We have been using our old laptops as makeshift HTPC's for awhile now. They work OK connected to the TV via VGA and to the network via NFS over wireless g. However, they are not able to play back 720p and we haven't even dared streaming 1080p. We looked briefly at the products on the market like Google TV, and Boxee Box which are going for $299 and $199 respectively, but decided we could do better. By better I mean cheaper than Google and with more freedom than either google or boxee box. We set a target price of less than $250 and after looking around for advice on the web we picked out the hardware below. If your interested in seeing a similiar build with an Intel processor look here: http://gadgetscholar.com/2011/01/build-a-htpc-on-the-cheap-under-250/
| Item | Description | Price may vary |
| Case | XION XON-810P-Black Micro ATX/ITX Computer Case - Micro ATX, 450W, PSU, USB, 80mm Fan, 5-in-1 Card-reader, Black | $39.99 |
| Motherboard | ECS MCP61M-M3 Motherboard - Socket AM3, MicroATX, Audio, GeForce 6150 Graphics, SATA | $31.99* |
| CPU | AMD SDX145HBGQBOX Sempron 145 Processor - 2.80GHz, Socket AM3, 1MB Cache, 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) HT Bus, Retail, CPU with Fan | $39.99 |
| Video Card | ASUS EAH5450 SILENT/DI/512MD2(LP) Radeon HD 5450 Video Card - 512MB, DDR2, PCI-Express 2.1 (x16), DVI, HDMI, VGA, DirectX 11, Single-Slot, Low Profile | $19.99* |
| RAM | Crucial CT12864BA1339 1GB PC10600 DDR3 Desktop Memory Upgrade - 1x1024MB, Non-ECC, Unbuffered, 1333MHz | $14.99 |
| HDD | WD Caviar 160GB Serial ATA HD 7200/8MB/SATA 3G | $37.99 |
| DVD | Lite-On IHAS124-04 Internal DVD Writer - DVD+R 24X, DVD-R 24X, DVD+RW 8X, DVD-RW 6X, DVD+R DL 8X, SATA (OEM) | $19.99 |
| * items with mail-in rebate | $204.93 + tax and shipping | |
| Option Items Listed Below | ||
| PSU Fan | Silenx IXP5214 iXtrema Pro Fan - 80mm x 15mm, 14dBA, 24CFM | $10.99 |
| Case Fan | Silenx IXP5414 iXtrema Pro Fan - 80mm x 25mm, 14dBA, 32CFM | not used |
| Filters | Masscool 80mm ABS Plastic Foam Fan Filter - 2-Pack | $3.99 |
| Wireless | ASUS USB N10 | $19.99 |
| Remote | Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard with Touchpad (RT-MWK01) | $32.17 |
| Feet | Felt pads from the Hardware store (pack of 16) | $2.47 |
| $274.54 + tax and shipping |
The Case:
Unfortunately the power supply that comes with the case has the loudest fan I've ever heard. It sounds like the case is ready for takeoff. After a fairly simple job of swapping the psu fan for a Silenx fan the sound levels are much better. However, the case fan is still louder than is really right for an HTPC. Sitting 15 ft away, one still notices the whir of the fan during the quiet parts of movies. So we decided to replace the case fan with another Silenx fan. Then a funny thing happened. Even though the new fan was barely audible when it was running outside the case. When it was installed the whoosh of air flowing through the case was still a little bit too loud. We decided to test the case temperatures both with and without the case fan. Under normal operation with the fan on the internal temperatures were 30 C 34 C and 33 C for the CPU, Video Card, and HDD respectively. After playing a 1080P Blu-Ray rip for 30 minutes with the fan disconected the temperatures were 30 C 48 C and 41 C. That convinced us the case fan is really overkill on this low power build so we decided to leave it disconnected and now the case is nearly silent.
It was somewhat disappointing to find out that the front audio uses AC97 connectors and our motherboard uses the newer Intel HD. This means we were not able to get the front panel audio to work. This isn't a big deal for us because the back audio works fine and thats what is normally used. The case was pretty cheap at $39.99 but it cost another $10.99 for the psu fan to make it quiet enough for us to use. For anyone who wants to go ahead and order replacement fans the one in the psu is 80mm x 80mm x 15mm and the one on the case is 80mm x 80mm x 25mm. Make sure you don't get a 25mm replacement fan for the psu because it will be to thick to fit. We also ordered filters we are hoping to install to keep things clean inside. The filters were $3.99 for a 2-pack.
