Building a Cheap Media Centre
I've been asked a couple of times what it would cost of build a media centre PC/HTPC like mine (once people have seen it they love it), as you can see in my most recent write-up the answer can be 'quite a lot.' So I've been investigating cheaper options.
My Build
My HTPC consists of:
| Description | Price |
|---|---|
| Silverstone LC17 Case | £65.67 |
| Silverstone ST30NF Fanless PSU | £71.09 |
| Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H Motherboard | £67.98 |
| 2*1Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-8500 RAM | £26.70 |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e CPU | £52.83 |
| Scythe Mini Ninja CPU Cooler | £36.09 |
| 2*Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB | £79.41/£77.04 |
| Pioneer DVR-116DBK DVD Recorder | £20.64 |
| Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote and IR receiver | £19.96 |
| Microsoft IR Media Keyboard | £23.48 |
| Hauppauge Nova T 500 Dual Tuner | £49.99 |
| Other stuff (case fans, fan controllers, etc) | £15.84 |
| Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade | £65.52 |
| Total: | £672.24 |
I have left out the £37 for AnyDVD as unnecessary and the prices don't include any postage I might have paid.
That's a fairly pricey build (cheaper than some I've seen, and probably cheaper/better than a bought model).
A Cheaper Alternative
So I've been hunting around for a cheaper set of components. Some have come down since I bought them, some have gone up, but by trawling the forums and various online PC parts stores, here's my suggestions:
| Description | Price |
|---|---|
| Antec NSK 2480 Case with PSU | £84.98 (Ebuyer) |
| ASROCK A780GM-LE Motherboard | £50 (Ebuyer) |
| 2*1Gb DDR2 PC5300 RAM | £16.98 (Dabs) |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e CPU | £45.62 (Scan) |
| Western Digital 500GB Caviar Green | £39.68 (Scan) |
| LG GH22NS40 22x SATA | £16.43 (Scan) |
| Nexos Wireless Multimedia Keyboard with TouchPad | £24.99 (Ebuyer) |
| Hauppauge Nova TD 500 Dual Tuner with IR sensor and remote | £53.59 (Ebuyer) |
| Total: | £332.27 |
This doesn't include any postage costs.
For that you should get a reasonably low power machine, capable of 1080p playback (you can add a Blu-ray drive should you wish) and with capacity to be upgraded later. It uses onboard sound (5.1) and graphics (HDMI).
Some alternatives were the Antec Minuet 350 case (£79.98 from Ebuyer), but it only supports half-height cards I think, which rules out the TV tuner, and it's not as well designed as the 2480. I have left out a CPU cooler, the CPU will come with one, it's fairly quiet from what I understand as the CPU is low power, possibly an after-market one may be needed (for example, Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 LP, £13.77 from Scan). I haven't included OS, at the moment I would load Windows 7 release candidate on it for free (until July 2010), otherwise you're looking at £60-90 more for Vista. Obviously any parts you can reuse help the cause.
In the future it may be the likes of a dual-core Atom with Nvidia ION will do the job, although I'm still not convinced they're quite up to the job of acting as a full PVR (most don't have the PCI slots for expansion and I'm not too keen on the USB tuners).