Ah! The crux of modern entertainment technology, the Home Theater PC (HTPC). While the concept has been floating around for some years with DIY and commercial kits widely available, HTPCs are only beginning to gain some ground as a serious entertainment alternative for the living room. In a nutshell, one can probably turn almost any PC into a HTPC with an appropriate media center or playback software. However, we wanted a thoroughbred. Our HTPC must be a fully featured media hub for all of today's entertainment needs and be powerful enough to see us through when high definition (HD) content hits the mainstream next year.
What we were looking for next was a small, stylish and sexy chassis that can fit inconspicuously in the living room. Most importantly, the HTPC should be silent and power efficient under operation so as not to interfere with your movie experience. When was the last time you switched-on your DVD player and it whirred to life in a cadence of cooling fans and gaudy neon lights? That's right – Never, so our HTPC shouldn't do that either.
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Kingston ValueRAM 1GB 533MHz DDR2
(2 x 512MB kit) – (KVR533D2N4K2/1G) SRP: US$85
Using the newer Dothan Pentium M cores, the system benefits from increased bandwidth with a 533MHz FSB. While speed isn't paramount, you do require something to deliver decent stability and offer great value. Also, you can never have enough memory, as system overheads continue to increase, 1GB of memory no longer seems far fetched and will smoothen out your entertainment experience. With this setup, the memory of choice was clearly a pair of 512MB Kingston DDR2-533 ValueRAMs. |
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