I went a bit overkill when I built up my HTPC and media server a year ago. I want to be able to do a "full on" audio/video experience with no compromises. I upgraded my network to gigabit speeds, and bought the following:
Media Server:
Intel i5-4430 3.0GHz Quad-Core
ASRock Z87 Extreme mobo
G.Skill 8GB DDR3-2400 RAM
Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD (for O/S)
(6) Toshiba 3TB, 7200RPM hard drives
Corsair 750W power supply
LG Blu-Ray Reader
Rosewell Redbone Mid Tower case
Windows Home Server 2011
HTPC:
Intel i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core CPU
ASRock Z87M Extreme4 mobo
G.Skill 8GB DDR3-2400 RAM
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD (O/S boot drive)
Asus Radeon HD7790 1GB video card
SeaSonic 550W power supply
Pioneer Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Silverstone LC10B HTPC case
Windows 7 Professional
This allows for max level MadVR video processing, and with any luck will actually be able to do a full decode of Atmos audio when they get the codecs figured out in a few months.
I also can stream to my Roku 3 in the living room, my laptop when I am in a hotel, my cell phone when I am at an airport traveling, and can do all of those at the same time without a blip from the media server. Keep in mind that the server is feeding a full movie image to the HTPC, and 3 different levels of transcoded (on the fly) video processing to reduce the image and audio to the appropriate levels for my living room, laptop, and phone (all still receive full HD video, the Roku gets 5.1 surround, and the others get downmixed to stereo audio).
Nice to have the horsepower to do that on the back-end, but it did cost a couple of pretty pennies to do so.
These two computers are the fastest computers in our house and I have a few... 3 laptops and 2 desktops besides the server and HTPC and the next closest is a quad core AMD computer running at 2.4GHz (vs. 3.0GHz and 3.4GHz).
