I’m putting together my third
I’m putting together my third (?) HTPC and I’m going for low cost and high performance this time. Here’s the parts list:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=16356254
If you want to go with Windows 7 I see no reason not to, but it was less money for me to do an upgrade from Vista (which I already had) to Win8, with the free WMC offer I signed up for last year.
I’ve borrowed some of the hardware from work (already had the OS and SSD) and it works great!
Mind you, I am testing with 4G RAM and could get away with a 30G SSD. This is running wireless (802.11N) and all the storage is on my Win7Pro “server” that lives in the workroom off the garage. Since my TV is only 720p, bandwidth is not a problem; I’d put a switch on the LAN cable connected to my ROKU if I needed 1080p.
And where I live, a tuner would be pointless, so we’re keeping “basic cable” to get Portland, OR local stations.
This box is small, unobtrusive, as close to silent as you can get with a single fan, and sufficiently powerful to stream video very well.