A True Home Theater Powerhouse!

If you want to build the best home theater PC (HTPC) for $1,000, this is the system for you! The $1,000 High-End 4K Home Theater PC Build may be sleek and compact, but it packs in plenty of impressive gear, plus a lot of room for expansion. It features a stylish design that will blend in perfectly with the rest of your AV components, which is great for keeping other members of your household happy. Behind that unimposing façade, however, lies the power of a seriously tricked-out PC!

This Month’s Build, Featuring AMD!

For November 2025, the $1,000 High-End 4K HTPC Build features the impressive AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. It offers 6 cores and 12 threads for great multi-tasking power, along with incredible efficiency for low noise and heat output. Plus the 9600X has an onboard graphics chip, which means you can avoid paying top dollar for an add-in video card. The best part: HDMI 2.1 is provided on the motherboard we recommend, which is a huge benefit to HTPC users, as it allows beyond full 4K/60Hz output to a TV. And while this system isn’t set up for gaming by default, we list an optional drop-in video card that will turn it into a serious gaming powerhouse!

On the storage side, the $1,000 High-End 4K HTPC Build goes with a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 solid-state drive, which will provide incredible responsiveness for your operating system and applications. Need more space? No problem – you can add two more M.2 solid-state drives and up to three high-capacity hard drives for media storage. You can also add an optional Blu-Ray burner for optical media access. In terms of memory, we recommend a full 32GB of ultra-fast DDR5-6000 RAM, which will provide plenty of breathing room for any high-end task, including video production.

Truly defining this build is the GD11 case from SilverStone, which looks great and will blend in perfectly with other AV gear! With the demise of optical disc drives in the PC market, we decided to move to a case that drops that compatibility in favor of other more modern features, specifically larger coolers, including liquid coolers, which we opt for in this build. It also can fit powerful graphics cards and power supplies (we use a 650W model in this build, and recommend a great optional video card if you’re into gaming).

Parting Thoughts

The $1,000 High-End 4K HTPC Build has plenty of expansion potential, so be sure to check out the optional components we recommend at the end of this guide, as well as our favorite accessories! Throughout this guide, we provide product links to Amazon, which will auto-convert for readers in Canada, the UK, and parts of the EU. As always, we’d appreciate if you’d use our product links, which helps support continued development of this and all of our buyer’s guides.