HTPC Building Series: The Final Tally

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Music, PC / Laptop, Software

Check out out HTPC on a Budget series and join us in building a great HTPC for under $1,000.

The challenge presented at the beginning of this process was for us to build a great home theater PC while sticking to a budget of $1,000. We knew we were up for the challenge, and wanted to walk you through that process with us. Here’s what we’ve done, as a refresher:

• Let’s Build a Budget HTPC
• Selecting Our Hardware
• The MSI 7411 Motherboard, and Why It Rocks
• Achieving Great 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
• Driving multimedia content to the HTPC
• The ATI TV Wonder 650
• Laying Out All The Components

So, now that we have reached the end of this process, we need to take a look at how we did, right? Were we able to stick to our budget? Let’s see how we did…

• AMD Athlon X2 5200+ - $60
• Scythe Ninja Mini heatsink - $35
• 2GB DDR2-800 RAM - $21
• MSI Media Live DIVA 5.1 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - $127
• ATI Wonder 650 - $90
• Antec Fusion V2 case - $170
• LG GGC-H20L - $114
• Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB Hard Drive - $104
• 7.1 surround pre-out card - $175
• Windows Vista Home Premium - $90

TOTAL COST: $986

We’ve done it, and we even have some room left over to pay for some of the tax. The only way you are going to find good deals on the products we listed above is by shopping online. We’ve linked you to some Newegg promo code deals above.

After putting it all together, we installed Norton Internet Security 2009 on it, and were pleasantly surprised at how much Norton stays out of the way with the newest release. The footprint is small enough that it won’t give you any hiccups in any of your usage situations, even if recording a couple of shows in high definition at the same time - and seriously, if you are rolling with an HTPC, you are going to want to make sure you keep it protected. Nothing like losing access to a bunch of recorded content due to a virus or some other sort of malware. Just saying.

So we’ve got through this, and we’ve done it at just under budget. If you are a savvy shopper, you can do this for under $1000, just like we did. We had a lot of fun building the HTPC, as you may have noticed, and in the end we have a nice HTPC that can fit into our home theater setup. Give it a shot - we hope you get something out of this. Leave a comment and let us know.