Home Theatre PC New Build

Griffolion

July 2, 2009 2:15:36 PM

Hi all, im looking to build a bit of a home theatre type pc for £500-700 for my entertainment room. The PC will be attached to a projector (not included here) and will have 5.1 speakers installed (included below). Its going to be used for music and movies primarily, not really any gaming. May also want to upgrade to blu ray at some point in the future too so need to make sure the hardware can handle it. Just wanted to get your ratings on it, any improvements, money savings etc? Im UK so newegg is a little out of the question as a supplier, i perfer scan, we are on good terms.

Thanks all.

Case: Asus TM-250 Micro ATX scan.co.uk £26.32
Power Supply: 520W Corsair HX Series scan.co.uk £73.59
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0 GHz scan.co.uk £65.54
Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 scan.co.uk £37.54
Motherboard: Asus M2N68-AM PLUS scan.co.uk £35.98
Hard Drive: 320 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 scan.co.uk £33.27
Sound Card: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio scan.co.uk £38.26
Graphics Card: 512MB XFX 9600 GT scan.co.uk £60.90
Optical: Samsung Black OEM scan.co.uk £16.66
Card Reader: Akasa 3.5" Int Multi Memory scan.co.uk £11.37
Fans: 92mm Silverstone Low Noise scan.co.uk £3.09
80mm Silverstone Low Noise scan.co.uk £3.09
Operating System: Windows 7 RC
Speakers: Creative Inspire T6100 scan.co.uk £45.89
Human Interface: Logitech Comfort Desktop EX110 scan.co.uk £21.28
TV Tuner: Compro Tech Videomate scan.co.uk £29.97

Total: £502.75

More about : home theatre build

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Wolfshadw

July 2, 2009 3:34:35 PM

If this is strictly for media playback and no gaming, look to a motherboard with a 780G or 790FX chipset and native HDMI. When paired with even a low-end dual-core processor, it was more than capable of handling blu-ray playback.

This means you can scale back your power supply and drop the graphics card altogether.

Otherwise, your build looks good to me for media playback and some minor gaming.

-Wolf sends

Whoops!

Verify that your selected processor is compatible with your selected motherboard. Looking at Asus' CPU Support List for the M2N68-AM PLus, it appears only the Phenom IIX2 545 and 550 are supported

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kufan64

July 2, 2009 4:36:07 PM

A quick thought: those fans (even though they say "low noise") may be a little louder than you'd like. Since this PC will be used almost exclusively for watching movies, I'd suggest some 120mm or even some 140mm fans. (the bigger they are, the slower they have to spin, which means the lower the noise) You're probably going to need a different case that supports these bigger fans, which usually means a bigger case. I don't know if you plan to just hide this thing away in a cupboard though, so maybe it doesn't matter to you.

Also, I'd look at some of Logitech's speakers if you haven't already. Logitech really makes some great products.

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Griffolion

July 2, 2009 9:49:14 PM

Wolf, i checked on the motherboards compatability list and saw the athlon II 250 on the official site (even cross references the manufacturer code and everything). If any of you guys could direct me to an Asus micro atx 780G mobo that would be ace, i really want to keep this thing small so its out of sight in the room etc. Thanks for the advice on the fans kufan, however with regard to the speakers, i want to stick to creative stuff as (in my exp) they stomp all over logitech for sound quality.

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