[gcoupe]

I'm toying with the idea of building an HTPC, and I'd like it to be as compact as possible. The main objective is to replace an existing Blu-Ray player, so it has to be capable of streaming Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA to my AVR. Being an HTPC, it will also be able to integrate with the Music and Photo libraries held on our Windows Home Server system. So what I'm thinking about is this list of components:

Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H
CPU	AMD Athlon II X3 400e
RAM	Kingston HyperX DDR3 - 2 GB
CPU Cooler	Scythe Shuriken Rev.B SCSK-1100
Graphics card	Sapphire HD 5450 512 MB DDR3
Drives	WD Caviar Green WD5000AADS
Blu-Ray Drive	LiteOn - Blu-Ray - BD-ROM

Now, I'd like to fit all this into an Antec Minuet 350 case. But there's the rub, will it all fit together? I have a feeling that the BD drive is going to clash with the cooler, and possibly even the low profile Graphics card. Has anyone tried this? If it looks as though there will be problems, then I'll resort to plan B: using an Antec NSK 1480 case.


Thanks in advance.

 

[jrwalte]

You'd be better off going with an Intel i3 or i5 which comes with an integrated graphics and is capable of bitstreaming HD audio, but it has to be with a H55, H57 or Q57 chipset MB. Not all i series processors have the integrated graphics, so do a little research to make sure the model you're looking at does.

 

[gcoupe]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jrwalte /forum/post/18172401


You'd be better off going with an Intel i3 or i5 which comes with an integrated graphics and is capable of bitstreaming HD audio, but it has to be with a H55, H57 or Q57 chipset MB. Not all i series processors have the integrated graphics, so do a little research to make sure the model you're looking at does.

But if I did go the Intel route, I suspect I would still have a clash between the BD drive and the CPU cooler, would I not?

 

[jrwalte]

I can't answer that. But at least you don't have to worry about the video card getting in the way and you save some power by removing the ATI video card. You can always get an external SATA to USB enclosure for the BD drive worst case.