[mythtv-users] MythTV Hardware Recommendations - Stability is the Key

[Craig Meyer]

  MythTV Users,

I am a long time MythTV user that recently retired my MythTV box when
moving to another state. I am now ready to build a new box but I am
looking for advice.

My first box was based on an Athlon 2000+ motherboard with a Nvidia
Nforce2 chipset and DDR2700 RAM. I bought the system for performance.
Unfortunately I found it to be totally unstable. It had weird issues
like system hangs, compilation problems and program crashes. It was
running Gentoo on both 2.4 and then 2.6 series kernels. I moved it to
become a Windows desktop and haven’t seen any of the same issues with
the exact hardware. However, I still think it was hardware related
because I ran into numorus Nforce2 related Linux glitches.

My question is, what would be a good choice for a cheap but complete
MicroATX motherboard and processor combination that will support MythTV
with rock solid stability? My primary concerns are STABILITY, heat and
power consumption.