Help me build a home networking scenario

[PARANOiA]

At the moment I currently use a single PC as a jack-of-all-trades. It has 1tb of HDD space for media, music, games, photos, etc, but it's mainly an internet browsing workstation. It's hooked up to my TV so I can watch movies, and to a 24" monitor. I was thinking that this is probably not the best way to run a machine - especially given it's on 24/7 and it's as loud as hell.

Can you suggest a good set up for a home network? I'd like to:

• Be able to play movies on my TV painlessly
• Have stacks of storage space that's always available
• Use a mid-range video card to play games every now and then
• Surf the internet quickly without needing to boot from scratch

Is a "one PC to rule them all" the run of the mill set up?

Some ideas I had were

• Set up a HTPC that uses the TV as its only monitor. It would need to be a low power usage system that was very quiet, and would need to sit a big bunch of hard drives in it. Then have a high-end laptop that I could roam with, and hook up to my monitor for normal usage
• Keep a separate server PC hooked up somewhere, such as in a cupboard, that just had network access and a bunch of HDD's. Use my desktop PC to access all data from it, but keep it with a fairly small HDD - maybe one of the 120gbs I have lying about. Keep my desktop hooked up to my monitor

Any ideas?

 

[Blazkowicz]

the first solution would be simple : you turn your desktop into the htpc. quiet PSU and fans are a commodity, and if it's not low power enough you get some low end parts (see the htpc/server thread). unless the trouble is hdd noise.