After fooling around with Steam Big Picture Mode, I decided that it was time that bring PC gaming into my living room. My previous system was a Core i5-760 with 4GB of DDR3 1600 MHz RAM with an ASUS GT430 graphics card. A modest system by any means with just enough horsepower to play simple accelerated games. The system also serves as my central hub for cable television as well as my digital video recorder (6 TB of storage). It also has any DVD/BluRay rips, music, pictures, or any other random media that I have felt necessary to store and share across the other computers on my network.
The case was outdated. While it maintained a great look on the outside, the nMediaPC 500B HTPC chassis just didn't offer a lot in the area of cooling. Just a few small fans, the largest of which being 90mm. I searched high and low for a case that would fit 3 full sized hard drives, plus space for a couple solid state drives, had decent cooling, a "window" to allow an internal I/R receiver, and a decent "Home Theater" look that would match most modern components found in a home theater rack. I ended up going with another case by nMEDIAPC, but an updated model, the nMEDIAPC 7000B.
nMEDIAPC HTPC 7000B HTPC Case - Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811204042)
This case, while only supporting Micro ATX motherboards, has two 120mm fans to cool the system, has mounting for 3 full sized hard drives, an optical drive, and also allowed for mounting two solid state drives. It also allowed for a full sized graphics card.
When faced with the conundrum of processing power, I was interested in 3 things:
1) Power draw (watts)
2) Multi-tasking ability (quad core, quad core with hyperthreading)
3) Price (around $200 for CPU + motherboard)
I decided that since this would be a gaming PC designed around a digital video recorder that I would be better off maximizing the number of working threads at one time. I went on to Newegg.com to see what my options were. The least expensive quad core with hyperthreading was the Intel Core i7-3770, for a surprising $289.99. With this being a bit over my price range, I started looking for the lowest price quad core i5 system without hyperthreading. This was also a surprise as both the i5-3550P and i5-2310 were equally priced at $179.99.
My dream of finding a quad core system within my budget looked pretty dim. I started looking at the FM2 A8 and A10 CPUs from AMD, but they didn't perform much better than my already aged Intel i5-760. I went ahead and stuck with the i5 in the interim, and I found a great Intel P55 chipset Micro ATX motherboard on eBay for $70 with free shipping.
The graphics card was the next thing for consideration and had to meet the following criteria:
1) Fit in the case
2) Be able to run on the 430w power supply
3) Meet both 1 and 2 above while being the best performing card under $250
After doing some quick research, the choice came obvious between the nVidia GTX 660 and the AMD 7850. I went with the GTX 660 but would have likely been just as happy with the slightly lower cost AMD 7850. My first purchase was a bust as it was the ASUS Direct CUII edition which had heat pipes sticking up 1" over the circuit board... making it so I would not be able to close the case. I ended up settling on the EVGA GTX 660 FTW which was $239.99 with a $20 mail in rebate at the time I purchased the card.
EVGA 02G-P4-2663-KR GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130833)
Just when I had put things together with the Core i5-760, I was lurking around on eBay and found a used Core i7-870s (82w) CPU for only $130. I jumped on it right away as this was essentially the same processor as the i5 I was using, but with hyperthreading.
I then had to add the rest of the hardware to the case, which included:
OCZ Vertex 60 GB SSD (For OS only)
OCZ Vertez 180 GB (For games only)
3 x Western Digital 2 TB Hard Drives
Pioneer Blu-Ray-R/DVD-RW
Corsair CX430M Power Supply
Ceton InviniTV-4 w/Cable Card
The final result was incredible. A true multimedia PC allowing for everything from serving as my home theater server, to live cable TV, and even gaming on Steam. Pics to follow.