I will be building my own Hacintosh to turn it into a "mom friendly" PVR.

Has anyone done this yet? What motherboard are you using?

I want to use a low wattage CPU and would prefer to go with an AMD 65Watt X2 CPU - but I am not sure about AMD based mobo compatibility with Hacintosh.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

For those that have no idea what you mean by a Hacintosh...
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#Do_I_need_Apple_hardware_to_run_Mac_OS_X.3F

I think this link will help address your question about AMD compatibility:
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.4.8

Yeah - I was there.
I just wanted to see what this crowd was up to.

Seems that AMD kind of sucks for Hacintosh compatibility.
Will have to stick with a more expensive Core 2 Duo setup.

I had a look myself because I love OS X but it seems like what they're doing is a lot of trouble - maybe if they make more progress I'll think about a Hackintosh solution. I love Linux too so I'll stick with what works: MythTV/Linux/AMD.

The most difficult part of building a Hacintosh is selecting your hardware - making sure that it is compatible. If you pick the right hardware then installing the OS should be easy.

Following all my reading I think that I will not go the AMD route.

I will go with Intel. Now the question is which Intel? Do I go with a Celeron D or with a Core 2 Duo? Is a 3 GHz+ Celeron powerful enough for an HTPC? If yes then I can save myself $150!

I will be building my own Hacintosh to turn it into a "mom friendly" PVR.

Ambitious goal. I'd be interested to know why you are not using a Mac Mini as a starting point? Not a bad value considering the minute size, and whisper-quiet operation. I added an EyeTV Hybrid as a tuner and MiniStack drive for storage to mine.

Craig

Mac Mini has no expandability.

If I build my own then I can easy upgrade video card, add more ram, change PCU - whatever I want.
Plus my hacintosh will be more powerful than any Mac mini.

Plus - it is the challenge as well.