A lot of great HTPC setups here.
Mine is a mix of very old, old, and new. The hand carved teakwood cabinet was custom built in Okinawa back in 1971. The turntable, I still have a lot of vinyl, is a Dual CS604 with a Shure VN15E cartridge. The top portion originally housed an Akai GX-280D-ss 4 channel reel to reel tape deck,
http://slbender.exactpages.com/akai4ch.html, connected to a 1971 Pioneer QX-8000 4 channel Quad receiver.
http://www.hifi-museum.com/js/pio/QX-8000_fs.htm. Back then, BCD (before CDs), that was Quad. The top now is home for rarely used components, a Magnovox VCR, a 6 disk Pioneer CD player, and a Teac casette tape deck. The bottom part is storage for records, tapes, CDs, and DVDs.
I replaced the QX-8000 in 1997, about the same time DVDs hit the market, with a JVC RX-884VBK receiver, which is still working perfectly. I've since gone through 4 DVD players. My current one is a Philips DVP5982.
The tower speakers are JBL 940Ts, purchased in 1988. The center is a JBL ES25C. My backs are small Infinity bookshelfs. I don't have a subwoofer since the 2-JBL 940Ts put out plenty of bass. The TV is a 50" LG 50PQ30 plasma. It's a 720P, but looks ok to my 50+ year old eyes since I view it from ~12' away. The TV stand is a 52" Techcraft. I also have a Logitech Harmony 700 Advanced remote to tie everything together.
I just finished putting together my HTPC. Thanks to renethx for his suggestion's in his very informative thread: Guide to Building a HD HPLC: Recommended HTPC Systems – March 2010 Edition
I needed a low profile case to fit on the bottom self of my TV stand. I chose a Lian Li HTPC PC-C37 case. It's only ~4 3/4" tall but will accomodate full size hard drives, PSUs, and DVD burners. It came with 2-70 mm low speed side fans. Enough for cooling since the PSU and CPU heat sink fans exhaust out the top case vents and, for now, I have no video card.
It has a Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H micro H55 ATX MB, an Intel i3-530 CPU, 4GB DDR3 G.Skill ram, an Antec Neopower 480W modular PSU left over from a prior computer build, a 500GB Hitachi HD, a Samsung SH223C DVD burner for now (may go blu-ray later), a Scythe Shuriken CPU heat sink, and a TRENDnet TEW-648UB IEEE 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 mini wireless adapter. Plugged into a front USB port on my HTPC case, I'm getting 100% signal stength and 100% link quality at ~30' from my ancient Westell 327W wireless DSL modem/router. This adapter uses the Realtek RTL8188SU chip.
I first tried an Airlink101 wireless g low profile bracket wireless PCI adapter, but started getting dropouts when streaming video and internet disconnects. Signal stength was also bouncing from 64% to 84%. I tried a 5 dBi antenna but no improvement, possibly an external cable connected antenna may have worked better.
I also have a Lenovo wireless combo keyboard/trackball. It runs on 2-AAA batteries and has a mini usb dongle receiver.
I use a 6’ HDMI cable from the MB to the TV for video and a 10’ S/PIF (toslink) cable to my receiver for surround sound through my speakers.
I'm satisfied with the picture quality from the onboard video so I have no immediate plans to install a video card.
Bare case
A little snug but everything fits. A modular PSU helps. There's room for another hard drive under the DVD burner.
My only complaint with the case is the blue LED power light. It's way too bright, but easy to fix; and the price is a bit high.
The trackball works great, but the keyboard buttons are a bit small for fat fingers. A bit of a power drain, but a backlite keyboard would have been nice.
TRENDnet TEW-648UB IEEE 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 mini wireless adapter Using the latest drivers and software from Realtek. They seem to work better with Win 7 64 bit than TRENDnet's.
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