Revamped Home Theater PC Build and comments (lots of pictures)

[James]

So, I've been meaning to upgrade my Home Theater, and especially my HTPC for awhile now. Thankfully a bonus at work allowed me to do just that. (After the required gifts for the girlfriend.)

So, here goes. Home Theater PC 2.3.6-21b
For this build, I wanted to make sure that the system could handle anything I threw at it, gracefully, without issue. That meant that I wanted a good deal of power, but an extremely silent package for that power. As HD content continues to spiral upwards in storage requirements (both online content, Bluray media, H.264 Quicktime content, HD TV recordings, etc.) I also needed lots of storage. Pushing HD content to my Westinghouse 47" LCD was also a concern, which thankfully was met with the onboard graphics from the Asus nVidia 9300 based motherboard.

Thus the contents of the build are:

Antec Fusion Remote Black
Enermax 535w Whisper PSU
Intel Q6600 CPU
Zalman 8700NT CPU HSF
8GB (4x2GB) G.Skill Value RAM (5-5-5-15)
1TB Seagate 7200.11 hdd w/ 32MB cache
1TB Samsung F1 hdd w/ 32MB cache
LiteOn GGC-H20L Bluray/HDDVD/DVD-RW optical drive
Asus P5N7A-VM Motherboard
Hauppauge HVR-2250 dual hybrid TV Tuner (PCIe x1)

Other Items:
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Onkyo TX-SR606 7.1 channel Receiver
Harmony 880 Remote

First off , here's the new receiver that was part and parcel of the whole deal. It's not uber high end, but it upgraded me to HDMI switching, which is what I cared about.

Onkyo TX-SR606 pics:

Box and packaging: Was in OK condition, a bit if "UPS-ing" if you know what I mean, but the contents were fine.






Now for the fun stuff.

Here's the front, nice and clean. Not as clean as the higher end stuff, but cleaner than my old Technics Receiver to be sure.