Selecting the hardware
Initially, I was going to just use KnoppMyth, which has a lot of really good information on their Wiki. They have suggested hardware, so I went to NCIX and built/ordered a PC based on their recommendations.
Two things happened though. First, my credit card payment was rejected because we’d recently moved, and hadn’t changed our address with the CC company, so the billing address I’d given them didn’t match up. At the same time, I saw an article speculating that the Athlon XP is nearing the end of the road. I decided that I’d actually do a little more research and see what kind of system I could build, that wouldn’t already be obsolete.
Here’s what I wound up with:
Antec Sonata case - quiet with a good 380W power supply
SOLTEK K8TPRO-939 motherboard - onboard audio (S/PDIF in and out) lots of expandability for extra drives
AMD Athlon 64 - 3200+ - lots of power for what I need, and at a good price point.
ASUS V9520-X/TD GEFORCE FX 5200 video card. Decent price, heatsink cooled (no noisy fan) and plenty fast enough for my needs. Also good driver support for Linux.
200Gb Seagate Barracuda SATA - I wanted a native SATA drive(ie not an IDE drive with a SATA controller board on it,) and this fit the bill.
2×512Mb Samsung PC3200 RAM. I debated myself on spending more on RAM, but supposedly this RAM works, and Samsung isn’t exactly a small player in the RAM business.
Hauppauge PVR-250 purchased gently used from a friend.
MyBlaster Serial to control the satellite receiver