Building HTPC. Advice

As topic says. Looking to build it as cheap as possible

Be warned I'm a little religious about some brands
Building it to handle 1080p mkv files.

Only need: Mobo, ram, cpu and gfx

Mobo: ASUS P5KPL-CM cheapest intel chipset based mobo I could find. It has to be intel chipset
CPU: E7400 cheapest cpu that is fast enough
GFX: ATI HD4350. It has to be ATI passive cooled
Memory: 2 x 1GB Kingston hyperX ddr2, pc800

Any thoughts ?

Thanx in advance

Greetings from Biosphere

I am a brand man when it comes to my gaming rig, Intel FTW.

However, for price, speed and power consumption I went with an AMD 4850e on an ASUS P5N7A-VM.
No need for the additional video card. Ffdshow tryout video and audio run at about 35-40% processor usage when running full 1080p mkv and DTS-ex.

Specs

ASUS P5N7A-VM (The 9300 onboard HDMI does purevideo)
AMD 4850e w / scythe mini-ninja (fanless)
2GB G.Skill DDR2 800

That and the Antec Black Fusion with imon VFD, powered by Mediaportal.

Most people would agree with Rurki. However, I know a couple people who have since had to add an HD4550 or HD4650 to that same setup in order to get the performance they wanted. With onboard, they would get stuttering in the VMC menu while playing a 1080p source simultaneously, which was annoying. Personally, I dont get that problem with my GF9400/E7200 system.

Just curious, but what case/psu will you be using?

Thanx so much for advice guys

I think I will stick with separate GFX. Just for safety

I will be putting it in my old case, silverstone G17 http://images.tigerdirect.com/skuimages/large/S35-1142-main.jpg

Just a cheap case. It's good enough for me. Powersupply will be 550w lc power.
Another cheap item which is currently running my primary pc( Asus p5k, 4gb pc1066, ATI HD 4870 1gb, E6850, RAID 2 x 250GB WD RE3 + WD 1TB) so that should be powerfull enough. Will by a Corsair TX650 to replace it.

Trying to spend my money where it counts. Just bought a Pioneer Kuro 50" KRP500M

Rurki: didn't understand which cpu you were running ? Did look at the phenoms but they were not much cheaper than the small c2d's and I don't know what kind af performance they will bring..

Any thoughts on the Asus board I found ? ASUS P5KPL-CM ?

You won't need a 650 watt Corsair for your power supply -- go with the cheaper CX400. Considering the age of your current PSU, however, you might as well include that in your purchase.

I don't know much about the particular board that you're interested in, but perform some research and make sure that the board you end up choosing has a PCI Express x16 slot that operates at its listed bandwidth range. Several G3x boards have PCIe x16 slots that only run at x4 or x8 speeds.

Nice TV. Don't forget to run the burn in stuff from avsforums.

Really a discrete graphics cards is totally unnessecary for a box that has no purpose other than an HTPC.
It just uses extra power and creates more heat, and makes your fans spin faster and make more noise.

heres two boards that i recommend,
ASUS P5N7A-VM LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9300/nForce 730i HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9400 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Both these boards are great, they will do anything you throw at it with that e7300, not to mention if you follow the guide in the HTPC forum it will use DXVA and CUDA and you wont see hardly any CPU usage during x264 playback.
Follow that guide and you wont need a video card.
Not to mention, you could probably also cool your CPU passively using a Scythe Ninja mini.
Can you say Silent