Hardware Recommendations?

[Underfunded]

I am thinking of upgrading my HTPC again and am looking for some recommendations from the community.

I already have 4 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, plenty of hard drive space, dvd burner and tuners (nvidia dualtv and HDHR). I am purely looking for a motherboard / processor / video card / sound card solution.

This is a Vista machine playing on a 46" 1080P LCDTV outputting the sound via SPDIFF to my 5.1 receiver. I want flawless HD playback. I MIGHT connect an extender in the future but that is likely another whole system away.

[Djc208]

Do you use this PC for anything else? Play games, transcode/edit video, play BD or HD DVD?

A lot of the new chipsets with integrated graphics are actually decent for HD video playback with a good processor, (even the newer Intel stuff) as long as you don't want to play games. Many even offer HDMI ports now, and they're all more energy efficient than discrete graphics.

On the flip side the new low end ATI cards do support 8-channel PCM output for BD/HD DVD and are cheap with more than enough power for video playback.

Personally I'd find a current generation MB with integrated graphics that has fits your needs and price point. I wouldn't be too concerned with AMD/Intel, just get the MB you like best.

Then go for a decent mid-range dual or tri-core CPU, leaving enough money in your budget to buy one of the aftermarket playback programs since they seem to be the only ones supporting hardware decoding properly, especially if you want to add an HD-PVR or BD drive eventually.

As for sound, some MBs have better implementations than others but for 5.1 over SPDIF I don't think any of them will have a major issue with it.

[Underfunded]

This system doesn't play games, it houses my tv recordings, my ripped dvd's (I hate swapping out discs from my 200+ collection). I doubt I'll add BD to it since I have a PS3 that does a great job for that. I might have it transcode but don't need it too for now.

If I am just recording and playing SD and HD video, serving ITunes to my local network, and potentially serving to other local extenders would there be a significant benefit of quad vs tri vs dual cores? Either Intel or AMD is fine so I don't want to get into a discussion of Intel vs AMD, just the difference between the cores.

[Djc208]

Depends on if you have any software that could take advantage of it. Most programs just don't benefit from having the extra cores, so personally it doesn't sound like a quad core would be a big benefit to you.

Streaming video and recording are very low power tasks and barely tax my old P4 server. On the other hand transcoding to a placeshifter or SD client, and running comskip can bring a CPU to it's knees. The advantage of multiple cores is they should help prevent things like comskip or background tasks from interfering with playback since between the two cores there should be enough free resources to support it. Usually HDD or memory limitations will interfere before the CPU becomes bogged down.

As for tri core, the newest AMD cpu's are native quad core designs, so you can't get a dual core Phenom CPU. The tri-cores are the lower-end entry level devices right now. I don't know that you need the horsepower of a Phenom CPU VS the older Athlon 64 X2 but if you go for the new ATI 790GX motherboard they are supposed to have better H.264 playback with the Phenom chips due to the faster link speeds.

A lower end CPU will give you the advantage of lower power draw and less heat, so fan noise doesn't become an issue.