Home Theatre PC Buyer's Guide - Q1 2009

Alternative Choices

Motherboard

Alternative Choice: Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H
UK Pricing: £91.30 (Inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $123.00 (ex. Tax)

We struggled here because at first we wanted to recommend more powerful AMD CPUs but it seemed like a waste - for example, the new Athlon X2 7750 is an 89W part but for an HTPC, there's no need for the large L3 cache and faster memory support. The Athlon X2 6000+ on the other hand might be faster in clock speed affording additional overhead, however it's also 89-125W which is considerably tougher to keep cool compared to the 45W 4850e.

With that in mind, we opted for the Intel route for our alternative micro-ATX build because the G45 chipset is still very capable but the motherboard is considerably more expensive. We've gone with Gigabyte because the alternative Asus product did not have an HDMI port (instant failure) and the MSI was considerably more expensive.

The Gigabyte also includes the same excellent Realtek ALC889a audio chipset like on its 780G brother, and as usual for a Gigabyte board it's full of features and will also play Blu-ray media over VGA too. The downside is that its PCI-Express x16 slot is only a crippled x4, potentially limiting your graphics card upgrade path.

CPU

Alternative Choice: Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200
UK Pricing: £56.65 (Inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $72.99 (ex. Tax)

To complement the board above, our favourite E5200 taken from the monthly budget build makes an appearance here too - it's very cheap, pretty nippy at 2.5GHz and super overclockable if you need more. Just as importantly, it's very cool running - essentially making it a superb choice for an HTPC CPU.

Case

Alternative Choice: Silverstone Grandia GD01B-MXR
UK Pricing: £114.00 (Inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $239.98 (ex. Tax)

This is a really tough choice because there are just so many options. We did consider something quirky like the Lian Li V350 that is truly beautiful to look at straight on, but it's difficult to build and keep cool and its side mounted DVD drives might make it awkward to use for some.

There's also the Silverstone Lascala LC13B, which is more discrete but we're not huge fans of the large flappy door. Additionally, we're not impressed by ugly and pointless touchscreen TFTs like the Zalman HD160XT+ exhibits either. In the end, the Gradia is a step up from the Antec in terms of price but also build quality too - it has similar features but it's also a bit bigger offering more upgrade options.