If you're anything like me, you enjoy seeing how other gamers have set up their pad. Whether they're using a television and console, projector, desk and PC, how they have their home theater set up, if they're gaming on headphones (and if so, what kind?), the combination of consumer electronics is seemingly endless.

In the first-ever Gamespot Cribs we take a look at the palatial estate of yours truly, Bozanimal.

Primary Platform: PC

We have a modest house by modern domestic U.S. standards at around 1,400 square feet. While we have three bedrooms, the former office was taken over by my daughter a few months ago. I had pillboxes set up at the entrances to ward her initial attempts to zerg my base, but when she called in the Mothership I was forced to relocate to the living room.

You can click most images to enlarge

After extensive hunting we bought the desk from a local retailer. It is a Wynwood Furniture desk (their "Camden" line, I believe). We wanted it to match the styIe of our home, hide the majority of the components when closed, be functional for both work and play, and well-built. Not only is this desk Lara Croft-sexy, it's built like a tank, all hardwood, and with dovetailed joints.

The chair I picked up at a local unfinished wood furniture store. I selected a stain to match the desk and stained and urethaned the chair myself. It only took a couple days and I got a beautiful chair out of it. If I'm sitting on it for any length of time, though, I grab a pillow for my butt.

It houses a PC that I built right here on Gamespot and is largely unchanged save for a couple extra sticks of RAM, a new motherboard, and a case light.

• Ultra Wizard ATX Case
• Acer AL2216W 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz CPU
• GIGABYTE GA-EP43-UD3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Motherboard
• Crucial Ballistix 4 x 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Model BL2KIT12864AA804
• SAPPHIRE Radeon X1950PRO
• Thermaltake Purepower 500W PSU Model W0100RU
• LiteOn's DVD Burner Model LH-20A1S
• Three Western Digital Hard Drives (don't ask)
• SAPPHIRE Radeon Theatrix 650 PRO TV Tuner (PCI)

With the kids sleeping and my wife watching television in the other room, the Creative 2.1 speakers do not see much use. Most of my time is spent under the hood of the Sennheiser HD 202 MK II headphones, which plug conveniently into a headphone jack mounted in the keyboard tray. The other visible components include an Acer 22" monitor I purchased off Woot at what, at the time, was an amazing $200..refurbished. There is also a relatively small HP 1020 laser printer and a microphone under the monitor.

Secondary Platforms: Wii

Unfortunately the only room available for home theater is the least ideal: A sun porch. The home entertainment center has been a work in progress since I first acquired the 5-piece Polk bookshelf speaker set in 1995. The gate you see above was in place until just this past week when we removed it to see how well our three-year olds behaved (so far so good). Like the desk, we like that when the home theater center is closed it largely hides the components, and with the gate removed we can keep it closed and run the speakers in stereo if the kids are watching Diego. The components include:

• Sony KD-34XBR970 CRT Television
• Yamaha RX-V1400 Receiver
• Sony DVP-NS700P DVD Player
• Monster HTS 2500 MKII Line Conditioner (PDF warning!)
• Nintendo Wii
• Custom-built PC running Windows 7
• Polk Audio five-piece bookshelf speakers (Discontinued)
• Custom-built subwoofer using a 12" Cerwin-Vega DVC Subwoofer (discontinued) and Dayton Audio Plate Amplifier

Regarding the home theater computer, the PC is housed in a RAIDMAX APEX ATX-802B Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case running an AMD Athlon X2 4850e, 4GB dual channel RAM, two ultra-quiet Enermax fans, and a GIGABYTE Radeon HD4550 (passive cooling) on a GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 motherboard. The computer sends video to the television through the HD4550's HDMI port and audio to the receiver through the optical output of the motherboard's on-board audio.

That said, we do not use the computer frequently, since we do not like the boot time and the wireless keyboard & mouse are spotty, at best. The television is the absolute best for watching movies, but it is severely lacking in resolution for using a computer, meaning text appears fuzzy and indistinct. The computer gets booted when the primary PC is out of commission, the wireless network is not working for the Wii to stream Netflix (both PCs are hard-wired via Ethernet), or the DVD disc is too dirty for my aging Sony DVD player.

The light you see behind the television is a full-spectrum flourescent light that turns on with the receiver. A full-spectrum light is the cheapest, most effective visual upgrade you can make to your television. The light reduces eye strain and makes the television appear larger than it actually is, and just makes it look that much more professional.

Bright light and television do not make for an ideal viewing environment, but the super-bright CRT is probably the best thing you could have in such conditions. The television is Sony's last, top-of-the-line Widescreen CRT monitor, and it weighs over 200 lbs. The image is bright, crisp, and amazing for watching movies in both bright and dim lighting. Its only drawback is lack of 1080p support and some minor geometry issues, but at my typical viewing distance these are both negligible.

Possible future upgrades
Primary PC: I'm pretty happy with our setup and have no immediate changes planned (meaning in the next 12 months), but the video card is starting to lag current content; even World of Warcraft. I will likely dabble in overclocking the CPU at some point, as the 2.2Ghz clock is starting to become a bottleneck, and it should be capable of hitting over 3.0Ghz if I do it right.

Home theater: As much as I love my CRT, a 1080p LCD display would make the PC more viable as a DVD player replacement and more usable in general. Plasma would be superior in a sunny room, but if it's being used as a PC monitor - even with its built-in protections - image retention becomes a concern. The bookshelf speakers were an entry-level purchase I made in high-school and, while they're still perfectly usable, I'd love to make an upgrade at some point. I have been wanting to build my own speakers for a long, long time. Finally, at some point I'll grab a dedicated audio card for the PC due to limitations with the on-board audio chip in producing Dolby Digital for non-native Dolby Digital content.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my gaming systems, how they are set up, and why. Following are some additional images of my house for context. Of note are the two sofas you see (one orange and one green). These are from King Hickory; we bought the green one almost ten years ago and have loved it so much we bought the orange one, which is the same model. Let me tell you: King Hickory makes really nice furniture at reasonable prices, and is worth going out of your way to find.

-Disclosure-

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