[demonblue666]

Hi All,

I have recently been given my nephews old gaming rig to see if anything is salvagable and have decided it's time I built an HTPC. Most of it was rubbish, case - CPU (Dead Athlon XII) - GPU etc but the bits I would like to reuse are:

MoBo: Asus M3N78
RAM: Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800MHz - 4x2gb sticks (8gb is a bit overkill from what I have read)
PSU: Thermaltake TR2-550 PP

I have built gaming rigs mostly which is all about power, power and more power but from what I understand so far HTPC's are almost the opposite....
What I would like help with is the rest of the build, what would be suitable but cheap AM2, AM2+, AM3 CPU etc?

This PC would be solely for watching movies, streaming HD Video and some light downloading, maybe a bit of browsing. I used to dabble a bit with WoW but would rather under-spec the PC so I don't have the temptation to play again (Would most likely end in divorce!)
I have a Win7 OS I can install and a couple of HD's I can use until I find a couple of bargain 2tb on ebay....
I am very limited for funds and I'm happy to spend a while catching bargains on ebay, as I did with my last gaming rig and I appreciate any advice you can offer, even if it's "bin the lot and start from scratch"

Cheers Damien

[Dougie Fresh]

An Athlon II X4 6xx (Propus) plus a HD6450 or 6570 GPU, you'll have a pretty nice HTPC capable of just about everything. If you can put Windows 7 on an SSD it'll perform quite nicely. I always wanted the 610e or one of the Phenom II x4 low-power processors like the 905e. If those cost too much I like the x3s too. The x3 705e was a good processor. The Athlon II x2 24xe too.

[GortWillSaveUs]

I used to dabble a bit with WoW but would rather under-spec the PC so I don't have the temptation to play again (Would most likely end in divorce!)

There's probably way too many guys here that understand exactly what you describe.
Just be careful,...XBMC can also lead to addictive behavior.

Good luck on your build.

[demonblue666]

I used to dabble a bit with WoW but would rather under-spec the PC so I don't have the temptation to play again (Would most likely end in divorce!)

There's probably way too many guys here that understand exactly what you describe.
Just be careful,...XBMC can also lead to addictive behavior.

Good luck on your build.

The good thing about XMBC is I can go afk without wiping the whole raid hehe....

---

An Athlon II X4 6xx (Propus) plus a HD6450 or 6570 GPU, you'll have a pretty nice HTPC capable of just about everything. If you can put Windows 7 on an SSD it'll perform quite nicely. I always wanted the 610e or one of the Phenom II x4 low-power processors like the 905e. If those cost too much I like the x3s too. The x3 705e was a good processor. The Athlon II x2 24xe too.

I'm watching a 7750 BE, would that do? Much cheapness at the moment though may go up later.... looks high on power consumption so more heat etc.....also an x2 270 but I expect that to go higher than I'd like... thanks for the responses of course...

---

An Athlon II X4 6xx (Propus) plus a HD6450 or 6570 GPU, you'll have a pretty nice HTPC capable of just about everything. If you can put Windows 7 on an SSD it'll perform quite nicely. I always wanted the 610e or one of the Phenom II x4 low-power processors like the 905e. If those cost too much I like the x3s too. The x3 705e was a good processor. The Athlon II x2 24xe too.

I'm watching a 7750 BE, would that do? Much cheapness at the moment though may go up later.... looks high on power consumption so more heat etc.....also an x2 270 but I expect that to go higher than I'd like...

---

I used to dabble a bit with WoW but would rather under-spec the PC so I don't have the temptation to play again (Would most likely end in divorce!)

There's probably way too many guys here that understand exactly what you describe.
Just be careful,...XBMC can also lead to addictive behavior.

Good luck on your build.

The good thing about XMBC is I can go afk without wiping the whole raid hehe....

[demonblue666]

Oooo.... I kinda just accidently won an i3 550 CPU on eBay for £20.....Only bid to feel part of the action while waiting for the missus to get ready...
Guessing I'm now looking for H55 MoBo and DDR3 ram.....Ooops lol

[Dougie Fresh]

You won't need a 550W PSU for that. A picoPSU will work.

[demonblue666]

Just to add to the line up, Gigabyte H55M-UD2H mother board (£32...£12 more than CPU ....) and an ASUS HD6770 graphics card. £20 from a friend..
Dougie, I understand the PSU is overkill for requirements but do you think I need to replace? Trying to do this build for absolute minimum outlay.....

[Dougie Fresh]

Nope, no need to replace it. It'll work just fine.