thanks, really appreciate ur effort, i have also came across one of ur thread that u were setting up HT system as well. Mind telling me what AVR u chose in the end? TQVM. How much is the pioneer VSX-819, RX-V465, Onkyo SR507 or Marantz 5003 which i came across. For Marantz 5003 only cost around 1.3k i can still grab Puccas Sat speaker rm100 and still make myself within 2k budget.

cheap casing could be had for RM50 till a few thousand.
i just built 3 HTPC using

for RM1.5k

core i3, the best gigabyte h55 board that i can find, 2gb ram and silverstone strider st400 power supply. didn't skimp on the power supply, mainboard and casing as it will be sitting in front of you.
the case costs me RM400 each.

the 80mm fan sound in an aluminium case, a few meters from your sitting position, next to the TV and speakers won't be audible IMO. unless you put the HTPC next to you.

even then, the 80mm sound will be overwhelmed by the aircond hehe

Wow..We are same gang..
I'm having one as well... For the remote, u can use Microsoft MCE compatible remote..

Dolby HT not really useful since we bitstream to AVR but SYOK to see.. haha

DVI n HDMI works as dual display..
Just received these plaques as wall decoration for my Room Theater & HTPC.. 

Wahh nice ones, the only plague i have for my HT room is stuck to my teeth 

Back to topic, have you notice any difference when using normal platter HDD with SSD? i.e Loading of movie files mkvs exceeding 25GB

I notice some different when i borrowed my freind SSD to play around for a day (Starting up the XBMC and loading of the movie) and was impress with the performance, but put off for the price. Might consider it later on for my new HTPC once my room have finish renovating.

My "Planned" build (Don't laugh pls  )

Intel Core i5 650
Gigabyte H55M-S2H
4 GB RAM
CoolerMaster 500W Extreme Power
Carbon Black Chieftec Dragon (This has been lying unused for over a year already)
4 GB RAM
2 X 1.5TB Seagate (For My HTPC Media)
1 X 1TB W.D. Green (64MB) (For Other PC stuff)
1 X 500GB Samsung (For OS Win7 and Ubuntu XBMC) or 1 X Intel X25-V SSD 40GB (Ubuntu XBMC)

Hope to get this done in 1 month's time when i move into my newly re-designed room 

My humble entry level setup
p7h55m-i3-stock hsf(not bad)-2gb ram-1tb ram-powerlogic allegra 500
+
Samsung 40"
+
Samsung HT (optical)
+
XBMC ( abit headache to personalize) & Boxee (nice online stuff)

h55 mobo isn't without its' weaknesses.
for one, max on the market only has 7 SATA ports (gigabyte h55m-usb3)

some of the older c2d mobo have 10 SATA ports. lots of ports are necessary important for HTPC cum media server.

then the cost will rapidly rise taking into consideration the price for another pc for storage or another set of NAS for storage.
NAS/storage server ain't cheap. i'd rather go with one solution that caters for both media and storage. cheaper in the long run.

i'm using a silverstone htpc case that fits 6 hdd (8 hdd after a simple mod) and another 3 on the dual 5.25" bay. so a total of 11 hdd could be stacked in there. currently using an extra mini itx board with 4 sata port and a 2 port sata pci card.

now in the process of upgrading the mainboard to another model with 10 sata port for a cost of RM250.
2 port pci sata card is only RM25.
4 port pci sata card is only RM85.

whereas a 4 hdd external case is RM355.
4 port NAS i think is close to RM1k more than RM500
2 HDD could only fit in about 150 1080p movies. not enough for someone with a large collection 

i'd blame it on the aircond, not on the htpc.
my bill is only about RM25-26 per month before this. couple of month goes below RM20 and paid by the gov.
now it's RM250 after airconditioning.

walauweh only increase 2 times. very good ekon you have

you use more than 1 optical drive issit?
1 unit of BD combo or BD writer should be enough for most people. i don't even have an optical drive for my HTPC. the 2 extra slot could be used for 3 more HDD.

300W should be enough for 3-4 HDD if it's rated as truepower. but if you're running the cheap RM50 PSU, then by all means don't attach more than 2.
BSOD is usually caused by RAM not sitting properly. HDD not detected caused by faulty mainboard, or by the cheap PSU if you're using one.

try reattach back all the connections and modules to the mainboard and make sure they're all firmly attach. also helps to clean the attachment and make sure there's no dust.

Just curious,

does everyone leave the HTPC on 24 hours ??

do you have a LCD monitor together with the LCD tv / Plasma tv ?

I like the Windows Media Center interface but it could not play .mkv format... what other media center look alike s/w do you use to play .mkv files ? I hv to manually goto Explorer and click on the .mkv and the Mediaplayer classic will launch..

I wanna compile a list of current HTPC users with h/w specs & htpc chassis on the first page and what common s/w do you use to power the HTPC...

This should give new HTPC users an idea what are the common h/w or s/w to use/install..

thanks for guidelines. will try tonight.
how bout xbmc skin, any good and nice sharing?

thank for sharing.
which version of rapier you using?
i just tested 3.06 but i don have wrap info view. only list, icon, big icon

where can i find nice HTPC Casing in Malaysia?
its really very difficult to find nice HTPC casing here~~~