HTPC mobo help

[DirtyMetis]

Thought I'd piece together an cheap HTPC to play around with spare parts I've got sittin' around collecting dust. Thus far I've snagged up a PVR 150 MCE and a MCE2005 Remote, and now I'm faced with some decisions to make.
I'm leaning towards this case to pop everything into. (Any feedback on this would be good too)

I've got an ABIT KT7 I believe with an Athlon 1200 and a stick of 512 MB PC133 SDRAM that I'd like to use. My questions mainly include:

1) Will the Athlon be enough for decent HTPC operation?
2) Are there any mATX mobo's with support for SDRAM available? Recommendations?
3) Would 1 GB (figure I'll pick up another stick for $30 or so) be enough or is SDRAM really gonna hinder me that much over DDR?

Any info or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[CaneFan]

If you plan on putting that box in your living room you should look for a different case. The two 60mm fans are likely to be noisy which is going to become irritating when you are watching TV/movies.

I'm running MythTV on linux on an Athlon XP 2500 with 512 MB of PC 2100 DDR in an Antec Overture case and it performs well and is quiet.

Check the system requirements of the software you plan on running on the box.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: DirtyMetis
1) Will the Athlon be enough for decent HTPC operation?
2) Are there any mATX mobo's with support for SDRAM available? Recommendations?
3) Would 1 GB (figure I'll pick up another stick for $30 or so) be enough or is SDRAM really gonna hinder me that much over DDR?

The only one of those three questions that I have any input to offer about is the second; I've recently had an older PC sputter seriously and I thought it was a goner. It runs SDRAMs and I looked for anything currently available in the retail channel without a lot of luck, and I had the freedom of going ATX *or* mATX if need be. I bid on a Biostar M7VIW for little more than pocket change at eBay and won the auction -- before it arrived, the old PC was running again, with no indication of why it overheated several times and acted as unstable as could be for several days.

The Biostar is a Via KT266A board, full ATX size, that swings both ways. Either SDRAM or DDR. So it makes a good insurance policy for any (Socket A) system that I think I can't afford to have offline for very long - and as noted, not expensive. I think that I've seen some SDRAM MB's in Newegg's "Refurbished" section, but I believe those were ATX, not mATX.