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My apologies for the inaccessible wishlist, here are the components:
hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC Steel 7K09BBA30FNRX Micro ATX Media Center 300W Power Supply / HTPC Case
GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H LGA 1155 Intel B75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Seasonic SS-460FL Active PFC F3, 460W Fanless ATX12V Fanless 80Plus PLATINUM Certified, Modular Power Supply
Intel Core i5-3330 Ivy Bridge 3.0GHz (3.2GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637i53330
Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX
OCZ Vertex Plus R2 VTXPLR2-25SAT2-120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
I have no plans on doing 3D at any point, but other than that, the main reason I believe (please correct me if I am wrong) I need additional CPU power, is to be able to use the box for emulation as well. The rest of the cost comes from the SSD and the fanless PSU, both of which are more "nice to have" than "need to have", but I think if I can keep it quieter, the WAF is likely to be higher... That being said, does this still look like overkill?
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What about IR, is that important to you?
What will you use to control it? Keyboard/Mouse and Gamepad? Universal Remote? Tablet/Phone? Other?
What O/S do you plan to use?
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IR would be very nice to have, but I can just buy an IR receiver, or FLIRC, right? Plan on using my Harmony One for day-to-day control, but will use a Keyboard/Mouse if required. I was looking to put Ubuntu or Debian (not a linux n00b, just a HTPC/XBMC n00b), and running XBMC from there.
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Here's what I just build recently (I wanted to have similar goals as yours when building mine, full HD video support, emulation up to n64 and possibly more in the future). I don't have any plans to play any newer games but I also don't want to rule out the option for the future either.
I picked a Intel Core i7-3770K (as I doubt I will ever upgrade it later on) and went with an Asrock Z77E-ITX (as it will also give me empty PCI Express slot... in case I decide to start gaming). I build 2 of them (one for upstairs and one for downstairs). I have all my content on 3 different NAS's (I broke it down by tv series, movies and music). I don't use my xbmc for music, so only 2 of them are constantly being used. I use a Harmony One downstairs and Harmony 900 upstairs. Both have an OCZ SSD 128GB drive (which loads fast) and I went with the exact same ram as you
For O/S, I went with Windows 8 as it gives me a great interface that looks great (in my opinion) on an HDTV. (I did run into a few hiccups with my upstairs box as the TV only supports 720P). & the Harmonys worked right away using MCE USB dongles. For Keyboard/Mouse, if prefer to use my Tablet (or smartphone from time to time).
Your case doesn't look like it will support full sized PCI Express cards (assuming you might want to add one in the future like myself. It looks to support only low-profile cards....which is fine but would limit the choices that would be available to you)
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Thermaltake VL52021N2U Element Q Mini ITX Case - 200W PSU, 2x USB, 2x 3.5 Bays, HD Audio Port, Black (it includes a power supply).
I'm not using a dvd and/or blu ray drive but the case can support one
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Cool, thanks for the reply DigitalAnvil! My main reason for going with Linux is because I want a centralized database (MySQL) for tracking the library, and I plan on using RPi's to extend the functionality to my other TV's, and I hear it can be a hassle to match versions b/wn windows and linux. Also, Linux is free, which is appealing to me, and from what I have read online, I can also use my PS3 controllers over bluetooth with Linux, it seems it is not quite as easy on Windows (it works, just not that well).
I will have to look into the low profile video card issue. I had not considered it, but honestly, I have a powerful desktop PC for gaming, as well as every current gen console, so I don't see using this box for anything more than old console emulation.
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If you're using linux 8 GB is overkill. You probably won't use over 2.5 GB for what you're doing but it's cheap so go for it. However your power supply is massively oversized for what you're putting in the box. Given that it's one of the more expensive pieces you're looking at you can downsize quite a bit to save some $. For reference, my server has an AMD FX-8120 CPU (much less efficient than the SB CPU you're looking at), 9 hard drives in a linux software RAID 5 array, SAS / SATA expansion card, NVidia 240 GPU and several fans. As a test I tried writing to the array at 280 GB/sec, transcoding / streaming a couple videos via Plex server while watching several concurrent 1080P movies on the server itself. It pulled about 330 watts from my UPS under this load. I doubt you could get what you've spec'd to draw more than 200 watts if you tried so a 300 or 350 watt would be ample.
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I don't have a fanless PSU in my HTPC but I do have a 80+ Gold unit - Antec something or other. Like most (all?) 80+ PSUs the fan is speed-controlled and I never hear it since i'm not pushing the PC. I do hear the case fans though and they're pretty quiet. My HTPC case is a Silverstone GD04 with 3 fans. You might want to consider going with a cheaper 80+ gold or even platinum PSU with fan and spending a bit of the savings on a quieter case fan, since I gather the HEC fan isn't the best . You might also want to look at a better aftermarket CPU cooler for your CPU. Others with the i5 330 chip can chime in but I suspect you'll hear the stock cooler fan buzzing away from time to time too. Just make sure whatever you buy fits in your case.
