Building an NVIDIA ION-based HTPC for $600

We posted just earlier about building your own Hackintosh, but how about building an HTPC on the cheap? When Intel first released their Atom processor, I’m willing to bet that they had absolutely no idea of what was to come. Sure, they could predict, but the actual reaction surely defied any of those. Atoms found their way into netbooks, nettops and other unique devices (like the EeeTop), and thanks to NVIDIA’s ION, they’re also found in an HTPC.

Technology is constantly moving and improving, but I still can’t help but be struck by how much value there is in computers today. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to build a sweet system, which is a stark contrast to years ago when spending $2,000 would get you a PC that could get you by, depending on what you want to do. With the advent of the HTPC, many have considered adding such a machine to their home, but who really wants to spent a lot of money to get it done? Not many, and luckily that excuse can’t really be used today.

Our friends at Legit Reviews decided to take on the task of building an HTPC on the cheap, and it’s a good one. It features an ASUS motherboard, a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, a slot-loading Blu-ray player and a Travla mini-ITX chassis. Grand total? Just $577.09. Yes, for under $600, you could build your own HTPC capable of playing the latest Blu-ray movies.

As you’d expect, the machine handles HD video fine, but the CPU usages do go a bit high depending on the codec used, especially on YouTube HD videos. That’s why NVIDIA’s ION is a blessing – the video would stutter like no tomorrow if the acceleration was left entirely up to Atom. Perhaps the best part of HTPCs and this one in particular is the power consumption… 36W during a Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood run, and 33W with Blu-ray. Ahh, technology’s great.

Oh, and for those looking for an alternative ION machine to build up, be sure to check out 2Tired2Tango’s look at one of Asrock’s offerings here.

After going to the Legit Reviews YouTube channel I fired up an HD video of a Yellow Garden Spider that I filmed this week and found that it was stutter free in standard definition video mode. I did take notice that the CPU usage was bouncing around 50% though, which just goes to show that the original Intel Atom 230 processor with just a single core and Hyper-Threading would have been running at 100% CPU load just to watch a video on YouTube.