Athenatech A100SC.200 Black/ Silver Steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 230W SFX Power SupplyASUS EN6200LE/TC256/TD/64 GeForce 6200LE (has TV composite out)1.8GHz Celeron Processor- 500GB Western Digital hard drive
1GB DDR2 667 memory- LITE-ON DVD +/- RW
MSI P6NGM-L- PVR-500 dual TV tuner
I chose a Micro ATX case so that it would be small and fit under my TV stand. One needs to be carful that the MicroATX case has full profile PCI slots, I don't know any TV tuners that utilize a low profile. I chose components that are known to not run how so I could minimize the fans and fan speed in my system, this will minimize the noise. The first TV this system is going to hook up to only has composite video in, so I had to find a way to hook up the computer to composite video in. I chose the graphics card that I did because it had composite out and the price was decent. The quality of the card wasn't an is sure because I will not be playing any games that require top notch graphics. This card will easily work for all the emulators I envision having on this system. If I was going to hook up to a tv that had an HDMI input I would have skipped the graphics card and got a mother board that had DVI or HDMI output and used onboard graphics. I would have also liked a mother board with 4 or 3 PCI slots which would allow more tuner cards to be added in the future, but my restriction to composite out made me chose the mother board and graphics card that I did.
I only got 1x1024MB memory card because the mo ther board doesn't support dual channel and I only needed 1GB to start my system. I chose a single core processor becuase this one does not run as hot and the price was good. Top-notch hardware is not needed in a mythTV box, so I focused on price.
Here is the case opened up before I put anything in:
It is a tight fit but after everything was in it: