HTPC best MOBO

[scruffy]

Hi all

Building a digital home server to store all of my DVD's, mp3's, recorder TV etc on and need the ideal MOBO for it, any suggestions?

Gonna need lots of HDD SATA connections and im not at all bothered about SLI etc.

I do need...
PCIe 1x expansion slot, at least one
Socket 939 with up to 4gb RAM
Lots of USB ports
ATX size
At least 4x SATAII 3.0 with RAID ports

Whats ur best then

[MD_Willington]

There is a good list at [H] forum...

Although if I post the link some moderator may remove it...

[3DGuy]

4gb ram??? for home theater geez, you supplying your entire street to? i'll take a look thers a few good parts out there ideal for HTPC's i'll go back look em up

[3DGuy]

oh yea forgot to post, what size you lookig at?

ATX? mATX? ITX? smaller???

[Skorp]

There is a good list at [H] forum...

Although if I post the link some moderator may remove it...

I'm 99.9% sure you can post the link. To my knowledge, daily tech was only censored because of a spamming incident, causing such links to be blacklisted.

[Xtreme]

For general mATX with great OC'ing options and SPDIF out the Biostar T-Force series is apparently good.

[MD_Willington]

Okay, here's the list then:

**********************.hardforum**********/showthread.php?t=900405

[yahooadam]

what do u need a PCI-E x1 slot ??

what cards are there availible for PCI-E (cept gfx ..)

[Rudegar]

a htpc dont really demand that much joice
but hd speed is good so you're sure that when you record it dont drop frames

[yahooadam]

dual core proc

4gb ram - why

win xp can only use 3gb max (MCE being windows XP MCE just to clarify)

even then you prolly dont need all that, 2gb will prolly suffice

what sized board are you looking for ? IE what case are you getting ?

finally, i still dont get why u want a PCI-E x1 slot ...

[Rudegar]

if i were to build a htpc i would just get a midrange
shuttle and single core mid range cpu
2GB ram
some ok fast but not raptors or anything
dvd burning of cause

it's small and unless you are streeming the channels over wifi or something
or realtime encode HTDV :P
or something like that
it's kinda overkill

a htpc can be compared to a fileserver where the input is from others then users...

[yahooadam]

i would go dual core

if your watching TV/music and recording off air, and serving other users, it could become bogged down easy

[Rudegar]

you may be right
if you want to record and do other things at once

i had my linux file/proxy server running as kinda HTPC for ages
of cause i dident record with it
but used it's tvcard, played dvd's listened to mp3's but never tried to at once
mainly because i had no reason to
and it had a celeron 300A and 128MB ram
it had no problems performing any of those tasks
but again i dident record or do many things at once
unless you count the server functions

[scruffy]

PCIe 1x for a terratec 2400i Dual digital tuner! Its sweet and MCE compatible! Think im gonna go for an asus a8n-SLI Premium, just so Im future proof with a x2 4400

[Justin]

MSI K8NGM2-L was listed on [H] Built a few..i like it, comes with a D bracket for Audio, component etc and has VGA and DVI built on.

Sold a few and they seem to be a decent board.

FYI you dont need that asus board for dual core, any 939 board will take a dual core.

[ElrichMeister]

not if its a via k8t890 pro or something like that

[Skorp]

Yeah, the K8T890 boards have sketchy dual core support. The early revisions wont take 'em, but they apparently un-borked it in the later ones. nForce 4 chippysets are better anyway.