New PC Recommendations

[stustunz]

if it was me building one i would lower the cpu spec
means cheaper mother board normally aswell
then put hat money towards a better graphics card and more pci slots

as you are building htpc
you want a good picture
having seperate graphics card means cpu can do the stuff its meant to do

plus like me i have a 6200 nvidia card im about to upgrade so i just pull that out grab another card and bingo better pic

intergrated graphics your screwed you have to upgrade the whole pc by then they have cpus is out dated so that has to go aswell up for more money
so what sounds cheap now will not be in the long run

[Torque]

Most of the boards that have integrated video have the option to disable it if you want to insert a video card. When the integrated video of my current board reaches its limit on what it can do, the motherboard has a PCIe x16 slot waiting for a new video card.

Integrated video used to mean it wasn't a true video adapter but some software driven way to display the screen. But now they're nearly a full fledge video chip. True, the integrated video on my board shares the system RAM, but only using 128MB of the 1GB I have in it, leaves plenty of RAM for the rest of the system and when playing videos, my single core CPU never goes much over 14-20% usage. With dual cores as cheap as they are, this is a non-issue.

If you pair up an AMD based system with name brand memory and a name brand motherboard, it'll be everybit as stable as an Intel system of equal components. I have had excellent luck using MSI motherboards and Corsair memory.

I would get atleast DDR2 800mhz memory. Corsair's XMS series seems to be the best decision, IMO. I've had some compatibility issues with The value series RAM (even Corsair) so I try to stay away from it if possible.

HTH

[majorpayne]

Here's an article you might be interested in reading: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sho...spx?i=3003
After looking at some newer low wattage AMD chips, they recommended going with the Intel E4300 for a cool, quiet system.

Of course, those AMD MB's looked pretty spiffy for PVR...I have not researched any Intel equivelents.

As for memory, once you pick a CPU, just pick the appropriate speed of memory to match the CPU, in some name brand's value line. Kingston, Crucial, etc.

I have this CPU and i will te3ll you this CPU even OC'd runs cool. Not overclocked i run in the low 20's oc'd i hit 40-50 I paid 99 bucks when it first came out and that was with a motherboard

[chrisv]

I have this CPU and i will te3ll you this CPU even OC'd runs cool. Not overclocked i run in the low 20's oc'd i hit 40-50 I paid 99 bucks when it first came out and that was with a motherboard

$99? Not for the E4300?

[majorpayne]

Yes for the E4300 the first day it was out I bought it at Frys Electronics with a motherboard