Thanks for the input guys. As I said this is all still pretty new to me and will likely be a work in progress for some time. Ideally this would be something I could use for capturing and processing, and as a good HTPC. Gaming would be nice but is much less important.
Plus I'm dying to try my hand at audio cleanup since getting a pair of Sennheiser wide range HD-380 pro monitors....they reveal quite a bit of distortion even on so-called "restored" tracks!