Need recommendation/help for SFF System

[Silly Burrito]

Hello everyone! I'm looking to buy a small form factor PC that I would like to use in the living room. I don't really care about overclocking or extreme performance. It can be either Intel or AMD. Here's what I'd like for this PC to do:

1. (And most important) - Record from Tivo and create personal DVDs (I'd love to get a Good Eats collection ) If I could also record from an antenna, that would be nice but not absolutely necessary.
2. Hook up to my upcoming purchase of an AVR 525 and Ascend 5.1 speaker setup for great sound
3. Be able to surf the net and answer email on my TV
4. Play MAME (and other emulators) on the TV
5. Play other games (nothing too powerful like Doom 3..more like Sims, Civ 3, Half Life)
6. Have front USB ports for hooking up a digital camera once I get one.

Is there a SFF PC that will accomodate all of this? Will I need a PVR card and a video card to get what I want? I won't say money is no object, but if I can keep it under a grand, that would be great.

Also, I've built a computer before, but I've never messed with the heatpipe cooling system. I'm almost thinking about having someone else do it for me to make sure that I don't fry the system. If I go that route, who would you recommend that builds quality SFF computers?

Thanks for all those who respond!

 

[Treyshadow]

Go with a shuttle SN45 or SN41 as they will give you the best onboard video and sound. The P4 models just don't have the graphics prowess and you will be forced to buy a video card also. Just get a good processor like a barton 2500+ or better to go in it. Make sure you get at least 512 MB ram as this will be necessary for the tivo aspects.

The heatpipe of the shuttle is really just part of the heatsink. If you have built a pc before this should be simple once you see it.

Since small form factor machines only have 1 pci, I would go with a hauppage pvr250 card. This has hardware mpeg 2 decoding so your tivo aspects are well taken care of.

For more information go to http://www.thegreenbutton.com or http://www.xpmce.com

Then again, the Alienware Navigator takes all the work out of building it yourself.

 

[funko]

i'd reccomend the sn45 which gives you the nforce2 400 chipset,

then you can add on m-audio 7.1 pci sound card which should give you goud enough sound quality for your ascends and the denon (very nice choice btw!)

as for video, you'll have to get an aill-in-wonder radeon to get all that tv functionality along with gaming ability, something like the up coming 9600 aiw if y oucan wait for that, or just a entry level aiw, should let you play those games you mentioned also

if you want to just use the onboard soundstorm, that would be adequate also, and you can just hold off on a sound card for the time being and try out the SPDIF - output for an optical connection from the XPC to the denon, and get a normal radeon 9600 pro and a separate tv tuner, like the leadtek, haupage, or radeon tv wonder, for the pci slot

all the latest shuttle mdoels ahve a slew of connections on the front and back, including usb 2.0, firewire, optical in teh front, headphones, analog audio, etc etc


and the heatpipe is easy to install, i wouldn't worry about it, its just like seating a normal heatsink with the spring/screw suspension, which i htink is easier than setting a clip-based heatsink, andt the manual is very helpful in setting teh whole case up