Ideas for a HTPC £450-£550

[superpig83]

I have a budget for a HTPC of about £450 - £550 looking to play HD movies and TV shows smoothly and possibly a freeview HD card of some sort. Ive come up with this configuration but ideally as cheap as possible would be better it is purely for HD movies TV and music and to be situated in the living room.

Case
Antec NSK 2480 HTPC Case + 380W PSU
Processor (CPU)
AMD A6-3670K APU (2.7GHz, 4 Cores) & AMD Radeon™ HD 6530D Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® F1A75-M: FM1 A-SERIES, SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
Integrated AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series Graphics
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE Barracuda SATA-III 6Gb/s HDD, 32MB Cache (7200rpm)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 10 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
TV Card
PCTV SYSTEMS DUAL TUNER TV CARD & WINDOWS MEDIA CENTRE REMOTE
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £563.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[PCS]

Welcome to our forums

I can wholeheartedly recommend this specification, as I have one in my living room. It can play 1080P full HD movies without any issues, and it's 100% fanless so SILENT!

Case
PCS Hush! Silent Mini-ITX Case + 60W PSU
Processor (CPU)
AMD® Zacate™ E350 Dual-Core Processor (1.60GHz) 1MB L2 Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® E35M1-I DELUXE: FCH A50, SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1066MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
Integrated AMD® Radeon HD 6310 Graphics - DX11
Memory - 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1[SUP]st[/SUP] DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
INTEGRATED GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD (AS STANDARD)
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £421.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-silent-mini-pc/

The only thing missing is the TV tuner, but you can buy external dongles pretty cheap!

 

[mantadog]

You can't select a TV card from the silent pc section, so if you really wanted to have a built in freeview card then you would have to go for something along the lines of the spec in your original post.

If your going for a more conventional PC with the (very slight) added noise of a fan but if noise isn't really an issue you can modify your original spec a little.

I would add a DVD drive so you can watch DVD's, a dual core processor will be more than enough and consider a 1TB caviar green if you plan on having any volume of stored video on your HDD.

 

[superpig83]

Yeah I prefer the look of the htpc cases I've come up with this spec as I don't need an OS and a tv card can wait but one question is do you think it can handle emulators like an n64 emulator smoothly? Let me know what you think cheers!

Case
Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case + 350W PSU
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Celeron® Dual-Core G530 (2.40GHz, 2MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8H61-M LE/USB3 (NEW REV 3.0): M-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD + Clear Video HD Technology
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
80GB INTEL® 320 SERIES SSD, SATA 3 Gb/s (upto 270MB/sR | 90MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
3TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD30EZRX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
Sound Card
ONBOARD 10 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £540.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-htpc/

 

[PCS]

I'm not sure how much power the N64 emulator requires, but I imagine that it's very low. Worst case scenario is to select a dedicated graphics card from one in the list.