Small form factor

[Bruceleeon 0]

Have any of you used a small form factor PC (HP or Dell, etc) as an HTPC? We are about to publish something fun and I wanted to get an idea of what people have done

[claycc 0]

I haven't messed around with an HTPC yet. I have a Seagate media player that I can use if I want to play music or movies on my TV.

[me_mystery 0]

Sorry no htpc. I manage with Roku XDS. The only problem is that after continuous runs it gets very hot.

[Bruceleeon 0]

I have a few friends that have the WD live and they like it. I talked them into streaming from a home server... and now they are loving it.

[flavoie 0]

Some time ago, I used an Antec Aria case as my first HTPC. I had a depth limitation where it was going to live, so this was one of the few cases that could live within the limits.

With a micro ATX board, it lived a couple of years, but it was trouble maintaining it since it was tight in there. I ended up upgrading the whole thing and putting it in a Silverstone HTPC case.

If you like the small form factors, it can be done. At the time, with an Athlon 3200+ and discrete graphics card, this was a decent htpc.

[Bruceleeon 0]

Thats the thing... people think they need these huge video cards for HTPC. Truth is, low profile graphics cards are usually all you need. (outside of gaming). That opens up the doors for all kinds of small cases. At one point, I was using the embedded video and it worked just fine.

[flavoie 0]

I like to check for the video card that will get me the most advanced video support at the lowest cost, and if at all possible, in a fanless version. What that means is you may only need to go just a few steps up from the cheapest card and still get top notch video acceleration support. I don't care about gaming performance on my HTPC...