Here are the specs on my first HTPC…
[list]
[*]Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H motherboard (more on that later)
[*]Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Dual Core Processor LGA775 2.53GHZ 1066FSB 3MB
[*]2 Gigabytes of Ram – OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN DIMM
[*]Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 3.5IN 500GB SATA2 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Cache
[*]THERMALTAKE BLACK BACH HTPC CASE[/list:u]
[b]Total Cost ~$600[/b]
At the same time I replaced my 10+ year old Sony Amp with an Onkyo TX-SR606 amplifier.
On my set up I didn’t add a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive yet, because I was pretty high on the wife agro already.
Right off the bat, I really love the amp! Hell, even the wife likes it, and the price was right at $620 canadian. Plus, I was trying to keep the overall budget really low.
After everything was setup with the 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium (64-bit there were too many codec incompatibilities), I found a small hardware limitation…the motherboard I purchased can’t output TrueHD or the DTS Master Audio through the HDMI port, it’s just not able to, only AC3 and plain DTS. But, for now it’s fine, my old amp never cranked out DTS anyways, Hehe.
I found this board online a few days later that seems it will TrueHD audio and some video enhancements through HDMI. It’s called the ASUS HDAV 1.3, check it out…. I’m definitely picking this one up.
[url=http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=25&l2=150&l3=0&l4=0&model=2355&modelmenu=1]http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=25&l2=150&l3=0&l4=0&model=2355&modelmenu=1[/url]
If you guys have other suggestions on other cards that will do the same thing.
[img width=400 height=300]http://www.xboxaddict.com/images/misc/htpc_small.jpg[/img]
Anyways, glad to be here! Any comments will be appreciated.
Kam
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