I just finished building my HTPC this morning. It basically mirrors the workstation that I recently built for my wife: Gigabyte GA-H77N-WiFi, i3 Ivy Bridge processor with Intel 4000 graphics on the chip. Case is Lian Li PC-Q27 I deleted the hard drive since this is just for streaming and added a Blu-Ray/DVD reader so we can play those as well. It's hooked up to a Sony Bravia 32" television. I stayed with Intel for the simple reason that I'm a long time Intel stockholder and no other. I chose the Ivy Bridge i3 processor with the 4000 HD graphics and it works splendidly. I could have waited for the i3 Haswell chips to come out but probably would have paid more for them. The Gigabyte GA-H77N WiFi MoBo is fantastic and I don't need to hard wire the PC into the router, the WiFi is sufficient. The system runs cool and you cannot hear the stock Intel cooler at all. The Lian Li is passively cooled and since I'm only doing Internet streaming and DVD reading power consumption is minimal.
Only a couple build notes. These small cases are really tough to work with. You need to be careful and get all the wiring out of the way before you insert the PSU. This Lian Li case takes an ATX unit and I managed first to dislodge the SSD SATA cable and then when I got that resolved the next insertion dislodged the Optical Drive power cable. Third time was the charm. The other weird thing was the Win7 installation disk (which I don't use, preferring to load Win via USB) was missing the last character of the product key. Fortunately Microsoft has Saturday hours and they issued a new one to me over the phone.
Total cost of the unit was $600 which is a little steep. I could have shaved some cost off using AMD instead of Intel but I'm happy with the results.
Only a couple build notes. These small cases are really tough to work with. You need to be careful and get all the wiring out of the way before you insert the PSU. This Lian Li case takes an ATX unit and I managed first to dislodge the SSD SATA cable and then when I got that resolved the next insertion dislodged the Optical Drive power cable. Third time was the charm. The other weird thing was the Win7 installation disk (which I don't use, preferring to load Win via USB) was missing the last character of the product key. Fortunately Microsoft has Saturday hours and they issued a new one to me over the phone.
Total cost of the unit was $600 which is a little steep. I could have shaved some cost off using AMD instead of Intel but I'm happy with the results.
