Windows Media Center Value PC

What specs would you use for building a Windows Media Center Value PC?

Note: Value meaning not the lowest cost components, but the components with the best 'bang for your buck'.

Minimum requirements:

- Processor must be 3ghz or 3000+ or greater
- Motherboard must support SATA RAID
- Hard drive must be at least 200GB Serial ATA 3gb/s
- Motherboard must be MicroATX form factor
- RAM must be 512MB or greater
- Must have TV Tuner card
- Must have Microsoft Media Center Remote Control
- Must only be the tower, no monitor / keyboard / mouse / etc.

Let me know what you'd build, and I might just end up building your idea!

For AMD, the 64 3000+ (which is not 3GHz you know ). For Intel the 3GHz Northwoods are BETTER than Prescotts. Get a 865P board and you'll be able to get an ATI AIW 9600 which is a great TV everything card. The SATA rev 2 with RAID requirement throws this motherboard out the window unless you get an addon card. Every other requirement falls into place after the CPU+Motherboard are picked.

i would choose the AMD 64 3000+ CPU i like AMD cpus and never had a problem with them plus AMD CPUs Speed is not everything now performance thats important specially if you want to multitask with a mediacenter pc, that would be my choice of CPU with the Mother board MSI makes nice motherboards and they use VIA chipset some models support RAID. now with the TV Tuner Card i have an ATI TV WONDER PRO that comes with a remote for around $120 bucks or you can go with Arons choice which also sounds good. hard drive space i would not worry to much about that. now RAM i would get the fastest and the most amount that the motherboard can support around 1+ gigs try the doubble density RAM. i noticed you did not mention anything about a soundcard, Soundblaster X-FI Platinum goes for $200 dollars and comes with a wireless remote check it out at http://www.soundblaster.com

now where are you going to place this PC no mouse,keyboard or monitor ??

im planing to built one sometime soon and well i want it in my living room i will not be using a monitor because the TV will serve as one
i will use keyboard and mouse but the wireless ones and i want to access my server for movies,pics, files, music and browse the internet all that from my living room hooked up to my surround sound.

I ended up building the following:

- MSI K8N NEO4-F Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (3000+ was out of stock at the time)
- Black ATX Case
- Plextor PX-740A DVD Burner (x2)
- Mitusmi Floppy Drive
- Mitsumi 13-in-1 Card Reader
- Maxtor 250GB Serial ATA (x2) (in RAID-1 for backup)
- 1GB DDR400 SDRAM
- BFG GeForce 6600GT 128MB Factory Overclocked w/ Dual-DVI & HD-TV Component Output (RGB)
- Hauppauge WinTv-PVR 500 MCE Personal Video Recorder (Supports Dual TV Tuners)
- Microsoft Media Center Remote Control

very nice machine

How's the computer working? Are you going to use Media Center Edition or some other front end?

The computer is working awesome. Btw, this was built for a client, not myself. (I wish!)

The machine is working very well. The card outputs HD-TV quality video over DVI-D to HDMI cable to a 52" plasma screen and the audio is tied in via optical cable to a Marantz receiver. Full 7.1 dolby digital.

I'll take some pics of the setup and post them here later.

Currently it's using Media Center for the front end. I'm currently looking at BeyondTV to use as a front end but I've found a few bugs with it that I'm trying to get resolved.