If it comes down to building your own solution, then yes, splurge a bit. But I think the greater counter-argument against the solution proposed by the author i

If it comes down to building your own solution, then yes, splurge a bit. But I think the greater counter-argument against the solution proposed by the author is a pre-built media player device (boxee, WD etc.). Not big on CPU, but sufficient for the tasks outlined in the original post. Building computers in the low price segments is pretty dominated by "constant" factors, i.e. case, PSU, mainboard. You can easily double your RAM or increase CPU by a large factor with a relative low percentage increase in total price.