14. Gigabyte i-RAM

To build an HTPC suitable for use in the living or family room, a quiet hard drive is an absolute must. This either means building in a 2.5" drive, which won't do much for performance, or you could reach for a i-RAM from Gigabyte.

This PCI card includes no moving parts, so it's completely silent and with four SD-DDR RAM modules installed, the card can accommodate up to 8 GB of storage. This is enough for Windows Media Center Edition, DVD burning software, and a (small) collection of video and audio files.

When your PC is turned off, data is retained via an on-board battery that keeps the RAM alive. The i-RAM connects to your motherboard through a SATA interface, and is recognized in the BIOS as a SATA drive.

i-RAM with no DIMMs installed

i-RAM with 1 GB DIMMs in all four memory slots