Building media centre PC

[mobitune]

Looking to build a (virtually) silent media centre pc..

It must be able to cope with HDMI, and be capable of receiving FTA HD via a DVB-S type card

I have no idea on what I need, in the way of decent priced kit that has enough kick to do the job properly. In particular I need a bit of help choosing a reasonably priced, but decent performance:

Video card (with HDMI)
CPU (dual core)
Case (quiet and decent looking for setting below the telly)

I guess while i'm at it, I should allow for future expansion, mainly in the form of dual dvb-t tuner, blu-ray/hd-dvd and large(r) hdd

Any tips welcomed

Cheers
Pete

[chris57]

I'll kick you-off.

What about ditching the video card if silence is the aim. You can get motherboards with HDMI out. Saves the fan noise/heat generated by a video card:-
Intel
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135080
AMD
http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSea...SubcatUID=1953

[happyuser]

Have a look at this thread from elsewhere: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=945923

[rhubarbe]

Oh dear, you brave soul. I am just breaking up HTPC MKVI. This one was an AM2 with HDMI out in a Hiper Media HMC-2K53A-H2 case that we modded to an H3 so that we could use the later Abit board with the HDMI.

The PSU had three fans in it, nasty 40mm screamers. The case also has a fan under the HDD but you can't hear that, and the HiperCooler isn't too noisy.

Mine has a DigtialNow QuattroS 2 x DVB-T and 2 x DVB-S PCI-e card.

Two problems with it:

MCE won't play .iso or my camcorder files natively so you have to open an app manually, this means a wireless keypbaord rather than the excellent MCE remote.

It gets too hot.

I have decided to use the mobo and the CPU along with the RAM and the HDD in a new build PC at work, and keep the case and DVD, tuners, etc, and wait until XBMC has been ported to Linux. Then I will buy a Mini-ITX GM965 mobo with DVI and HDMI, a T7700 C2D MODT chip and use a 120W PicoPSU 12-25V PSU with an external laptop brick, and just a 2.5" notebook HDD. This will prevent heat build up in the case and give the nearest thing to a silent HTPC that I can conceive of.

That will be HTPC MKVII, and if that doesn't cut it it really will be hammer time.