Hello fellow geeks,
I am interested in building a pretty basic HTPC and would like to know if you have any suggestions on parts. I'd like to keep the budget to about $500.
I'd like to use my HDTV as the monitor and use a wireless keyboard with a trackpad to interact with it--unless you have another suggestion?
I am looking for something that I can surf the internet and stream videos through, from websites as well as Amazon or iTunes. I don't need an external dvd or Blue Ray drive, as I have a BR player that works fine.
I have a 1 TB hard drive lying around; I'd like to get a smallish SSD to use as a system disk and use my HDD for data, so the case would need at least one bay for each of those.
I'd like the form factor to be a HTPC shape, similar to a BR player, and I'd like to be able to lay it on its side so I can just set it in my media console.
I would need to connect to the internet via wifi; ideally, I'd like a mb with integrated sound, wifi and video. This is mostly because of simplicity, however. If buying the various cards would be cheaper, I would go for that.
I prefer win7 to win8.
I don't think I need a super powerful computer to do all of this. Is that true in your opinion? I was thinking of a Core i3 or maybe i5 processor.
I was actually considering this bare bones system:
http://www.amazon.co...=I13JMFFK4GTFGR
The only problem with that is that there is only space for one drive, so I would either give up the SSD or purchase an external HDD. If I went this route, I'd probably just give up the SSD. Ths would be pretty cheap, as I'd only have to purchase RAM if I bought the gigbyte bare bones system. I like the idea of fast ssd startups though, because this computer won't be running all the time--just when we use it, a few hours a day at the most.
Do you think this barebones system would be powerful enough to play video? That will be the most taxing thing I will be doing with this rig.
Thanks for your attention so far!