The Case
The HTPC case can be more difficult to choose than one might think. That's because HTPC builders may impose more limitations on a system designed for the living room media rack than something to be shoved under their desk. Many want their case to mimic other components in their home theater cabinet, but PC cases are typically huge clunky towers rather than sleek, horizontal-lying enclosures.
Thankfully, case manufacturers are beginning to cater to the HTPC market. But one still has many considerations: form factor, noise, airflow, and, of course, budget. I decided early on to purchase a Micro-ATX motherboard for use in a Micro-ATX case. This form factor shaves a couple of inches off of the standard ATX measurements by limiting the number of expansion slots to 4. Some case makers attempt to further optimize for size by floating drive bays over the motherboard, or lowering the height of the case so that the system will only accept low-profile expansion cards. But the tighter you pack components into a case, the hotter it gets. The hotter it gets, the more cooling you need. More cooling means more or faster-running fans, which means noise.
After reading tons of reviews, the case in my price range that seemed to get the most unambiguous praise was Antec's NSK2400. It just fits into my media cabinet, its facade is silvery and elegant (doesn't match my black components, but it doesn't look out of place), and it provides ample internal space and noise-dampening features.
Other Stuff
Now I just had to consider components for which there is not much difference between brands. For the hard drive, I knew I could afford about 250GB, and chose the Samsung Spinpoint after reading that these drives are known for their quiet operation. For memory, I could afford 512MB DDR2 533, and Kingston seemed to be the only company offering compatible sticks in the 2x256MB configuration. Using paired memory instead of single sticks optimizes the performance of DDR2 memory. And because my motherboard features 4 memory slots, I can still upgrade without having to toss out what I bought this time.
Of course, my TV would act as my monitor. I already had an extra mouse and keyboard lying around. And I had an ATI Remote Wonder from my old video card that I wasn't using. For the CD/DVD drive, I plucked an old combo drive from my office PC.
Revisiting TV Tuners
When it came time for me to buy, ATI and their partners had still not released their Theater 650 Pro-based TV tuners. Just as my plans to use a Conroe compatible motherboard had been foiled by slow roll-out, so again I would have to make a compromise. I will eventually want to add a second TV tuner to my system, so I figured I'd just buy one of the more advanced cards later. Instead, I went with PowerColor's version of the Theater 550 Pro that runs on the PCI Express x1 bus. It was the least expensive card going at the moment, and I thought it unlikely I would ever need that funky slot for anything else.
Final Specs and Price
Case: Antec Solution Series NSK2400 - $85
Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM - $84
CPU: AMD Sempron 64 300+ - $60
RAM: Kingston ValueRam 512MB (2x256MB)DDR2 533 - $51
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint P Series 250GB (OEM) - $70
TV Tuner: PowerColor T55E-P03 $74 - $10 rebate
CD/DVD: Repurposed MSI 52xCDRW,16xDVD Combo Drive - Free
Keyboard & Mouse: Repurposed Logitech Wireless Combo - Free
Remote: Repurposed ATI Remote Wonder - Free
I ordered everything from NewEgg.com. After tax, shipping, and one rebate the price came to about $450. A little more than I wanted to spend, but still within reason.
Here's how everything looked out of the box:
With a little wrangling, I managed to cram everything in:
Installed Windows and other vital drivers and software, the open-source media center MediaPortal, and shoved it in my cabinet:
Impressions
As to the look and feel, I'm fairly satisfied. The case certainly is quiet. Even with the hard drive running it's barely audible. I'll probably pull it out again and disconnect the hard drive monitor light. No need to have that little LED flashing at you in the living room. The CD/DVD drive, though, yuck. That's super-ugly. I'll need to replace it with a drive that matches the color of the case, or do a manual modification to cover it up.
The system does indeed run as fast as I need it to, which means not very fast for anything but serving the media and web browsing.
The quality of the TV image could use some work. The tuner in my TV set is noticeably better. Hopefully the next generation of TV tuner cards will alleviate the difference. And there's probably some tweaking of the output settings that I can do to improve it.
The MediaPortal software is great, but definitely a hobbyist's solution. Keep in mind it is still version 0.2. I've spent hours configuring it, searching the forums for advice, and configuring it again. But I've finally managed to get a stable system running that will turn on, record a show, and turn itself off. It retrieves program guide information from Zap2It.com for free. It also plays music from a shared folder on my office PC, which is my entire CD collection. It runs photo slide-shows from a shared image folder. I've integrated details of my DVD collection from DVD Profiler, so I can browse my DVD shelf on the TV. I can also check the weather and listen to broadcast or internet radio. And the open source community is constantly introducing new features. Pretty sweet.
Conclusions
I managed to build a multipurpose Media Center PC for only $150 more than the cheapest DVD Recorder+HDD. Of course, I reused some parts and got my OS for free. And this kind of configuration still has some significant barriers to wide adoption. But for those who enjoy tinkering with tech, have intermediate computer skills, and a good chunk of time on their hands, building your own convergence box is an ever more reasonable proposition.
