If you were going to build a budget/mid-level HTPC...

[shocksyde]

What would you choose?

I know there are guides, but after a few months they get outdated.

Right now I've got a nMedia Case on the way as well as a 320gb hard drive.

I currently have an Athlon XP 3300+ system, with a radeon 9600xt vid card and 512 mb of DDR3200 ram..

In the future I'll be hooking it up to my DirecTV box, but for now it'll just be used to play movies and music that will be stored inside.

Will the above system serve my purpose? As a reminder, I will not be using this PC to record TV. Just rip DVDs, store em, and watch em.

Also, if I were to upgrade now anyways (now that cpu prices have dropped), what should I get? Thinking along the lines of Athlon 64 cpu, mobo, ram, tv card, etc. I'm not really sure what the budget would be, let's say $800 cap (because I've already spent $250 on a harddrive and case).

Thanks!

 

[ProphetSix]

I'd definately upgrade now, as AMD price cuts are almost too good to pass up. You can get a Socket 939 dual core 2.2GHz AMD for under $200 at NewEgg now. Another $75 for a decient mobo, and $100'ish for RAM. That's under $400. All you need is an Mpeg capture card, and you'd still have about $250 left for a vid card upgrade.

BTW, the system you listed will be fine for DVD playback. I've currently got an Athlon XP 2500+ with 512Mb RAM and it does fine. I even have an Mpeg capture card, no problems.

If you want to spend the money now to bring yourself more "up-to-date" hardware-wise, it's a good time to do so. But you don't NEED to, unless your HTPC needs change here soon.

 

[shocksyde]

I'm gonna throw all my stuff into the nmedia case and ad the hard drive and see how long that tides me over.

We don't even get HD programming (or have an HDTV) at my place yet, so it would honestly be overkill to upgrade now.

Thanks for the input.