I concur with the others who said to get the largest separate amp that you can afford. The improved cleanliness of the sound, and not the level, is what you hear most when you move up to a larger amp. Additionally, with more power, the amp is not driven as hard. Anecdotally, I had a 7125 driving my 5 NHT L5 surrounds and it got pretty hot (but admittedly not to a problem level) under everyday (mostly TV) use. Because the heat gave me any excuse for my upgraditis, I moved up to the 7700 (with balanced outputs too) and it is cool all the time, even under heavy loads. For example, I was driving my whole 7.1 system (on the Outlaw 990 7.1 stereo mode) really hard--i.e. super obnoxious loud when the wife wasn't home--for several hours and my 7700 was still cool. In fact, I was driving the system so hard that I even blew a center channel speaker DRIVEN BY A DIFFERENT AMP--it turned out my center channel trim was turned up 3db over all my other channels to make voices better for TV which I guess was a bit too much for the volume I was using. Therefore, go with the largest amp you can afford; but don't be too obnoxious with the level when your channel trims are out of wack.