How to build pc for watching movies

[kamui4697]

what is needed to build a good pc mainly for watching movies (dvd and blu ray)

 

[lowriderflow]

depends how cheap you are looking to go?

You can do it easily for $400, or you can spend $800.

$400 would be AMD motherboard with 6150 geforce video built in ($70), Athlon II x2 240 ($50), 4gb DDR2 memory (2x2gb - $85), Blu-Ray drive ($60to$80), spinpoint 500gb harddrive ($50), and any case&400watt power supply combo you can find in the $60-$70 range

 

[kamui4697]

so you dont need anything real high end for processing the video

 

[lowriderflow]

It will be fine for bluray... it will be terrible for gaming. Certainly an actual video card would be alot better for both. It depends o nwaht you want to spend...

Also I should specify I assume your using a regular computer monitor is a DVI connection.? If you're considering outputting this to like a 40" plasma tv or something, this wont be very good.

 

[kamui4697]

i am using a 24 inch samsung monitor and wont be hooking it up to the tv

 

[Wolfshadw]

Sorry, but I doubt the Geforce 6150 on-board graphics will handle Blu-Ray. You'll need a motherboard with at least an ATI 3200 on-board (ATI 780G) or Geforce 7050PV (NVidia 630a) chipsets.

-Wolf sends

 

[kamui4697]

i see i guess i will be doing some research thanks for the help

 

[kamui4697]

Best answer selected by kamui4697.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Or you could go the route we did and redeploy something else. We upgraded a computer and took the 'old' CPU/mobo/RAM for the HTPC. Then bought a $30 HTPC cooler master elite 360 case, a 530-watt rosewill green series power supply $50, a $70 HD 4670 graphics card, and a $50 blu-ray drive.

The CPU is a 4200+ dual core with 3 gigs of DDR2 RAM.

It's running at 720p, and can play several games like batman arkham asylum maxed. (Stuff you'd play with a controller is generally what runs fine and is run)

But for just playing blu-ray, you could even use an old single core computer as long as you have a graphics card and the software to do the decoding mainly on the GPU.