Highly considering about building a small mini htpc

[-RockMan-]

I have a quick question for you all ?
I am going to be building a small htpc just for recording digital cable shows.
My church just gave me a flat white desktop to have and use.

Would it be a good a idea to use a normal Micro atx desktop to build a small media center ?
I just wanted some of opinions if anyone has transformed a office desktop pc into a mino htpc.

 

[Press_Corpse]

What kind of budget would you be willing to spend? You can save a lot of money by getting a Core 2 Duo setup with a 640Gb hard drive, and tuner card. DDr2 is pretty cheap so this could actually be a great idea.

 

[-RockMan-]

What kind of budget would you be willing to spend? You can save a lot of money by getting a Core 2 Duo setup with a 640Gb hard drive, and tuner card. DDr2 is pretty cheap so this could actually be a great idea.

Actually I almost have all the parts I need, I have daunte's mobo, 350 watt atx PSU celeron e1200 which might come in handy if I can hack dauntes mobo bios a little bit, DVD burner, happuage win tv go tuner card 882 model, new intel heatsink fan, 80gb hard drive that can be used after I make internal repairs to it via through dos and system mechanic 8 and my old monitor I am currently not using....

I have question for the old computer geeks here, my church the vineyard just gave me a "HP Vectra VE" workstation.
I looked inside of the case and everything seem's almost new. the mobo and slot 1 400mhz celeron have no dust or marks on it, however cannot really tell if it will hold a normal micro atx board on it though, the back panel can be popped out and it looks like the mobo is on a grounded metal plate surface inside.

If anyone knows if this case can be used please let me know in this thread or leave a message in my profile.

I am going to gut it out in about 25 minutes and make a decision based on the next answer I might get from one of you all here.