Nick's Home Network: Planning My ESXi Server Build

The Plan (~August of 2013)
-- updated Jan 10, 2016

Keep everything on a very low budget (<~$1500 - will include parts from previous years totaling ~$700). With the SAN boxes I purchased in previous years to support VMs and movie storage, I shouldn't need any additional storage
~~Will consider pricing options at Amazon or other cloud sites to ensure that my below solution is cost effective.~~ Will not be using Amazon for computer services. For the cost of 1 medium Linux server, it would be around $90/month - for that cost, I could support my ISP bill, electric bill and 1 of the VMs I'll be running.

Amazon charges after 1 GB of outbound data per month, so I would need to still have something at the house for my PlexMediaServer. And if I were to keep my data there as a backup, it would cost money to pull the data back down to me.

Will attach both SANS Digital SANs I'm currently using (~6.5 TB and ~650 GB) and format with VMFS. Will create datastores for VMs on both SANS - debated keeping the current ext4 partition and passing through to a VM, but having the storage as VMFS, I'll be able to provide local disks (potentially in large amounts) to VMs (especially for FreeNAS)
Will re-use 4 SATA I drives for data store 1 and attach to motherboard. Goal is RAID 5 with the 4 drives.
USB stick for ESXi install. I want to make this easy to pull out and backup before testing upgrades. I do have an older IDE drive I can use for this purpose.

Processor: Aiming for the AMD FX-8150 (8 core 3.6 GHz). This should be plenty for all my virtual machines.
Memory: Aiming for 32 GB (4 - 8 GB) DDR3. This should be plenty for all my virtual machines.
Motherboard: Aiming for the ASRock 970 Extreme 3 or Gigabyte GA-970A UD3. Only big requirement is to support hardware pass through, 32 GB, and enough PCI(e) slots to support cards (cards are still to be determined)

Ethernet: Gigabit Ethernet (motherboard will more than likely support this). I don't plan on having a clustered ESXi environment so I don't have a requirement for 3+ NICs. I have thought about running the main router as a VM, and if I did, I would need a second NIC at some point.
TV Tuner: I have a Hauppauge USB TV Tuner that will get passed to the PVR VM.
FXO/FXS Card: Digium TDM card with 4 FXS ports and a generic FXO card, both PCI. The mother boards I've been looking at only have 2 PCI cards, so I'll need to get PCI-E video card for ESXi to use.
Video:

Basic PCI-E video card (can use an older PCI card I have if I don't use both the FXS and FXO card I have) for ESXi to use
Basic gaming card (looking at the Radeon HD 7770 (PCI-Ex16) to pass through to a workstation for light gaming. Looked at HDMI extenders, but will probably re-use a 25' HDMI cable from Monoprice.com to save $50.

Won't really need the on board sound, but will try and pass that through to the gaming workstation if possible. If not, then will try and use a USB sound card for the gaming workstation.
Updated Jan 10, 2016 -- opted for USB sound card

USB Sound card
USB Disk for ESXi install
USB BluRay player for archiving BluRays on Windows workstation
USB port reserved for 1 TB off-site backup drive (all the really important data such as taxes, family photos, financial information, ...)

Current Challenges:

Where to keep the server? I currently keep these in a small closet room, but it's not ideal. It gets very hot. The new server will generate a lot more heat than the laptop I'm using, so I'll need to add ventilation or find another place to store it.
Backups? Will need to backup the VMs somewhere. Even though I'll be using RAID, it'll be nice to archive the VMs in case of major problems.

Nick's Home Network