Hey Shaun,
Welcome. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences.
I'm not going to be the ubergeek on this deal, but wanted to offer a couple of observations.
Putting five drives into ANY box is going to be HOT and NOISY. Now, maybe you don't care because the machine will be isolated from your listening/viewing area. But if I were going to implement that much storage, I'd put it into a separate box in a closet far away from my ears.
Depending upon your gaming requirements and how the Yamaha processes audio, you might need only the digital output from the PC to the receiver, which would probably not require a separate sound card.
Are you getting OTA HDTV now? I'd work through this in stages and make sure that is a realistic expectation before devoting resources to it. I'm about as far as you from the transmitters, but I'd need a huge directional antenna on a huge mast with a rotator to get usable OTA HDTV. Very different topography, I'm sure.
I've had excellent service at both PCAlchemy and Newegg.
I bought a Silverstone LC-10 and a Seasonic power supply. Satisfied with both. Tharkun has (I believe) an Ahanix 601 case. He or Ben (Inane), along with sirquack, nickbuol and a host of other folks are likely to be helpful. Ben's going to tell you to get MCE instead of XP Pro
If you're not already consuming mass quantities there, be sure to read up at
silentpcreview.
Good luck with your project!
