I am thinking of buying these components: Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit Unbuffered CL9 Intel Pentium G620 2.6GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2V-B3 H61 Socket 1155 VGA DVI Onboard 7.1 Channel Audio mATX Motherboard Thermaltake Armor A30 Micro ATX and Mini ITX Case Around about £198 I have kicking about a Crucial C300 SSD and a 500GB HDD, an optical drive,a PSU and a 8400GS which I will probably upgrade in the future if needed. Anything I can improve on? obviously in the purchase dept, I certainly do not want to spend more than the above figure.
Look's a very capable HTPC from here. Should handle anything you could throw at it easily. You could probably even get away with not using the 8400GS - the onboard graphics in that Pentium chip should easily handle 1080p playback. Might keep power usage down a bit if it's likely to be on a long time.
If you're looking for an HTPC that's going to be on a long time, take a look at a low-power solution like Atom/Ion or Fusion - they'll be perfectly capable of handling 1080p video without any issues, as long as the player you use can use the GPU for decoding. Just a thought...
Could you post a link or two to your suggestions? I forgot to mention in my original post that I'll be sticking a Hauppauge TV card in it, if that will make any difference to your suggestions.
I would stick with the Pentium and have nearly double the performance if you ever happen to need it. An Atom/Ion will likely be about the same price, so it doesn't offer any real advantage in my opinion. In fact Atom is going to be a disadvantage if you expect to have more than one expansion slot of either pcie-e or pci as flexatx are very few and there are no matx or atx with Atom. There is one matx e-350 board in the Asus e35m1 that may fit your needs. But once again it still is about the same cost as the Pentium and Gigabyte you have selected, also with less power.
But test both too, I have used Nvidia and ATI cards in my HTPC and have never been happy with the picture quality on a TV from NVidia. Also if this is connected to a television via HDMI why not find a board with a HDMI out, you will may be able to pass-thru video and audio through HDMI.
