I’m a big fan of XMBC, the great open source media center for Xboxs. But, I stopped using it over the last 12 months because my needs had out-stripped the capabilities of the Xbox, which can’t support native HD content. Because of this, I now use PCs running Windows Vista Media Center for my media needs, with all my content held on a Windows Home Server.

I was thus pleasantly pleased to learn that two teams of developers are working on porting XBMC to OS X and Linux, providing much needed HD support. Previously the XBMC had worked miracles in terms of squeezing as much functionality as possible out of the power-challenged Xbox. I can’t wait to see what they can achieve if they are given more powerful hardware to play with.

Unfortunately, the timing of the work is too late for me. I’m in the process of buying a new house which has a second reception room that I’m going to use as a ‘den’ or ‘games room’ for when my mates come round. This means that I will need a new media center for the new room to watch DVDs and to play music. I can’t find a good out-the-box media center that has wide enough codec support e.g. FLAC, .mkv etc, so I’ve decided to build another media center PC. Maybe overkill, but I can’t find a better way to deliver the support I need.

Rather than build a new Media Center PC from scratch, I’ve decided to bring forward a few months the planned upgrade of my main PC, and to use the old parts to build a new media center PC. I’d really appreciate some reader advice (that includes you Zath!) here as I haven’t had a lot of time to do my research.

The spec of my current main PC is:

• Gigabyte Aurora case (pictured)
• Water-cooled AMD 4200+
• Seasonic S-12 600 PSU
• 2GB memory
• 1×250GB SATA II
• DFI Lan Party Socket 939 mobo
• Water-cooled X1900XTX
• X-Fi Xtreme music

And the spec of my current HTPC is:

• Antec Fusion case (pictured)
• AMD 4600+
• 1×250GB SATA II
• Hauppauge TV Card
• Nvidia 7950 GPU
• X-Fi Xtreme Music

What I intend to do is leave the X1900 card and the X-Fi Xtreme card in the main PC, and use the CPU, PSU, mobo, HDD and memory together with the 7950 and X-Fi from the current HTPC to build a new 2nd HTPC. I’m going to pack all this into a Aplus CS-GL-3 Case, which is nice and cheap at 40 pounds and also can hold a ATX card so I don’t need to buy a new compact mATX mobo.

As you can see from the pic the case is pretty ugly, so if anyone can find a better looking cheap HTPC case that can hold a ATX card, then please let me know.

To replace the ‘borrowed components’ from the main HTPC which will go in the main reception and hence needs the best components, I need a new graphics card that will support 1080p with ease, and a new soundcard that will support the latest digital formats. I’m thinking of getting a Asus EN8800GT and a Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1. I’m not sure if the EN8800GT is a dual slot card, but if it is I’ll just take the TV card out of the HTPC to make room as I never use it. I’m really excited about the prospect of getting the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 card as it will support Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive and DTS NeoPC.

The spec of my new main PC is where I’m a bit stumped for ideas. I basically need to buy a new CPU, PSU, Mobo, HDD and Memory to go with the remaining Gigabyte case, X1900XTX graphics card and swiftech water-cooling to build a new PC. I’m thinking about building a PC around a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450, but I’m not sure which mobo to partner it with. I’m not a big overclocker, but I wouldn’t mind a mobo I can have a quick mess around with. I’m also not convinced that I need DDR3 instead of DDR2 memory, given the extra cost.

Any tips on the other bits (CPU, PSU, Mobo, HDD and memory) that I need to buy?