My brother is looking to replace his satellite with an antenna and an HTPC which will be on most of the time. Since he's a middle school teacher, money is tight, and he's looking for a cheap one (think hobo build) with a small energy footprint. Monitor is not needed, since he, rather ironically, has a 42" plasma TV he won in a contest which eats up power like cheerios.

Going for the cheapest possible, I feel there needs to be:
PSU - All low end crap, shouldn't need more than 300 W. 80+ only.
Motherboard w/ onboard video and HDMI out - Need to decode 1080p
Processor - Need to decode 1080p
HDD - Price/GB is king
RAM - single channel. Dual channel wastes energy on an HTPC. Performance is Pfaw.
Case - I may end up giving him mine.
OS with some form of media center capability.

Unless anyone can point me to a linux distro with easy media center setup for antenna, I fear the OS is going to have to be windows 7. He does technically have free access to windows XP Pro (through me), but I've had one hell of a time getting any DVR software to work for XP that doesn't cost $100. That automatically cuts out ~$150, leaving us with $250 if we have a $400 budget. He's not keen on pirating an OS, either.

So, here's my initial ideas, and please give your suggestions.
$40 PCP&C Silencer 370 W
$54 Asus M3A78-EM AM2+ 780G - I'd do Intel, but the cheapest there was a Geforce 7100, whereas this is a Radeon 3200.
$60 AMD 240 Regor - See above, should work in AM2+, especially considering Asus is pretty good about releasing good updates when needed. I may drop this to a single core, unless someone can find a decent intel motherboard.
$75-10 Hitachi 0A38016 (deskstar?, I dunno, it's OEM) - I have extra SATA cables for this, since the mobo doesn't come with any.
$25 Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 800 - I bought 1 GB of DDR2 667 for $100. Boy do I feel jipped.
We're going to find a free case somewhere, unless there's a really freaking cheap one out there that's small.
Total comes out to $244 sans OS. I'm not sure what 7 will offer in terms of Media Center yet, but from what I can tell, it's ridiculously expensive.

Now of course, there's the question of whether or not to add a blu ray player on it. My brother seems to think he really needs one, which is why the PS3 is such a tantalizing option. He seems to think its a power hog though, even when on standby, and I don't know if it can play videos on hulu, etc... I have a spare DVD-ROM, so he won't be without optical, but I think he can avoid buying a blu ray until DVD is dead.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134066

I think you should get dual channel ram (and maybe higher speed cause that motherboard can go DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) but maybe it was the low voltage you wanted?)

Mobo you want is out of stock.

First off, dual channel is a very good idea. If you want to grab a mobo with a lower memory standard like DDR2 667 be my guest, and hell, throw 2x512mb sticks in it, but make sure its dual channel.

Second, HTPC have two heavy orders: HDD and GPU reliability. You nailed one. I would not do onboard video on an HTPC if you want quality picture and no stuttering. Instead get a nice low profile low power GPU like the HD4550 this ASUS offering is low profile and offers a nice little fan rather than a passive cooler. I'd feel a lot safer with this card than one of its passive cooler variants. He's got a very large TV and I wouldn't want the GPU giving it shit play of his movies.

But that's just me. I am never comfortable with onboard for anything other than web browsing, and I probably never will be.

Why?
What's the point of dual channel when you're playing a movie @ 30 fps? I really don't think it matters much. What does matter is that one DIMM is cheaper than two, both in power, and in offset cost. Cheapest RAM is $20 for 2 gigs, without shipping. This one is $25 with free shipping.

Also, I'm not all that worried about the onboard after reading this. If they can get it to run smoothly with a 1.8 GHz sempron, I don't think a even a 1.5 GHz Regor dual core will have any problems. We're not talking about an intense gaming session here, just a decent amount of video playback. If I get a video card, that will increase my cost essentially by $40. Granted, I can then switch to a better motherboard/intel CPU.

I'm confident in my choices for everything but mobo/processor. I think the Radeon 3200 is fine for what it's needed for, but I'm slightly worried about finding a processor for it, since newegg only has 27 AMD processors in stock, most of which are agena or deneb. I'd get the 45W single core sempron if it weren't for my intense disgust at single core processors and their severe stuttering (not that it would stutter much at 2.7 GHz.)

If a better graphics card is needed, it can be bought later (unless maybe it would be influencing your motherboard decision).

If he really wants to get Blu-ray, there's this BD-ROM/DVD-ROM/CD-ROM for about $68 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106326
There is an OEM one for $60, but it may not come with the software for playing Blu-ray discs (and there is likely no free alternative at the moment), so I'd advise only getting retail Blu-ray drives for now, unless you are sure it comes with the software.

As far as I know, Windows 7's Media Center is supposed to have better support for over-the-air digital TV than Windows Vista's Media Center.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 21 2009, 2:46 am by ShadowFlare.

Alright, I'm getting closer to actually buying this. Found an absolute steal on the PSU.

In this case, $22 for a 2GB stick from a decent company is much better than $26 for dual channel from a no-name. I toned down my processor, since there's really no need to have such a beefy one, and on top of that, apparently you can easily unlock the 2nd core if it's not defective. Unless I'm mistaken, a 2.7 GHz dual core with 1 MB l2 cache is REALLY good for $35.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811160028
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145233
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128394
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220228
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698