Just built me a new HTPC box.
Antec ISK300-150 case with a Zotac 880G-ITX motherboard, 2.4 GHz Athlon II X4 610e 45W cpu, $Gb DDR3-1600 RAM, slimline DVD burner, 90Gb SSD for the OS and 1Tb 2.5-in drive for storing videos and music. Put Windows 7 Home Premium X64 with a few tweaks on it. From power on to desktop with wifi connected is 14 seconds. Has 2 USB 3.0 ports on back and added a PCIE USB 3.0 card for the front USB ports. Along with my 2 Gb external drive with USB 3.0 I can store about 400 DVD movies and my 60Gb worth of music on it.
aandegoons
(473 posts)Did you decide to use the SSD for start up time, and why no blu-ray?
I have been using a wdtv livehub with luck. Though it is a little buggy at times. Just use my gaming computer to convert my blu-ray and dvd movies and store them on a network drive.
I have been tossing around building a htpc not sure how much better it would work then what I have though.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)And blu-ray wouldn't do much for the 100's of old movies and shows that I have.
Got the case on sale for $70, the cpu for $70, memory for $20, DVD burner was $25. The SSD was on sale for $80 with a $20 mail in rebate on top of that and the hard drive was on sale for $85. Found a legit Dell branded copy of Windows for $70 on line(authenticates without a glitch), motherboard was $55. I slowly accumulated all the pieces when I found them on sale at Frys and Newegg.
The original mini ITX project was for a deal that fell through-I was going to build about a 100 systems for someone but they couldn't get the licensing from the bar gaming software company(they wanted to sell a package deal with crappy hardware included).
aandegoons
(473 posts)You can rip blu-rays and get rid of the DRM and put them on your server if you ever decide to. I don't own a whole bunch of blu-rays but they play well through a wired connection.