HTPC Q's

[Radioboy]

Ahoy.

Thanks to a lightning strike I had to kiss my Media player, TV, Blu-ray player, external hard drives and speaker system goodbye. My Prescioussssssss

Anyway, so i am in the market for a HTPC after i read Keeper's amazing thread on the subject. Well done dude!

A number of members posted on here that the HP Microserver is a good way to go - but I got some conflicting information regarding the rest of the hardware required.

My requirements:
1) Connect with HDTV via HDMI to view HD Vids (1080p), Music etc
2) PC will connect directly with TV thus not network requirements
3) About 3TB of Storage
4) SPDIF out to HT Speaker System
5) Might run win7 , or open source stuff like Keeper mentioned
6) Remote NB
7) Play Blu-ray discs

What will the hardware requirements be?

I know stand alone media players are cheaper.... but i have been there, done that. Meh. Evetech have some great looking machines - but Im not prepared to drop that amount of cash seeing as my gaming rig is only a few months old. I was thinking of streaming my media from my current rig, but I don't want to leave it powered on when I'm not in front of it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys.

EDIT: oh wow, look at this: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/333460-HP-ProLiant-MicroServer

 

[battletoad]

These are the options I'm looking at:

Intel NUC i3 - R4000
4GB RAM - R450
Power Supply - noone knows, lets say R400 (12v 5A, overkill but ok)
Flash drive as main drive - R100
Approx R5000

Otherwise a self assembled system:
micro-atx or mini-itx board with SPDIF - R1000
i3 cpu - R1500
4GB RAM - R450
HD6570 or GT620SL - R800
Good looking chassis - R1200
Power Supply - R500
Total: R5500

But this is predicated that I will stream from another box, DLNA and all that. So, either:

Raspberry pi with external USB drives ghetto solution
Approx R2000

Self built NAS
Board with onboard cpu and vga - R1000
3TB - R1500
RAM - R250
Case+PSU - R600
About R3500

 

[Radioboy]

Otherwise a self assembled system:
micro-atx or mini-itx board with SPDIF - R1000
i3 cpu - R1500
4GB RAM - R450
HD6570 or GT620SL - R800
Good looking chassis - R1200
Power Supply - R500
Total: R5500

I like this ^^^

Would i be able to fit this GPU and Soundcard into the HP Microserver ?
http://www.wootware.co.za/asus-xonar-dg-ultra-fidelity-5-1-pci-sound-card-internal-sound-card.html
http://www.wootware.co.za/gigabyte-...-64bit-gddr3-pci-e-desktop-graphics-card.html