For the last 6 months or so I've been wanting to buy a little computer to dedicate to media-related stuff. I finally got around to it! I picked up a niftly little Biostar iDEQ 210V from Newegg with a Sempron 2400+ and 512 MB DDR400 RAM to go with it. I'm very pleased.
The Biostar barbones system is a great deal. I was eyeing Shuttle computers for a while, but they are pretty pricey. (Most clock in at >$200), so I settled for a $140 Biostar. Runs quiet. Looks great. Works great. The model I purchased doesn't have a TV out, so I'm using an old nVidia card with TV-out. For some reason, the VGA port on that nVidia card died, so all the colors are messed up on a monitor screen, but the TV-out works fine.
I debated about going Sempron. Since this is a media computer, I didn't need a heavy hitter like a P4 w/HT or a Athlon64. After poking around the web for a while and talking with other computer geeks, I decided a Sempron gives great bang for my buck-even with less L2 cache. I chose the lower end model (2400+) since it's plenty powerful to do what I want to do while not consuming much energy and being cheap ($75). If it seems the CPU is way more powerful than I need, I might even underclock to get a cooler, more engergy efficient system.
Now I'm in the midst of getting my Gentoo Stage 1 install up and running. Things are going very well. I think I'll have a great little media box.
So, here's the stuff I bought. Some of this is destined for my desktop machine (DVD burner, video card, CPU fan).
Biostar Barebones $139 (I bought it on sale)
AMD Sempron 2400+ $75 (I paid more than the current price.)
Kingmax DDR400 512MB RAM $65
GeForce4 MX4000 128MB w/ VGA-out, DVI-out, and TV-out $45
Rosewill DVD+/-RW w/ DVD+R dual layer support $57
Tr2tt Tr2M1 CPU Cooler $10