Picking hardware for Media Center

Chassis - Small Form Factor Barebones

When it comes to putting all this stuff together in a box that is going to live in your living room, you have to think that you want a box that's going to look nice next to all the other fancy kit by your TV. It's way too ghetto to just stick a tower case next to your kick-ass new flat panel.

The easy way to get a sleek, small system is to buy a barebones, such as a machine from Shuttle. These things look great, are small, quiet, and the motherboards integrated into them pack a decent punch. We reviewed the SD31P last month, which is a Shuttle that supports Intel's dual-core chips - this makes an absolutely perfect Media Center box. There is room for a hard drive, a decent graphics card and a tuner card all in a ready-made package.

Other boxes

Alternatively, you can look to build something around the Micro-ATX form factor. These are cases that accommodate small boards, such as the AOpen Pentium M board we looked at a couple of weeks ago. Generally, as with the Hiper Media Chassis, you'll only get one or two expansion slots on these, so you'll need to consider your options for dual / single tuner and discrete / integrated graphics carefully. You may also only have room for one hard drive and a laptop optical drive. The upshot is that this is one sleek, slim, sexy enclosure.

Because of their small stature, and proprietary design, it's usual that these types of tiny chassis have their own, built-in power supply. Make sure it's hefty enough to power all your clobber.

The alternative is to go the whole hog and get a full-size ATX box, such as the Arisetek box that we looked at back in May. These types of cases take full-size optical drives and PSUs, as well as ATX motherboards. Assuming you have room in your Hi-Fi stack, these things can look awesome. However, with all those full-size and full-power components, these boxes can end up being a little louder than smaller boxes. With careful component choice, however, they can end up being far quieter. For example, if the case you're looking at has two fan mounts instead of one, you can stick two fans in and run them at half power, which will be quieter than using just one.

PSUs

Assuming your case doesn't have one of these built in, you'll need a PSU. Of course, it needs to be hefty enough to power all your gear, and quiet enough not to intrude. Not only that, it's ideal if the PSU has modular cables, since things will probably get fairly cramped in a smaller chassis.

A lot of people skimp on the PSU when they build a system, but it is one of the most critical components you install, so get a good one. The Tagan TG530 U15 Easycon that we looked at last month is not only modular, meaning you can cut out the clutter, but it's also nigh-on silent.

We'd advise against getting a totally fan-less PSU though: things are going to get hot inside the case, and the last thing you want is for your PSU to overheat.