Building my first HTPC

[endatheworld]

Hi, I am building my first HTPC and after much reasearch I have come up with the following build. I want to use the system to watch streaming sports, Bluray and downloaded HD movies. I will not be using it to watch TV. Any comments or suggestions welcome.

Case » SilverStone Grandia GD04B
Power Supply» be quiet! Pure Power  430W ATX 2.3
Motherboard » Intel DH67BL, H67
CPU » Intel Socket 1155 Intel Core i5-2310, 4x 2.90GHz, tray (CM8062301043718)
Memory » Crucial DIMM kit 8GB PC3-10667R
Heatsink » Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev. B
Optical Drives » LiteOn iHOS104 4x BD-ROM

 

[Aaron Ledger]

That sounds like a great system. For the tasks you’ve listed, you won’t require the Core i5. You could get away with a Core i3 or even a Pentium or Celeron. You might want to consider something like the i3-2100t as it has a bit better power/thermal characteristic. IMO, the stock HSF in the i3-2100 and i3-2100t (the T-variant has a thinner profile HSF) are both pretty quiet and you may find that you don’t really need to splurge on the Scythe. The stock HSF on the Core-i5 2500K is not so quiet.

Have you considered going with a low-profile chassis or even mini-ITX? Or are you going for something bigger to have more storage locally?

Storage drive( s ) and operating system are missing from your build list.

[scoyne2]

Looks like a great start! I have an i5 and it is more then enough, if the budget gets tight an i3 will do. I HIGHLY reccomend a SSD as your system drive, after installing mine my computer was a totally new beast. If you are going to be soring media on your HTPC keep an eye out for deals on 2TB and 3TB drives, buy more then you think you will need, it adds up fast. 

[Morely]

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.

[Author]

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