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Will be using it to play media stored on a local drive, and for streaming media from the net.
I will mostly be playing bluray rips, so full HD.
Also planning on doing some light gaming on it, so that's why I went for the i7.
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For light gaming you'd be better off with a i3 or i5 and a dedicated GPU. If you think you can get away with just the integrated HD4000 GPU and it's just for gaming, you might as well go for the i5-3570K and save the money unless there is some other i7-specific feature you need.
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The thing is the i7-3770 is overkill for HTPC but the on-board GPU is not great for gaming. So, it's just the wrong CPU for what you want to do unless you just want to have an i7 to have an i7. You could spend a lot less on a i3 or i5 + a medium graphics card and have a much better gaming experience while still having all the features you need for HTPC.
Something else to look at would be a AMD A10-5700 with an FM2 motherboard. You'd get a lot better gaming experience though not as good as Intel + dedicated GPU.
ASUS and Gigabyte would be my top picks -- choose based on the features you need. Intel makes good mini-ITX motherboards but their other boards look to be hit-or-miss based on reviews.
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The Lucid Virtu support would be nice in that Z77 motherboard but only if you plan to use a discrete GPU.
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I have never built a PC before, so am very new to this, so please excuse all my questions.
I have been reading a lot on these forums, and have learnt a lot.
The case I want has a display screen, with multimedia buttons, and I've read that not all motherboards accept this. Looking at the specs on the motherboards I have chosen, I assume they will accept it.
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That display is the iMon Soundgraph LCD and it needs a USB header and maybe power from the PSU but I cannot remember. At least the one in the Antec does. It should be the same.
A nice HTPC + gaming combo to look into is the Intel G860 + HD6670 GPU -- probably about the same price as the i5-3570K. Food for thought.
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erm have you found stock from zalman hd503?
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Damn, I can't get the Zalman HD503 anymore. Now I have to find a new case.
I really like the idea of the display in the HTPC case, but don't really like the look of the Zalman HD135 case.
