Building the Perfect PC

Component Considerations

With our design criteria in mind, we set out to choose the best components for the HTPC system. Although we’ve designed and built many PCs over the years, the HTPC was a new experience for us because the special purposes it serves were outside our general experience. For example, although we understand PC audio and video quite well, the different standards used for television video and home-theater audio were largely a mystery to us. Accordingly, we made a few false starts, but we think we ended up choosing optimal hardware components for the HTPC environment. The following sections describe the components we chose, and why we chose them.

ALTERNATIVES: CASE & POWER SUPPLY

At the time we built the first iteration of the HTPC system, Antec had not yet introduced their Aria small form factor case, which we used in the SFF PC project. We subsequently built a second HTPC around the Aria case and found it well suited for the purpose, although, like the Cooler Master ATC-610-GX1, the Aria accepts only microATX motherboards. Still, we like the Aria. It is quieter than most traditional SFF cases and has excellent expandability for its size. The Aria accepts three hard drives and has three standard PCI slots and a 300W power supply, so there’s room for any reasonable HTPC hardware configuration. If you want a cube-style HTPC case and are willing to use a microATX motherboard, we think the Antec Aria is an excellent choice.

Case and power supply

Antec Overture (http://www.antec-inc.com ...