To go with the post of the list of software I have running on my main PC, this post will list the hardware:

• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R motherboard – bloody brilliant motherboard, although the P45 chipset has now superseded it.
• Intel Q6600 Quad processor – The best bang for buck CPU out there.
• 4Gb Corsair XMS PC6400 (800Mhz) RAM
• Hauppauge Nova-T – dual tuner Freeview (DVB-T) card
• Hauppauge HD S2 – single tuner satellite (DVB-S2) card for FTA HD channels
• nVidia 8800GTS 320Mb (a decent PCI-e graphics card cos I like my gaming)
• Pioneer Blu-ray drive – quite slow reading discs compared to a newer LG model at my workplace.
• Toshiba HD-DVD drive – My first taste of HD, so it’s still there for old-times-sake used as a standard DVD-ROM
• Samsung 400Gb HDD for Windows 7
• Samsung 500Gb HDD for RecordedTV
• 3Tb of HDD for Blu-ray, Music & Pictures and general media storage.
• Coolermaster 500W PSU – incredibly quiet and efficient compared to the jet-engine models from about 10 years ago!

Stick it all in a case and run Vista’s the Windows 7 install DVD. Easy.

The second Media Center PC in the house is running the bedroom and bathroom monitors and it has:

• Gigabyte GA-P31 -ES3G motherboard – A cutdown version of the great Gigabyte in the lounge.
• Intel E7400 Core2Duo CPU
• 1Gb Corsair 800Mhz RAM
• nVidia GeForce 8200 GS – A simple enough card for TV purposes.
• 500Gb HDD for OS and storage for locally RecordedTV
• Optiarc DVD-RW

The second PC in the house, running the bedroom and bathroom PC, is another matter. It’s an aBit NF-M2-nView with an AMD 5600+ CPU…
…and it’s bloody terrible. I use to have it running as the main lounge system when it was first built a couple of years ago and it’s given me nothing but stability issues. It’s in its 3rd re-incarnation of hardware/software and it’s still no better. Currently it won’t boot unless the power cord is pulled from it and reinserted after 10 seconds. Absolutely useless! I’m planning on an upgrade though

The main Lounge PC: