Netflix has launched in India and now all the other streaming services are going to be in high gear. Out of curiosity, we wanted to how much would it cost to build a pure basic Home Theater PC (HTPC) that could handle most of the streaming tasks, a little bit of gaming, and just about everything you'd want to do on a PC.
Note: Prices may vary from the time this article was published. Pencils on the ready, here's our config...
Cabinet: Mini ITX Nova Cabinet with 200W SMPS
Price: Rs 1,850
When looking for a small cabinet, we came across several no-name options that looked cool, with their own built in SMPS for a lot less than the above price. However the Nova Cabinet looks pretty decent and comes with a 200W SMPS, which is adequate for this build. Also, it has a bay for a DVD or Blu-Ray drive, though things could get a bit too cramped.
There are better options for cabinets in terms of looks. For a bit more, Antec and Silverstone have amazing small cabinets that will look amazing on your mantlepiece.
Buy it on Amazon.in
CPU/Motherboard: Zotac E2-1800-ITX WiFi, Bluetooth
Price: Rs 3,999
An all in one motherboard at a fantastic price. With an onboard AMD E2 1800 1.7GHz dual-core CPU and a built in Radeon HD 7340 which is decent for simple gaming and full HD movie viewing. You also get in-built Wifi and Bluetooth 4.0, so you can connect your wireless headphone or keyboard/mouse. Yes it has an ethernet port as well. The motherboard is capable of 6-channel audio through HDMI.
That’s not all, with a full PCI-Express lane, you can put in a bigger graphics card and the RAM can be upgraded to 16 GB. You may have to then opt for a bigger power supply and cabinet though.
Buy it on Amazon.in
RAM: Transcend 4GB DDR3 1333 MHz
Price: Rs 1,787
For starters, 4GB is enough RAM for everything to run well. Transcend’s 1333MHz RAM is a good starting point, but you can alway add more for better performance. If you can put in two 8GB RAM DIMM’s to max out the memory, the overall performance will be a lot faster.
Buy it on Amazon.in
Drive: Seagate Pipeline 250GB SATA 5900RPM Hard Drive
Price: Rs 1,230
Our recommended motherboard supports upto two SATA devices. Since this is mainly going to be a streaming machine with minimum installs, we felt 250 GB was enough for the OS to move around in comfortably. Plus, The Zotac motherboard has a few USB 3.0 drives as well for you to plug in external storage. However, if you want this to be a powerful media storage option, then you may want to opt for a 1TB laptop drive.
Buy on Amazon.in
Input devices: Mobile apps
Price: Free
Having an HTPC is all about wireless control. Rather than spending money buying something, we can use our smartphones as a keyboard and touch mouse with creative apps like Air Mouse that makes your phone a motion gesture mouse. Logitech’s mouse and keyboard app - Touch Mouse offer the phone’s keyboard and touch screen as control elements.
If you like the physical feel of a keyboard and mouse you can get a Zebronics for as low as Rs 325. However, for a bit more you can get Logitech’s offerings. There are also options to get keyboards with trackpads, if that's your thing.
Download AirMouse for Android
Download Touch Mouse for iOS
Download Touch Mouse for iOS
OS: Ubuntu Linux
Price: Free
Windows is pretty expensive and if you don’t have an unused serial key of Windows lying around you’re build could end up costing a lot more. However, there are lots of options out there that don’t cost anything at all. Ubuntu Linux would be our recommendation - it's free and has a lot of support from the developer community.
Download Ubuntu Linux here
Conclusion
With a total cost of Rs 8,866, you get a fully functional (though quite basic), home theatre PC with media streaming capabilities. The good news with the PC is that it’s always open to expansion. Choose your own case or add a graphics card, and more RAM. Of course the price will increase with each upgrade, but so will the performance. Build it yourself, give this configuration to your PC hardware vendor; it's up to you.
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