Budget: under £500 Main uses of intended build: films, iPlayer etc., TV tuner, internet browsing, music, normally multitasking. Parts required: case psu cpu mobo ram hdd Monitor resolution: 1920 x 1080, hdmi connection Storage requirements: 1 TB should be enough will you be overclocking: no - not experienced and will just create more heat/noise Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): hdmi, 5.1 surround. around 10 usb should be enough Extra information about desired system: I'm on a budget, but will have much more money next year to upgrade, so don't want to end up with a poor machine and changing all the parts CPU - Intel i3-530 - £60 used, £96 new Saw a lot of old threads recommended cheaper or AMD processors, but this should handle everything without the need for a graphics card. less power, less noise. MOBO - asus P7H55 P7H55-M LX £58 P7H55-M/USB3 - only 3 x Audio I/O, thats enough for 5.1? RAM - 2GB, will probably end up running about 20 tabs on chrome and playing music so might add more if needed. I have no idea what RAM I need though. HDD - Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green Should be plenty for now, got good reviews, but wasn't sure if fast enough. When the prices come down, I hope to use a SSD for the OS, and maybe move this over to NAS. I could even then add an ssd for my laptop too. Case - this is where I'm undecided - want a slim and cheap solution: Silverstone Milo ML03B Micro ATX But this doesn't appear to have any PCI slots. I'm looking to buy used cases, but haven't seen many suitable. Other questions: If upgrading to an ssd in future, will the board not being compatible with usb3 or sata 6Gb/s restrict the performance?
It's very doable to build a decent HTPC with a budget of £500 or under. As an example, the specs of mine which I will hopefully buy and build sometime this month: Take off the third-party CPU cooler and it's around £432, quite a bit left over to afford a 64GB SSD or so. There are also cheaper PSUs (Antec Earthwatts 380 for ex.) but noise is a concern for me to risk it. You may as well go for Sandy Bridge, it's only at around £20~ more than the pricing of the last generation H55 mobos and i3 CPUs. You can do fine with 2GB RAM but it might be best to close Chrome before any media playback. But, 4GB is quite affordable (just a few more quid) so you may as well go for that. I can't offer much wisdom on cases, I have heard very good recommendations about the GD05 in terms of build/quietness, so have stuck with that. It's a bit bigger than your average HTPC case though, but at least I do not have to worry about finding low-profile (half-height) PCI cards if I needed to add any edit: one of the motherboards you linked; the LX, doesn't have an HDMI output on the back by the way, watch out for those things
Thakns for the replies, you built yours yet? at the price difference, and the TDP, I may go for sandybridge. jsut leaves me questionaing weather i actually need this again, it's gonna way outperform my laptop, and I might end up using it as my main pc, instead of its original purpose...
Hi, just checked back here and saw these replies. You started your build yet? I stayed away from sandybridge in an attempt to keep the cost down but, it does seema better investment. You started your build yet? If i do go witch sandybridge, I'll probably go for the i3-2100T, with the power consumption of 35W, even if is is slower than the standard.
