Went with:

Novatech Vision Media Centre Case

ASRock N68-S3 FX nForce 630a (Socket AM3+) Motherboard
Low profile passive AMD cooler
AMD SEMPRON 145 AM3 OEM CPU PROCESSOR

Came to ~£125 delivered, just need to find a cheap as chips SSD to make an ultra-fast boot time and I'm done.

Plan is to install XBMC Live and for it to be fast enough to turn on and off when needed.

have you thought about a compact flash card instead ?  should be fine if you're only booting from it.... and it'll be 10 times than even the cheapest ssd ?

Quote from: knighty on February 08, 2012, 12:32:49 PM
have you thought about a compact flash card instead ?  should be fine if you're only booting from it.... and it'll be 10 times than even the cheapest ssd ?

Hadnt considered it, I just need to be able to boot xbmc live, maybe play some ROMS (if I cant get them working), but all storage will be over the network.

I'll look into it, cheers.

Yeah I used a IDE to CF adapter when I did my geexbox setup years ago, they are just a little slow, but new cards can give you a bit more speed..

Edit: this one in fact: http://www.tekforums.net/computing-technology-web-communication/media-centre-pc-on-the-cheap!