With black Friday sales, I finally got around to building a computer for my living room. I’ve wanted one for a while because when friends are over, it’s a lot easier to sit on the couch and play games on the TV than it is to crowd around a monitor in the office. This computer also has a TV tuner in it, so I hooked up the TV antenna to it so we can watch and record over-the-air TV with this computer. Below is the PC Part Picker list for the computer I built.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD – Ryzen 7 1700X 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor | $213.29 @ OutletPC |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master – Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler | $24.89 @ OutletPC |
| Motherboard | MSI – B450M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard | |
| Memory | Crucial – Ballistix Sport AT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory | $121.49 @ Newegg |
| Storage | Samsung – 860 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive | $147.99 @ Newegg |
| Video Card | MSI – Radeon RX 480 4 GB GAMING X Video Card | |
| Case | Thermaltake – Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case | $67.43 @ Amazon |
| Power Supply | EVGA – SuperNOVA G1+ 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply | $98.68 @ OutletPC |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total (before mail-in rebates) | $703.77 | |
| Mail-in rebates | -$30.00 | |
| Total | $673.77 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-15 11:04 EST-0500 |
These are current prices, which I did not pay. Before rebates (which I should get around to sending in), everything was about $530. I reused the graphics card and power supply from an old computer.
So far, I’m really liking it. It plays games on the TV very nicely at 1080p (the TV is 4K, but it’s really difficult to see the difference at couch distance) and it watches and records TV just fine. I’m not really thrilled with any of the media center options out there though. None of them is nearly as good as Windows Media Center was.