Gaming HTPC.....someone please help me

[bisoner]

I've tried Steam streaming and whilst it works OK, I've decided I may be better off using my spare 7870 graphics card connected to my TV in the lounge. Currently, I've got a older Plasma TV which is limited to 1080i but until it gives up the ghost, I wont be replacing it.

Note, I have spare HDD capacity as well - SSD and standard HDD's I can use.

Personally, I don't think the missus is going to accept a huge box near the TV so I would like to go with something like a Coolermaster Elite 130.

Ideas welcome - ideally, I don't want to throttle the graphics card and I also have a GTX 670 which I could use in the HTPC as well. If I ended up requiring an 1080p output it would be nice to know I wouldn't need to start from scratch though it does boil down to cost really. I call this an 'unplanned spend'.

Therefore, I think I need:

Case
Motherboard
CPU
Memory
PSU

I just need some help and guidance.

 

[snips86x]

How much are you looking to spend? It helps to give a rough budget to be honest!

 

[bisoner]

How much are you looking to spend? It helps to give a rough budget to be honest!

To be honest I wasn't really sure so I ended up looking at all the old threads on this forum to gauge some more ideas - this only led me to upping the budget so still a little confused. As I was outputting 720p/1080i it didn't need huge amounts of CPU grunt so I had to keep this in mind, so my biggest decision was around the CPU/Motherboard choice.

As a stop gap solution (that will probably be longer term), I ended up getting an i3 CPU, cheap MSI H81 Motherboard and 8gb of ram. I re-used a 120gb SSD for the OS and also had a 1gb hdd not really being used which can house the data. All built in the Coolermaster 130. The 80mm fan in the 130 seemed a little vocal so that got removed.

I also had a spare Windows 8 licence knocking around - the whole uefi thing was causing me untold issues until I changed it from uefi/legacy to uefi only - in the bios settings.

I haven't built a PC in a while (never a small machine too) so I actually quite enjoyed it (the building part anyway). Modular PSU's make things so much easier!!!