My latest project started back in December with some Boxing day sales, and finished up on the 1st with the maiden voyage.

It was interesting gathering all the parts from Greenlyph, NCIX, NewEgg and various local shops to come together in my first media center. I spent months price comparing and shopping around for the best deals, trying to decide on form factor, cases and where I would stop. There are still a few things I can think of that will have to wait.

Here is what I settled on:

• IN WIN IW-BT611T Slimline chassis
• Athlon 64 X2 5200+
• Asus M3A78-EM (Asus 780G Chipset)
• 2 x 2GB Crucial PC-6400
• 1 x SATA Seagate 500GB 16MB Cache
• LG SATA DVD-R/RW
• Logitech Wireless Keyboard/Laser Mouse Combo
• Windows 7 Ultimate RC 32-bit

Originally I was going to install Ubuntu 9.04, but thanks to ATI's horrendous proprietary drivers and two wasted days I decided to save the cost of a Vista license and install the release candidate of Windows 7 until it comes out this fall.

In the mean time this machine makes a great addition to my modded entertainment center (a story for another day).