My Dual Xbox 360 Setups/Apartment Media Room (living room haha)

Hey guys I wasn't sure if I this should have gone in the xbox area or here so i'm just putting it here (mods if you want to move go ahead). Quick note: anything with an * is gear that is going to be replaced soonish.

First lets start with the gear set up for the first room, "the casual gamer" room

Gear List:
Sharp Aquos 40 inch led tv
Onkyo tx-sr309 5.1 Receiver (using as 5.2 setup)
Polk CS10 Center Channel
Polk TSi100 Fronts
*Energy Take Classic Rear Surrounds
Klipsch RW10-d Subwoofer (Front)
Sony SA-W2500 Subwoofer (Rear)
Auralex Designer Series Roominator Kit (helps with sound, but mainly got for looks)
Auralex Speaker Dudes for Center Channel
Sony Blu-Ray Player
Xbox 360 (MW2 Edition)
Synology DS110j Server
Apple Airport Extreme, with Cable internet 25mbps
4 Cooler Guys usb fans sucking heat out of the right cabinet (xbox, server, modem, router)
2 Cooler Guys fans sucking heat out of the left cabinet (receiver)
Lutron IR Dimmer Control for all lights
Harmony One remote to control it all
Leather sectional for my tush

I really only have one pic since it's just a standard setup (nothing to amazing, unlike all the other setups i've seen on here)
Sorry it's so dark, my camera was being dumb..



Now onto the second room, "the comp room"

Recently i've been getting more competitive in the xbox scene (casual gamer hopped up on mountain dew haha) So i've been expanding this room

Gear List:
Macbook Air
23 inch AOC led monitor (for the mba)
*Altec Lansing front speakers
Energy 8 inch Subwoofer
2012 Xbox 360 (250gb hard drive version)
24 inch ASUS led monitor (for the xbox)
Turtle Beach DSS
Turtle Beach X12 Headphones
Xbox 360 dual quick charge station
Tempured glass L shaped office desk
Leather Office chair
Griffin Elevator laptop stand (for xbox cooling)
Cooler Guys fan with temp control sensor (for xbox cooling)
IR controled led strip lighting, 16 colors

here's a pic of the spread


xbox screen


turning to the right


laptop screen


xbox on the stand with temp sensor controlled fan on top (xbox heats up fan kicks on, super cool)


turtle beach x12's, led light remote, turtle beach dss in background


heres a double shot of the led lights giving an example of the different colors (16 in all)



Conclusion: All together they are pretty decent setups. The first room is great for watching movies and such. I love the sound of the polks and the dual subs. Also the Lutron IR Dimmers are so freaking cool. I love that slow fade when you hit the play button on the Harmony One. I gotta give props to my beast internet, I can have a buddy over and we can squad up in Battlefield 3 on the two separate xbox's and game for hours without a single hitch of lag. Also gotta give props to Apple and their Airport Extreme, I read horror stories about trying to get two xbox's to work on one internet connection with other routers, but the airport didn't require any sort of crazy setup. We just turned on the two xbox's and they connected and started rocking! In the second room the led lights I added this past weekend (had em for another project that never happened), man I gotta say they look sick in person. The frosted glass really makes the light shine through it. It creates a really cool effect and it isn't distracting at all.

FUTURE PLANS:
First Room-
1. I want to upgrade to 7.1 receiver at some point. I know its overkill but i get the upgrade bug easily.
2. Ditch the Energy Take Classic surrounds for matching Polk TSi surrounds. Basically I first got the Energy Take Classic 5.1 setup, it sounded pretty good, but I wanted more punch. So i've been replacing components one piece at a time.

Second Room-
1. Replace the Altec Lansing Speakers with the unused Energy Take Classic System. Either in 5.1 or just stereo.
2. Get a buttkicker to add to my desk chair hooked to the xbox. Since I use headphones when I play in this room, I feel the buttkicker could add to it greatly.
3. CABLE MANAGEMENT. Jesus i'm terrible at this I really need to get this crap sorted out haha.

Anyways thats it thanks for checking it out. I know this isn't epic like all the other setups or builds but i'm in an apt so i'm kinda limited as to what I can do

Yep, it's actually..

this desk: http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden...9/product.html

and these lights: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details

It was a pretty easy install, i just got some 5/8 x 36 wood pieces from Lowes, sprayed them black to match the desk legs. Then got 3m outdoor double sided tape (heavy duty) cut strips that run the entire length of each piece then mounted them on the underside all the way around the perimeter of the desk


Then i used the double sided tape to stick the lights on the inside of them, facing inwards so the light shines on the frosted glass.


The frosted glass really helps transmit the light through the desk and creates a cool effect. I held the lights up to the very edge of the desk and that was the best effect but it would have been near impossible to figure out a way to mount the lights on the edge of the glass.

Thanks for the kind words!

PS: if anyone is looking for some solid ir remote controlled lights those led lights that I linked are awesome, and for only like 30 bucks you can't go wrong

Thanks! I did a lot of research when I was getting fans for my other components and such. I found a bunch of threads where it was suggested to get another fan to suck air out as the internal xbox fan is kind of weak. What a lot of guys will do is open it up and swap it for a better fan, but i'm not that brave to crack open a brand new xbox. The cooler guys fan is great, and the temp sensor only kicks it on when it needs it. I'm sure its only helping slightly but i had the fan laying around so i figured why not hah.

At the moment I don't have any more pics, my camera died the other night and I had a couple things outta place cause I was running some cat5 cables for my security cams. I'm going to try to load up some more pics with better light to show off the nitty gritty this weekend. As far as the lighting goes...i love lighting haha (probably obvious by the photos). I got a pretty ridiculous addiction to lighting...like take me to a concert, I just watch the lights the whole time haha. So naturally I go over board on my lighting for my setups .