[Dougie Fresh]

I am finally (for real) building a new living room HTPC. My living room HTPC is fine, a G530 + HD5450 but in my adventures across the internet world, I've picked up some good bargains and now I am going to build new. A friend needs a new cheap PC so I am going to turn the G530 HTPC into a desktop PC for him.

Specs:
AMD Llano A8-3800 2.4GHz quad-core with HD6550D graphics (OEM)
ASUS F1A75-M Pro FM1 motherboard (open box MicroCenter)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1866 (new Newegg)
Scythe Shuriken (original version) CPU cooler*
Intel 180GB SSD (Black Friday deal TigerDirect)
120W DC power supply with 120W AC adapter (12V or 19V TBD)*
nMediaPC 1000b micro-ATX HTPC case*
Inteset IR receiver*
Windows 7 x64

* = from previous build(s)

I got the motherboard open-box from MicroCenter when I was in there last week so today I put it together to make sure it all works.



I am not 100% sure I will reuse the nMediaPC 1000b. As much as I like it, I want something more up-to-date looking with a cleaner front. If there's a deal on something I'll go for it, like a used Antec Fusion Remote Black, Lian-Li PC-C50B or Fractal Design Node 605. It's fine for now though. Swapping it out later is easy.

I have a bunch of different power supplies. I'd like to use a 19V 120W power board w/ 19V AC adapter that I have but we'll see because there really isn't a place to install it without some modding. I have a few different picoPSUs, 12V and 19V and a 12V picoPSU knock-off from China to try too. 19V is my preference though.

I'll try to add some pix as I go. It should be for real this time and something I keep .

[Dougie Fresh]

So, my motherboard turned out to have memory issues and I had to return it. Now I have an ASUS F1A55-M/CSM FM1 which I got open box from Amazon.com. I also got myself an A8-3820 off eBay which is a slight upgrade over the A8-3800 but it was the kind of deal I could not pass up and it freed up the A8-3800 to be used with a brand new Gigabyte GA-A75N-USB3 I bought months ago. I am going to sell that system as a special barebones build. I also switched the memory to a pair of Crucial DDR3-1866 that I got via a Black Friday deal.

Tonight I actually got to work on my own HTPC which right now is just the motherboard sitting on my desk for testing. I ran this and I'm pretty happy with this result:


Not bad for a used processor, open box motherboard, a couple of Black Friday deals and a 120W power supply. 22W at idle at the desktop. Not bad for a quad core system with those scores.