Video Card

I wanted a cheap, half-height AGP card with TV-Out. I'd heard ATi's TV-outs were better than nVidia's, but I have nothing to prove that one way or the other. I wasn't planning on doing any 3D gaming, but did want DX8 compatability for various 3D acceleration options (translucency, etc) on the desktop. I found this yum-cha 9200SE card, that was half-height, as well as having three video-outs (VGA, DVI, SVideo). If you look at the link, you can see that the VGA out is actually via a cable so that all three outputs could be maintained/used in spite of the card only being half-height. $44 at NewEgg (although it is $50 now).

Hard Drive

All I wanted here was a big drive, cheap. With an 8MB buffer. By taking advantage of a low no-rebate Fry's price and a price-matching/rebate combination opportunity at Circuit City, I managed to get a 120GB 8MB Western Digital drive for $1.50 after tax and rebate. This is the one deal that I got that probably can't be easily replicated.

RAM

In this regard, I didn't live-up to my "cheap" nature. I was planning on getting only 256MB of RAM, but because I am a firm believer in "you can never have too much RAM", I went with 512MB (one stick of Kingston ValueRam). $64.72 at OfficeMax.

DVD/CD-ROM

I had originally intended on just using a spare 5.25" CD-RW drive I had laying around. But after mapping out a few measurements, I realized that this just was not going to happen. Regular 5.25" drives are just too large in both depth and height to fit over the motherboard components that it would need to. So I settled on a slimline (laptop) DVD-ROM concept. I found one (Toshiba SD-C2502) on eBay for $20, shipped. I also bought an adapter to convert from slimline to IDE for another $19. Little did I know that I bought the wrong one (60 pin instead of 40 pin)! So there was my first wasted expenditure. I eventually found the right adapter on PCAlchemy.com for a better price than what I saw on eBay ($17.45, shipped). PCAlchemy.com is a nice little store I found. More of a boutique website, it caters to the HTPC crowd. Dan would probably say, "Recommended".

WiFi

WiFi was a requirement for me. I did not want to run cable from my DVR to my primary PC in another room. I have a Netgear WGR614v4 router, so I decided to stick with the same brand (for compatability's sake) and get a PCI 802.11g adapter, the Netgear WG311. I could have gone for a USB adapter, but an internal solution was more elegant and congruent with my aesthetic goal. If I didn't already have a router, I would have considered a "Super-G" WiFi solution for faster file transfers, but I didn't want to buy a new router so I stuck with the vanilla 802.11g setup.

Power Supply

My first thought was to use a spare ATX PSU I had laying around. I couldn't have been more misguided. Way too big for the case. So I did some measurements and found that the micro-ATX form factor would probably work well. I found a cheapo unit for $22, shipped at NewEgg. Upon receipt, I found that either I or NewEgg had confused the width and depth dimensions and it didn't actually fit the way I needed it to. Argh. Another wasted purchase. So I found that I was going to have to spend the big bucks and get a FlexATX PSU. I like Fortron PSUs (their ATX ones have been quiet and reliable for me in other computers) so I settled on the Fortron FlexATX FSP200-PLA unit. I originally ordered from Axiontech.com but their "24-hour" availability on their website turned out to be three weeks with no contact from them, so I canceled the order. I ended up getting it from Power-On.com for $54.94, shipped. More to come on this later in the article -- this component turned out to be the biggest hurdle to overcome in my DVR odyssey!

Heat Sink, Fans

To make a long story short, I needed a heat sink that I could blow at from the side instead of from the top, because of limited vertical space in the box. I went with the Zalman CNPS3100. The included 92mm fan was too big to sit vertically in the case, so instead I used it as a case fan sitting horizonally. I then purchased a Vantec Stealth 60mm fan at Fry's (~$10) to use on the heat sink. I also ended up purchasing a Zalman ZM-OP1 slim 80mm fan from excaliberpc.com for use on the PSU (more on that later).