My turn — under $1k HD-ready HTPC
So let’s make this quick and easy, this little box has HDMI and is ready to have a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive added to it. For a little bit more you can get whichever flavor of video card, AMD/ATI or NVIDIA, you’d like to ensure smooth MPEG-4 AVC [H.264] playback from the latest batch of HD DVD/Blu-ray releases. Read on for the full monty…
|
Component |
Price |
Notes |
| Athlon X2 BE-2350 | $100 | The new BE series is super low power (45W max) and cheap! |
| Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 | $15 | Decent, budget, cooler. |
| Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H | $75 | Socket AM2, AMD/ATI 690G (X1250) with HDMI (HDCP) and S/PDIF output, microATX formfactor, nuff said! |
| Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 800 | $60 | |
| Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB SATA | $110 | Huge, cheap, quiet storage. |
| ASUS DRW-1814BLT 18x DVD burner SATA black | $35 | Features QuieTrak tech to keep the drive quieter then many others around. |
| AVerMedia AverTV M780 | $90 | NTSC/ATSC combo, PCIe x1, great digital TV reception |
| Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium OEM |
$115 | Vista is where it’s at for Media Center these days. |
| Antec ‘Veris’ Fusion Black | $220 | Awesome microATX media center case, now in a revised all black version! |
| Totals | $825 |
To ensure the latest next generation titles playback perfectly we have two possible candiates that will fit in the Antec Fusion. The HiS Radeon 2600 Pro (model# H260PRQT256DDN-R) ~$115 has a large double wide heatsink with fan so it doesn’t need extra height. Alternatively we have the ASUS EN8600GT SILENT/HTDP/256M~$140, which is totally passive and unlike the Gigabyte model Alan used, it is double-wide and so doesn’t have to be higher then the card, thus it will fit the Fusion case.