Wowwwwwww. Reading this thread has brought back some nightmarish memories.
Look at my first rig, fam. I don't even have a media reader in my HTPC anymore - if I need a DVD for whatever reason, I just plug one in. I even took the DVD-ROM out of my laptop. And I never did wind up building two of them b/c when I moved, I made a pact not to bring my TV into my bedroom. Gave up looking for a nice HTPC case long ago - you can be a gamer w/a sweet card or you can have a nice-looking case, but it seems to be hard to do both.
Never thought I'd see the day where my drives are 1 TB, but they're becoming quite cheap.
Ah, technology.
So my current build is as follows:
Motherboard: AMD FX 8320 Black Edition 3.5GHz AM3+ (OC'ed to 4.3)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8 GB 1333MHz PC3-10666 240-pin DDR3
Westinghouse 47" 1080p LCD Monitor LVM-47W1 (Shut.
UP. Since the backlight is starting to die, it'll be replaced eventually.)
Graphics card: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060*
Tuner: WinTV-HVR-1250 HDTV
OS: Windows 10 x64 (with WMC hack)
*Keeping my 960 as a backup in case my 1060 ever goes down. I used my 250 when my 960 was being refurbed and that was absolutely painful.