(Update: The filters are too thick to be installed on the case fan as it is very close to the motherboard. We did slide the foam part of one filter between part of the case and the PSU air intake and that seems to fit very well (See the third picture below). All in all I'd say the filters were probably not useful here.)
One last note on the case. Its designed to stand upright but in our entertainment center if fits better laying on its side. The feet don't attach to the case in this orientation so we added some felt pads to keep the vent on what is now the bottom from being blocked.
CPU:
We don't need a very powerful CPU for this build. What is important to us is that its quiet and that means low wattage. The lowest wattage available are 35W intel cores and 45W AMD cores. We choose the sempron 145 because it is sufficiently powerful and was the cheapest available at tigerdirect. We could have saved a few bucks at newegg with the Sempron 140 or 130 but we wanted everything to arrive in one shipment and the rest of our build we found at tiger.
Motherboard:
Since we picked an AMD AM3 CPU, we need a motherboard with an AM3 socket. (AM2 and AM2+ could work with appropriate BIOS updates if you're recycling a motherboard) Also to fit in our case we need to choose from micro ATX motherboards. The cheapest available was $44.99 but now its offered with a rebate for just $31.99.
Video Card:
The on board graphics card is pretty weak. We should probably test the build without a discrete card just to see how weak but we didn't bother. Also we wanted HDMI output so we upgraded to a discrete card. To be completely honest, we don't know enough about graphics cards to make the best choice here. We do know that we a have an on board Radeon 4200 in another HTPC and it sometimes has problems (tearing and freezing) with 720p video. We decided to try a Radeon HD 5450 made by ASUS in part because its passively cooled so its completely silent, and also because its one of the cheapest we could find with 1080p support.
RAM:
We can get by with just one gig here so thats exactly what we did. In fact, we stole a gig from a previous build that had 4 and really didn't need it. If we didn't have the spare ram already we would have purchased the one listed above.
HDD:
Like with most of the other components, we went for the cheapest thing we could get our hands on. In this case it turned out to be a 160 GB Western Digital hard drive. We briefly considered a 8GB solid state drive from newegg but we thought that might be a bit small and again would require another shipment. since we keep all our media on a separate server and stream over our home network, the total installation only uses 3.5 GB of the 160 GB drive. So the 8 GB drive would have worked fine and offered a slightly faster boot time for those interested. If you don't have a separate media server and plan to keep all your media on this HTPC you should probably spend a bit more for a large HDD. At the moment, the 2TB drives offer the most storage for your dollar.
DVD:
We choose a simple DVD drive here. Look around there may be a bit cheaper option from time to time. If you want Blu-Ray, obviously your going to pay a bit more.
Software:
Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Windows is only good for games in our opinion so why waste any money on it here. As far as Linux distributions go there are many choices, we stuck with Ubuntu here out of familiarity. We ditched the unity interface in favor of the classic Gnome because it had better customization options. We increased the font and icon sizes until we could comfortably read the screen from the couch. Both the Gnome and Unity interfaces are a bit buggy with some settings so we played around here until we found settings that avoided the bugs. Also we used the proprietary ATI drivers for the graphics card in order to get sound to work with the HDMI cable. The proprietary driver defaulted to having a bit of overscan which wasn't necessary with our TV so we shut that off in the ATI Catalyst Control Center.
Wireless:
This is completely optional. Last year it would have been about as easy to run an Ethernet cable as would have been to find a wireless N USB adapter that works with Linux. We tried 4 different wireless N USB adapters last summer and 2 of them claimed they support Linux on the box. None of them actually worked. At least thats how it was last year. Lately the support of wireless N has gotten better. We had kept the last adapter we bought (ASUS USB-N10) and can report that it now works with kernel 2.6.38. It might work with older kernels but it wasn't working out of the box with kernels as late as 2.6.32-32. This adapter claims speeds of up to 150Mbps but has fairly limited range in our environment. In some crude testing where we downloaded a file over our home network it wasn't any faster than our Netgear wireless g adapter unless we were in the same room as the router.
2.4GHz Wireless Mouse & Keyboard:
Last year we picked up a cool little wireless keyboard with a touch pad. When we looked around for something for this build we found the same device for half the price so we decided to get another. We had to make some mouse sensitivity adjustments in Ubuntu to get the mouse to move just right. It was moving far too slowing by default. We've been charging the old one about once a month since we bought it and it is still working very well.
