Feature Friday: 24 Terabytes of awesome

Feature Friday: 24 Terabytes of awesome

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Nathan Betzen

August 05, 20112 min read

This is Micah’s gaming PC.

Gaming PC
Gaming PC says hi

Often, Micah will play a few quick hours of Star Trek Online with his gaming PC. Naturally, this means he needs some serious processor power, which is why the PC is equipped with a Core i7 3.06GHz quad-core processor and a GTX 470 video card, along with 12 gigs (soon to be 24 gigs) of RAM. It’s also got some extensive fans and a serious gamer case.

None of that is particularly interesting to an XBMC head. What might be slightly more interesting are these:

12 HDDs
12 HDDs

Yup, Micah is sporting 12 2-terabyte hard drives in his gaming computer for a grand total of 24 terabytes of solid media storage. At the moment, these hard drives are storing 1500 HD movies (the vast majority being 1080p). They are warehousing approximately 7,500 episodes of various 720p television shows. And they are serving them all up to this:

73 Inch Television
73 Inch Television

Yes, many people are willing to sacrifice screen brightness for the larger picture a projector can throw. Not Micah. His 73 inch DLP Mitsubishi is longer diagonally than I am tall and as bright as every DLP screen is known to be. Hooked up to this behemoth is a Denon AVR-1910:

The back side of Micah's Denon
The back side of Micah's Denon

Along with a PS3, an Xbox 360, a Wii, an SNES, the PlayStations 1 and 2, the Sega Dreamcast, a Gamecube, and an original Xbox.

The Dreamcast, SNES, N64, and PS2 say hello
The Dreamcast, SNES, N64, and PS2 are only some of Micah's current and retro gaming systems.

Micah has all the appropriate controllers for his various systems, along with a Logitech Harmony One remote to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

For his htpc Micah has thrown together a Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU and an ATI Radeon 4670, along with the necessary PC trappings. It’s an unremarkable machine when compared to the rest of his setup, but it’ll play pretty well anything Micah throws at it, which is just about everything a person needs an htpc to do.

An unremarkable PC to complement a truly remarkable setup
An unremarkable PC to complement a truly remarkable setup

Micah has future plans to build an entirely new htpc with a built-in ir sensor to better make use of his Harmony One remote. For now, though, feel free to pull up a chair or leap on the couch…

Take a seat on the couch!
I promise it's comfortable!

And prepare to pick out and enjoy one of the 1500 movies in the middle of the day on Micah’s super bright and super giant DLP screen. And while you’re at it, why not send your setup to natethomas AT xbmc DOT org or post about it on our Facebook fanpage to see if you don’t get featured yourself next Friday!