Upgrading HTPC - need help

[McBainUK]

I've decided to take the jump and upgrade my HTPC so it handles the latest GB-PVR interface and can play live TV, recordings and DVD at top quality. It makes sense to make it HD ready while I'm at it. After reading through these forums and on (what seems like) every hardware/HTPC site on the WWW I've pretty much settled on the following components:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e 2x2.6Ghz 45W (Socket AM2) £53 link
Lots of sites seem to like the power/performance ratio of this CPU.
Being low wattage helps the heat/noise down.
People on these forums reckon it has enough grunt for HD playback.

MSI ATI Fanless HD4350 512MB DDR2 PCI-E £44 link
Need a s-video TV-out as I currently have a basic SD CRT Sony TV.
Read that it can decode MPEG and HD video with ease, and with low CPU usage. link link
Has DVI/HDMI (with HDCP) for future HD/Blueray use.

750 GB Samsung HD753LJ Spinpoint F1 SATA £64 link
silentpcreview.com reports that this is a very quiet drive.
750GB is double my current storage

2GB Corsair RAM £25 link
Obviously motherboard specific but looks a good buy.

Any comments. Does it all make sense?

[McBainUK]

Missing from the list above is a motherboard as I'm not quite sure what to do here. I've been looking at the £54 Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 (NF560 chipset) here. Mainly because it has lots of PCI slots for tuners/wi-fi cards etc. Oh, and it's a full size ATX which suits my Antec SLK3000B case.

What kind of things do you need to keep in mind or look for when choosing a motherboard for HTPC use... :confused:

[whurlston]

It's a shame you need the PCI slots or I would recommend the MSI Media Live Diva 5.1. I absolutely love this board but you would still need a discrete graphics card to get S-Video out.

Word of warning though: That site (Silent PC Review) has bad information. The video card you linked does not have S-Video/TV output: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodvg...=1640#menu

[McBainUK]

Word of warning though: That site (Silent PC Review) has bad information. The video card you linked does not have S-Video/TV output: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodvg...=1640#menu

That link takes me knowhere

Do you mean the quietpc.om shop link? http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/product...4350-d512h

[Elmo Putney]

My BE2300 which I think basically is a 1.9 Ghz version of the 5050e handles BBC HD using CoreAVC codec, CPU runs at about 70% though. The extra headroom the 5050 offers would be very useful, I've been eyeing them up for a while.
I run a HD4670 with a seperate fan controller, it doesnt do HA because I'm running EVR + XP, on SD tv the fan is mostly off and also on HD but thats cos the CPU is doing all the work.

[whurlston]

That link takes me knowhere

Do you mean the quietpc.om shop link? http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/product...4350-d512h

Strange, it works for me. It was a link to that same card on the MSI Global website. The quiet pc link and the silent pc review link both say the card has TV/S-Video out but according to the MSI website, it does not. The pictures also don't show any such output.

[McBainUK]

Thanks for pointing this out, I've emailed the shop to see if they can confirm either way.

If not, maybe I could find this one for sale in the UK: http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/...=263&grp=3 eg: http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/Sap...v_agp.html