$1000 HTPC - Need Advice

Hi Everyone,

Can you look over my system build and give me your thoughts. I will be using this HTPC for movies (DVD/Blu-Ray). Most of my movies are stored on an HP MediaSmart Server that I will access from this pc. Other things I will use this pc for: Music, Television/Hulu and eventually connecting into DirectTV HD. I am not planning on using this for gaming, just media. I currently use Xbox 360s around the house as media center extenders and will continue to do that so streaming movies and music via ethernet connections is another use that I have tried to give myself extra processing power for.

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: I am ready to buy

BUDGET RANGE: around $1000

Here is what I have come up with:

Case: Silverstone LC10B-E ATX Media Center HTPC case

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0 ghz socket AM3 95w Quad-core

Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX

Sound Card: ASUS Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim PCI interface Audio card with True Blu-ray Audio

PSU: Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU 500W ATX 12V 2.0 power supply

Memory: G.Skill 4 Gb (2 x 2GB) 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Hard drive: seagate Barracude 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 GB (I will eventually add in 2 more hard drives for additional storage)

Blu-Ray Burner: Pioneer Black BX Blu-Ray DVD Burner Model BDR-203BKS

** Future purchase: Dual Tuner TV cards (need to do more research on this so if you have any suggestions I would appreciate it. They have to connect into DirectTV HD tuner.

I will be running this in a Windows 7 environment.

Thanks for your help!!

Thanks Hunter for your suggestions. I am going to be doing trans coding, it is part of the reason I am upgrading so the quad core will be great for that. It is not uncommon for 2 movies to be trans coding and going to different locations at the same time - so the extra processing power is a must! I appreciate you catching the capability issue with the M4A79T - I guess I have been looking at these a bit too long!

They are also clocked a bit lower, they are the 780g board with dx10.1 support and smaller manufacturing so they really should run cooler, but really with a 945 the heat generated by the motherboard is going to be fairly minor.

Woah, i just took a look at that PSU you have listed, first rule of PSU, red switch BAD. The corsair 450vx is the same price on newegg, more powerful, and 80+ certified meaning it is quite efficient so it wont generate as much heat and it passed a 100% load test, the thermaltake is only listed as 70% efficient.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] &Tpk=450vx