Three choices

The three options I'm looking at are:

Dell E521:

• AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+
• Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
• 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs
• 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
• 16x DVD+/-RW Drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU
• Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Pros:

• Impressive processor- dual-core
  
• Includes everything, OS and case
• High-tech: SATA optical drive, SATA hard drive
• Assumed to have a quiet PS
  

Cons:

• Does not have component- out. My projector can take a direct VGA input, so it isn't a deal-breaker
• It's a Dell, dude
• Case would be tossed

Price:

• $439
• Case $120
• $560

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Build-your-own

	247076 Quantity Limit: 20 Asus M2NPV-VM GeForce 6150/nForce 430 Sempron/Athlon 64(FX)(X2) SktAM2 DDR2 M-ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail ***Free Shipping*** Remove		$91.99	$91.99
	80701-8 Quantity Limit: 20 AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ Socket AM2 (62W) Retail ***Free Shipping*** Remove		$88.80	$88.80
	85016-56 Quantity Limit: 20 Kingston HyperX KHX6000D2/1G 1GB DDR2-750 PC2-6000 Memory Retail ***Free Shipping*** Remove		$111.00	$111.00

Pros:

• Fully control each component
• Has SPDIF and Component-out
• Drivers and software available
• Upgradable
  

Cons:

• Compared to Dell, not a deal
• Processor is single-core
  

Price:

• $400 + Case + Powersupply, $550
  

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A configured (Linux) system:



Ultra quiet, super small, transformable elegance for Linux and Windows. These system are loaded with features: TV-Out(SVideo and Composite), DVI, Component Video, VGA, Card Reader, Front USB/1394 and Sound. Equipped with a 280Watt ultra quiet14dba power supply, front access to 9 in 1 Memory card reader as well as front USB/1394, Mic and Headphone IOs for easy access to your digital and analog media. The NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6150/nForce™ 430 MB offers 2 PCI, 1 PCI-X x 16 and 1 PCI-X x 1 half height expansion slots.

This system is the same motherboard as above, but comes with a nice case and HTPC-specific power supply.

So, I'd have to add in the processor ($89), the RAM ($110) and hard drives and optical drives (another $100).

Pros:

• Purpose-built HTPC components
• Remote control included
  

Cons:

• None known
  

Price:

• $350 + $300, $650
  

Mobo idea

I found this Asus board which meets some of my criteria. It has component out and SPDIF out for a great price: $90.

Since it is AM2, that means the newer Athlon processors, but I'm thinking non-X2 (single core), so they're reasonably priced at $85 or so too.

Time for the HTPC

I'm just starting my HTPC- I actually had a PC I bought well before I put up the first board for the home theater. I had bought a Shuttle with an nForce2 motherboard which had integrated graphics, optical output and still had room for a HDTV tuner card and aftermarket video card. However, Aidan has been using that as his personal PC and to be honest, it is pretty loud for a little PC. So, I'll pull out the TV tuner and I'll get set.

A little background for what I want:

• digital sound output (spdif)
• onboard graphics

My projector has multiple inputs, but rather than messing with its remote, I'd prefer to let my receiver do the video switching. Therefore, I want a motherboard (or mobo as those of us 'in the know' say) which can do component output. All my other PCs are AMD, so I'm leaning in that direction too. The new technology is the dual-core processors- of which Intel are leading in performance right now. But, I'm pretty sure that doesn't do much for purely viewing on my HTPC (I don't plan on doing encoding or other tasks which benefit from multiple cores). So, since the horsepower doesn't have to be that hot, I'm thinking I'll find a low-power single-core chip, which will certainly be well-priced since everything is dual-core these days. For RAM, I'd like to stick with DDR (since I can move it around to other PCs which are all DDR), but that's not a big consideration. The newer memory (DDR2) is the same price and will be a little more future-proof.

So, I'm going to start with the guts, and then find a case at some later point. One of the Home Theater Shackers, chasw98, did a similar setup in that he encoded his movies and put them on a file server. I have a giant PC case that I'll turn into a linux server for storing movies and other media, so a big case isn't required- hopefully, I can get away with one- or none hard drives.

Stay tuned!