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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Here is a nice guide for a $500 "Steam Box"

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-build-your-own... Great pictures for assembly - components as follows:

  Processor: Intel Core i3-3220 ($130)
  Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H61M-HD2 Micro-ATX ($55)
  RAM: Kingston Value 4GB DDR3 1066 Low-Profile ($30)
  Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GHz Edition ($115)
  Hard Drive: Western Digital Blue 500GB 7200RPM ($60)
  Power Supply: Antec NEO ECO 400-Watt ($40)
  Case: Antec New Solution VSK-3000 ($30)
  Cooler: Cooler Master GeminII M4 ($30)

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A great resource for building a custom PC on a fixed budget is http://www.logicalincrements.com/.

No offense, but can we at least spend more on cases instead of recommending people ugly boxes? Yeah I understand it might be banished to the entertainment center for life, but all the thought into selecting components, assembling it, and wiring it just right, get tossed out the moment I see what amounts to black painted cardboard box equivalent.

I know, for many its what inside that counts, but for some its presentation that shows to others that all details matter.

Is there really a point to a custom cooler when there are literally no high-end components in the machine capable of producing an appreciable amount of heat? Seems like $30 wasted.

This is going to be a tough sell. The PS4's performance is going to blow this thing out of the water, and it's a practical guarantee that the next Xbox will also - and probably not cost more.

The fan can run more slowly (with the cooler it's more efficient) - so the the system runs more quietly. Important for a living room appliance.

The GPU is fine, but that build needs more RAM and possibly a better CPU. Would benefit significantly from an SSD; spend ~$100 on a 128GB SSD and watch your loading times drop.

yup, 8 Gigs of RAM should be mandatory. Also a i5 3720 has a excellent performance/price ratio.

My machine is always on. Subjectively, having 24GB of RAM made far more of a performance difference than my Plextor PX-256M3P, presumably because with 24GB of RAM pretty much everything of importance ends up being cached in RAM sooner or later.

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