5. Motherboard And Memory

Something that I didn't expect about HTPCs is that you actually have to consider the amount of expansion slots in a motherboard. Generally, there are so many peripherals incorporated into today's motherboards that there's usually not a need for many expansion slots. In fact, before I became interested in HTPCs, I hadn't used more than one expansion slot on a motherboard since I scored my first motherboard with a VESA local bus slot. (Oh yeah, those were the days). Now for the first time in years, I had to factor expansion slots into my motherboard selection to make sure that all my peripherals would fit. I needed enough PCI slots to accommodate at least three TV tuners, a sound card and a video card.

Beyond the expansion slots, my motherboard requirements included an Nforce chipset with a gigabit network controller, SATA Raid, room for a Zalman cooler, front Firewire and USB, and to salvage my own sanity, a passive Northbridge cooler. Most of these options are not difficult to find, but the passive Northbridge proved elusive. After deliberating for weeks I found the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 and put it on my list. I considered waiting for the Nforce 6150 boards to come out, but the lengthy delays at the time had sparked some nasty rumors about failures and I wasn't willing to risk a potential problem.

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 with the Athlon 64 3700+ and Zalman cooler installed.

Happy day! It's a passive Northbridge cooler!

Super low-latency powerful RAM seemed overkill for a media PC, so I bought two sticks of 512 MB Corsair PC3200 Value Select RAM at a good price. They have been more than adequate.

1 GB Corsair Value Select RAM