[SofaKng]

Instead of splitting my main XBMC box I'm thinking about setting up an extra/spare XBMC box for my upstairs television.

Is there any way to do this for around $100?

I currently have a spare HTPC case (Mini-ITX) with a 150 Watt PSU so all I need is a motherboard/cpu/gpu combo.

NewEgg has the ZOTAC NM10-A-E-ION for $109.99 which seems good. It's an Intel Atom (D510) with nVidia ION, but it only has a 100 Mbit LAN card instead of gigabit. I'd probably need to purchase more RAM since I only have one spare 512 MB DDR2 (333 MHz) stick.

Anybody have any other suggestions for me?

Ideally I'd like 1080p playback. 720p is the minimum though...

[Numus]

Instead of splitting my main XBMC box I'm thinking about setting up an extra/spare XBMC box for my upstairs television.

Is there any way to do this for around $100?

I currently have a spare HTPC case (Mini-ITX) with a 150 Watt PSU so all I need is a motherboard/cpu/gpu combo.

NewEgg has the ZOTAC NM10-A-E-ION for $109.99 which seems good. It's an Intel Atom (D510) with nVidia ION, but it only has a 100 Mbit LAN card instead of gigabit. I'd probably need to purchase more RAM since I only have one spare 512 MB DDR2 (333 MHz) stick.

Anybody have any other suggestions for me?

Ideally I'd like 1080p playback. 720p is the minimum though...

You will need about 2 gb of ram and the gigabit lan is not really that big of a problem at all.. My wrt160nl is only 10/100 and i have yet to hit a stream problem with full 1080p rips... This seems to be about the same as the Acer Revo setup so should be fine.

No matter if it is 10 10/100 or 10/100/1000 your limitation is going to be pretty much the read/write speed of your harddrive and other physical factors. Say you have a 20gb 1080p file on your harddrive (this would be an incredibly large BR rip.. since my largest (avatar) is only like 15gb)... and say the movie is only 90 minutes long (this would be a highly improbable situation since the length of the movie doesn't justify the size of the file). So 20480/(90*60) = 3.7925 mb/s ... Hense i dont understand why people keep insisting on gigabit.

[prae5]

100mb is fine, 1gb of ram is fine if you are running linux too.

[Numus]

100mb is fine, 1gb of ram is fine if you are running linux too.

Maybe with the dual core proc 1gb is fine.. but my revo didnt like 1080p content without the extra gig...

[prae5]

Quite happily running several single core revo's with 1gb under linux with no issue at all.

[MacUsers]

Hense i dont understand why people keep insisting on gigabit.

The only reason one might think of gigabit network large files (e.g. 15Gb Avatar) are transferred across the network in regular basis, like me: I rip the DVDs on one box and move it to Apple TC. But as Numus already says: the limiting factor is HDD read/write speed. Cheers!!

[alexpigment]

Maybe with the dual core proc 1gb is fine.. but my revo didnt like 1080p content without the extra gig...

I presume you were running something prior to 9.11/Camelot stable release, correct? 9.04 didn't like 1080p with 1gb of ram on my Revo, but anything 9.11 and after are gravy. I have 1gb in one revo1600 and 2gb in another and honestly I can't tell the difference, especially when it comes to video playback.

[Numus]

I presume you were running something prior to 9.11/Camelot stable release, correct? 9.04 didn't like 1080p with 1gb of ram on my Revo, but anything 9.11 and after are gravy. I have 1gb in one revo1600 and 2gb in another and honestly I can't tell the difference, especially when it comes to video playback.

That would explain it then... I havent ran sub-2gb since before 9.11 ... Figured it was hardware limitations and not optimization issues in the software... i retract my 2gb ram statement then :p

[SofaKng]

Can I use DDR2 400 (PC3200) RAM? I've found two 1 GB sticks for a total of 2 GB of RAM but they are a bit slower.

Also, are there any disadvantages to use Compact Flash as a HDD? (one of those micro-drives that are incredibly slow but very low power, etc)

Everything will be streamed from a media server and nothing will be stored locally on the XBMC box...