So finally we have settled on Blue-Ray. While many are still stuck at the work blue some of us have alrady joined the techy wagon while others ponder on the shade of blue.
As a quick warning before you begin, this post will cover many aspects, some may be beyond you while other may find it is all common sense information. Feel free to skip the common sense sections, because of the lengh you may also want to bookmark the page and come back later. Read more…
The centre of your creation, your motherboard
When choosing a motherboard you have to remember what aims you have for your hardware, maybe you require a raid controller for your Hard Drives or onboard Graphics with HDMI?
After writing a detailed post about what you should be looking for in a HTPC case a few people asked me to recommend some individual cases and explain what their features are. I recently found the perfect page that already covers all that has been asked for over at www.yourhtn.com .The specific Page can be found at http://www.yourhtn.com/2007/05/28/top-10-htpc-cases/
Choosing a graphics card, this will all depend on your personal needs of your HTPC, will you be playing games, maybe even the latest games or most likely you need HD playback?
If you want to play HD content look for a HTCP logo for your shortlist. If you think you may some day upgrade to HD content this may be your chance to be ahead of yourself.
Choosing a HTPC Case can be a daunting process, my advice is to set a price and stick to it , otherwise you will get carried away and could end up with a 12″ touch screen and no money left for components.
Choosing a case is very personal decision as you are the only person who knows what you want to look at so I cannot advise a single case, however there are a few cases that are very popular among HTPC builders. Firstly you need to establish what you need from your case, maybe it needs to able to hold a large powerful graphics cards if you also plan to play games or maybe a large amount of HDD’s for all that HD video.
