Today Only: Budget HTPC ION

[Cave Man]

I just rec'd an email from NewEgg with a special Cyber Monday price for this board:

• HEC 8K 8K01BBA20 Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC (Japanese Steel Metal) Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 200W Power Supply - Retail
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
• G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail
• ZOTAC IONITX-D-E Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6 GHz 441 NVIDIA ION Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo - Retail
• LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DS-8A3S-01 - OEM

Original Price: $374.95
Discount: -$58.46
Combo Price: $316.49


It appears to be easily hackintoshed with DVI and digital optical audio, and should be able to handle moderate bit rate 1080p playback with Plex. It needs kernel 10.6.1 to run under 10.6.2 (Atom).

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

Man that is a pretty nice deal.

 

[phrehdd]

I just rec'd an email from NewEgg with a special Cyber Monday price for this board:

• HEC 8K 8K01BBA20 Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC (Japanese Steel Metal) Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 200W Power Supply - Retail
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
• G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail
• ZOTAC IONITX-D-E Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6 GHz 441 NVIDIA ION Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo - Retail
• LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DS-8A3S-01 - OEM

Original Price: $374.95
Discount: -$58.46
Combo Price: $316.49

This appears to be easily hackintoshed with DVI and digital optical audio, and should be able to handle moderate bit rate 1080p playback with Plex. It needs kernel 10.6.1 to run under 10.6.2 (Atom).

Looks like a good item if you exploit it properly assuming you really want to play back m2ts/mkv 1080p files -> use Windows or Linux and XBMC. This is a far better fit for this system. Linux has the main advantage of exploiting the GPU and Windows (yuck) using XBMC will exploit Direct X. Mac is the weakest contender of the group though PLEX is perhaps the "nicest" front end.

- Phrehdd