Here is a summary of what i paid for the whole cMP² system :
GA31m S2L Board - 30$ Ebay ( i saw it selling for even cheaper )
e7300 cpu - 40$ ebay ( " " )
512mb crucial dqt9 ( similar to the kingston low latency ) - 10$
Cogage MST 140 cooler ( rebranded Thermalright axp 140 selling for the half price )
Esi juli@ - 80$ ebay ( only digital board used )
Wireless Mouse - Microsoft Arc
Case - 0$ old htpc case, take any case you want until it´s heavy build.
HDD - old 1tb sata HDD from my server ( upgradet to 2tb )
12" VGA LCD Screen - 20$
Pico PSU 150xt - 30$ ebay
Regulated linear PSU ( to power p4 and p24 through pico psu ) 50$ ( velleman / peaktech) 0,5mv ripple
Old seasonic psu to power the other components like hdd and usb mouse ( 0$ ). As you power the whole board with the linear psu you can just take any atx psu. Remove the fan though.
No Fans, no noise, wunderful...
As you see not much money, even less than iwould have paid for a Squeezebox. The biggest improvement i´ve got with the linear psu powering the pico psu. More prat and perceived weight. Since then i´m a psu believer. my opinion is that any device rises and falls respectively to the psu it uses. Forget atx psu´s to power your board in an audio pc.
The linear psu stuff and seperating noisy hardware like hdd´s and usb powered devices from the mainboard circuit will probably improve any audio pc regardless wich software it´s running.
All the software, bios tweaks summed up was a nice performance boost too. When i was running my all in one htpc before, for music aswel ( bitperfect )l i thought that my dac inside my av receiver would be the weakest link in my system, in the end it resulted that it was my transport, the dac just wasn´t operating at the level it could. Try it out, follow the guide step by step with pacience and be amazed.
Just my 2...