Chaos

Well I just recieved a CoolerMaster HTPC chassis as a trade for another piece of hardware and I am planning to build a media centre

Any thoughts on components? I want to do this on the cheap. I need motherboard/cpu/ram/video/sound.

Do you recommend a dedicated sound card or is onboard audio good enough?

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Judas

If it's realtek... it's actually quite excellent.. course everyone knows i would probably have said that anyways.

Using the digital out to a amp on a realtek solution and windows vista is imo, the most excellent. You'll want a dedicated TV-tuner though as currently no AIW or VIVO fuctions work under vista. That'll probably be awhile yet.. (unfortuneatly)..

are you considering HD anything? imo a x1300 ati card plays back HD-720p very well 1080p is.. er.. .not really sure if it's powerful enough for that. Probably a x16xx series would be more then plenty and are HDCP compliant.

Ram/cpu/motherboard, you can just about go any route with that, dual core would be favorable if possible. But you don't need ALL that much juice to push a simple multi media center. Nothing like a gamer would need.

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procupine14

yeah i agree as for motherboards maybe an ECS RS485M-M would work its pretty cheap and relaible and AMD lol
as for proc a 3800+ on this board makes up my brother's MMO gaming rig so it should be a good base for a media centre thing
that is if you are going with socket AM2 application

Judas

considering todays tech, it may be more worthwhile to go with say a P965 chipsets and intel core 2 dou, say E4300 would be nice plenty....

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procupine14

true that
i myself am thinking of a switch to a Core 2 Duo setup

Tipstaff

Agreed. Because of how little heat it generates, even on the stock fan it'd be quiet, and it'd still perform well enough. Thankfully it's a full height case too, so you can put any video card in there you want.. well.. as long as it fits length wise.

Do yourself a favor though, Chaos, be sure to test out the rear fans that come with the chasis (if yours came with some I mean). I've sold a couple of these, and both times I found those fans to be to loud... at least to loud to be used in a media center setup. You may want to switch them out for quieter ones.

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