New HDPC

[BirdDroppings]

Hey yall. I would like to build or purchase a HDPC. I am curious on what your thoughts are, either to build one yourself or purchase a prebuilt one. or a combo of the two I suppose. Please keep in mind I am very cheap and I am really only looking for something that will just get me by. I just dont have the funds to go all out. A laptop wouldnt be out of the question either.
I have two options in mind. One being that it will play my current HD DVD and Blu-Ray movies and thats it. The other being a storage depot of some sorts for them, meaning convert them to a playable format.
I currently convert all my DVDs to mp4 with Nero Recode and it chews up over 90% of my CPU, and takes about 4 hours. I would like something that will do the same for my HD movies and hopefully not eat away at my CPU and not take too long. I understand there is a somewhat hidden rule about not asking about CloneBD so I wont......but that would be my end result you could say. I only have 720p TVs and have no plans to get a new 1080p anytime soon, so saving on space recoding them to 720p would be a big plus. I understand the second option is going to be more expensive but it will be good to know.
Thanks.

[shadow07]

I don't know if anyone responded to your question, but if you take a look at the components in my sig, you can get all of them pretty cheap. You can skip on the ASUS HD 4550, as the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H has a built-in HD3200 GPU. It is a pretty good GPU for any level of HD playback (720p or 1080p.) I upgraded to the HD 4550, as it can decode 2 HD streams at once (i.e. Profile 2.0 PiP, found in the Tranformers DB version), and has an improved AVIVO engine.

I bought most of the hardware for about $500 total over on Newegg. You can find most of the parts cheaper on eBay.