Build a Practical HTPC

Engadget has an article about building a practical HTPC. The goal of the How-To article was to build a machine that has good desktop performance, long life through upgradability, and a cost close to $1,000.

The total for the base system is $988. The addition of the TV tuners brings the grand total to $1126. We've talked about the upgrades we plan on making in the far future, but the only thing we have planned in the near-term is adding an HDTV tuner that can do OTA and QAM for $169. Since building the system a month ago it has been happily running MythTV on top of a Gentoo Linux. [Engadget]

The result is an Intel Pentium 4 630 (3.0GHz) processor, Intel 955X chipset motherboard, 2GB memory, 250GB SATAII hard drive, and dual tuner PVR card machine.

Also, the article has the following advice for those planning to use Linux for the machine:

The majority of TV tuner cards being produced right now are based on ATI chipsets and should be avoided like the plague if you plan on running a Linux based PVR. This is the same reason we went with an nVidia chipset on the graphics card. [Engadget]

Technorati : HTPC, How To, Intel, PC Hardware