hardware suggestions for 'quiet but powerful' HTPC?

[NTB]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and thought I'd look for some specific suggestions: CPU coolers, video cards, and any other essential parts with a genrally 'noisy' reputation.

suggestions for a good soundcard would be appreciated, too. I know there are a few more players in the game now than just Creative, but I haven't had the oppotunity to use any of these other cards. And, if it makes any difference, the sound will generally be run through a home theater reciever, rather than PC speakers. Might use headphones once in a while, though.

As far as budget goes, less is always good Realistically though, I'd like to stay at or below $1,000.

Nathan

 

[ther00kie16]

are you asking for everything? well... a lot of things would be somewhat limited by the choice of case.
a good case would be thermaltake dh101
any 780g board (preferably with sideport so bandwidth during playback isn't limited when cool 'n quiet kicks in)
any x2 or phenom cpu (if you don't need to edit hd video then any x2 will do; the low power ones are slightly more expensive)
with the bigger case, you can get almost any heatsink (arctic cooling will be plenty for a dual core but great deal on zerotherm zen 120mm for $14 after rebate at newegg)
2x2gb ddr2-800 ram or faster (the cas4 1.8v gskill pi looks good)
any sata dvd-rw (or if you want to go blu-ray get lite-on 401s-08, not -66)
samsung 1tb hard drive
some decent corsair/pc power&cooling/seasonic psu (at least 400w) preferably with a 120mm fan
if you want to play some decent games, get a 4670 or shell out more for a 9800gt/4850 (may want to consider a nvidia motherboard instead with 8200 integrated gpu because you can use hybridpower with 9800gt whereas it's limited to 3450 for AMD's platform)

edit:these boards should have plenty good sound for a home theater. you can always add a dedicated sound card later.

 

[tom2000]

I just built my HTPC (literally, like two days ago) with help from people here on the forums, and everything worked out great. Check out the threads under my profile. Its a very quiet system, only one case fan, the PSU fan, and my video card vents out the back, which makes it all around very quiet so far.