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I have a Ceton InfiniTV pre-ordered and will be using this new box to drive our main TV plus 2 or 3 xBox 360's throughout the house. This will be a dedicted HTPC, no personal use. It will be connected to a Toshiba '55 1080p LED and will replace an HD Tivo. It will be in an enclosed cabinet (stacked with A/V components horizontally) so noise nor size are an issue... within reason. I want to build in standard size Blue-Ray drive as well as enough horsepower for any needed transcoding, HDMI out, etc. HD space is not an issue, since all content will be stored on my Mediasmart Windows Home Server. And of course like eveyrone, I want to exceed the minimum requirements for Ceton, but do this as cheaply as possible. :-)

Any pointers you can provide to build lists that would meet these needs? I'm hoping to keep the build at/under $400 before Ceton cards if that's doable.

Thanks for any advice you can give. Rich

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For $400, you'll need to make some sacrifices, but I think you can build a pretty good system (better than what I'm running now, really.) Here's a parts list to get you started. It leaves some head room in your budget so you can customize as needed, but I think it's a pretty good baseline.

Case: Moneual LAB EGI 0.8mm Y601B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case w/300W TFX Power Supply : $59.99

There are a lot of case options available, so you'll probably want to pick one based on your needs and tastes, but Moneual is a good brand even if this is their low end offering.

Motherboard/graphics: ASUS M4A785-M : $69.99

At this price point I'd recommend an AMD integrated solution. I'm running a 780G system and am very happy with it. This one is 785G

CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 440 Rana 3.0GHz $74.99

That should give you enough power for transcoding yet stay within budget.

RAM: Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 $55.99

That's a 2GB kit, you might want more with the extenders, I'm not sure. I never use more than 2GB now but I don't run extenders.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALS 1TB 7200 RPM $74.99

Lots of options here of course, but this one will give you reasonable speed for recording multiple shows at once and room to hang on to them until you transcode and/or move them.

That brings the total to $335.95 before shipping and Windows of course.

I'm sure there are other opinions of what you should spend your money on :-)

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Thanks! Very, very helpful – unknown (google) Jul 21 at 12:47
In case it wasn't clear, I'll add the caveat that I haven't used any of those specific parts but I have used similar ones. The case in particular is always something where personal preference is the rule. I forgot the Blu-Ray drive also, so that will bring you total up to close to $400. I have an LG and a Lite-On and have no problems with either. Then there's input devices which I always overlook. I use a Gyration media center remote & compact keyboard, but there are lots of options there as well. – jrandecker Jul 21 at 14:31

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