[DjMobile]

So I am about to build my first HTPC. I want to be able to store all of my movies, music, and pictures, run media portal, record TV shows, rip blu-ray movies, and have the option to play a game, surf the web, and have Microsoft office. It will be hooked up to 5.1 Surround sound and a 42" HDTV through a receiver. Like most people I want to do this while spending the least amount of money possible but at the same time I dont want to have to upgrade this HTPC for a few years if not more.


So this is what I have come up with so far:


SILVERSTONE Black LC10B-E HTPC Case - $110


AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz Dual Core Processor - $103


GIGABYTE GV-R487D5-1GD Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - $170


Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 PCI-Express x1 Interface - $115


GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard - $85


OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ600MXSP 600W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active - $75


OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 1066 SDRAM - $54


ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - $32


Seagate Barracuda 1TB 5900 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - $80 x 2


Logitech diNovo Mini Black USB Bluetooth Wireless Mini Keyboard - $100


Total: approximatley $1000


Is there anything I'm missing? Anything I could downgrade or take away?

 

[Latinoheat]

BLURAY drive?

 

[ArtosDracon]

I'll also add that 2TB is not likely to be enough depending on the size of your current DVD library and certainly won't be enough once you up to bluray.


Also, if this system is going to be in your living room, which I suspect it will given the choice of case and sound equipment, you'll likely want to spend a bit of money on making it quieter, a scythe mini ninja as well as a passive power supply and a large heatsink with either a large slow fan or a passive heatsink for the graphics card, and if at all possible, a lesser expensive and smaller SSD for your boot drive, your system can spin down the storage drives when not in use so you can save quite a bit of noise when not playing from your storage array.


Finally, speaking of storage array, I'll highly reccomend two things, number one, keep your OS separate from your mass storage, it's "just in case" feature number one. Re-installing a corrupt OS or cleaning out viruses will be much easier if you don't have to worry about all your DVDs or music or pictures at the same time, on the same drive(s). Number two, go raid, generally I would suggest raid5, that parity will mean a LOT the first time you have a drive crash, trust me, been there, done that, it SUCKS.

 

[renethx]

GA-MA770T-UD3P supports only DDR3 SDRAM.

 

[ArtosDracon]

Ah, good catch renethx.


A quick tip for everyone, anytime you're looking at a Gigabyte board for AM2/AM2+/AM3 simply look just after the chipset model number and before the next dash, T means DDR3, no T means DDR2.