Budget HTPC

[BALISTX]

Tested some parts (motherboard & CPU) that I had lying around and got a crazy notion of building a Budget HTPC. The wife liked the idea so much she insisted I build this before my gaming rig.

Out of my current PC I'm sacrificing the video card cause it's an All-in-Wonder and out of the parts for my gaming rig I'm sacrificing the PSU and sound card.

So after pricing out the parts I need It's going to come in around $350 before taxes from DC.

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ @ 1.80GHz - Free
Gigabyte GA-7VAX KT400 - Free
1GB Crucial Rendition PC3200 DDR400 - $81.90
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Free (Sacrificed)
SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio - Free (Sacrificed)
ASUS WL-138G-V2 Wireless G Network Adapter - $23.54
Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7900 RPM 8MB ATA100 - $77.76
LG 18X8X16 DVD±RW Black - $36.50
Nmedia MP-500 - Free Sacrificed)
Silverstone LC17 HTPC Black - $129.64

Total: $349.36

[sswilson]

Silverstone was the first producer of quality HTPC cases that caught my eye. I've always liked the look of them.

What do you plan on using as an OS?

I ran into this link just yesterday...... MEDIAPORTAL - free MediaCenter HTPC Software - Home .

Might be worth looking into.

[BALISTX]

That program looks very interesting I may have to try that out. I was going to run Windows XP SP2 with the ATI software that comes with the card or try and get a copy of the MCE 2005.

[grinder]

too bad you have an ATI card. If you were running nvidia i'd suggest LinuxMCE on Ubuntu. Beats everything else hands down.

[Robscix]

I would suggest a different front end then the ATI software. I will look around for you and post back. Hey since you donated these parts to the HTPC you can buy new ones. If your building a new gaming rig I would suggest the Prelude for a soundcard.