A7N8X-E Purchase

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TMG

I am lookin at the A7N8X-E MB for a HTPC. Any ideas or thoughts or
alternate recommendations??? Thanks!
TMG
 
I am lookin at the A7N8X-E MB for a HTPC. Any ideas or thoughts or
alternate recommendations??? Thanks!
TMG
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Many respondents will probably suggest their favorite microATX
board, but if you have room for a full size board, then that is
a good choice. Combine it with Mobile 2500 or 2600, so you can
adjust the multiplier for the right combination of power
consumption and performance.

This is the model of processor I am using, and with a Zalman
7000A AlCu for cooling, it never gets warm. (The only way you
could do better than this, is to shop for a motherboard that allows
undervolting, as Asus boards won't allow you to arbitrarily
drop Vcore below a certain level. There may be some other brands
of Nforce2 motherboards that allow it. For a HTPC, you might be
able to use a low multiplier, then use closer to the rated voltage
for a mobile, to reduce power even further. A "35W" Mobile
processor would make this aspect of performance even better.
You can always hack the motherboard for a lower voltage, but
I didn't enjoy my modding experiences that much, as the parts
on the board are so tiny and soldering on there is no fun.)

I use the 2600+ XP-M at 1.65V, 200x11 multiplier = 2.2GHz
In P.R. ratings, this mild overclock is equiv. to >3200+
I've never wasted time trying to reduce the voltage, but with
the mild overclock, I bet stable lower voltage operation is
possible.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-436&depa=0

These are all the Mobiles on the Newegg site. Shop around for
the best price (severe line wrap...) :

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...=&mfrcode=0&DEPA=0&order=PRICE&InnerManu=1028

RAM is the most annoying aspect of buying an Nforce2 board. I
am using Ballistix PC3200, but cannot give you a good reason
why a premium RAM is required. A recent poster is having trouble
with some Corsair PC4000, so for the time being, I would suggest
a low latency RAM. Running at DDR400 in dual channel mode, is
the best performance point, while you could use a single stick
of a lesser RAM at perhaps 180MHz, then adjust the multiplier of
the Mobile to compensate. Memory bandwidth is all important to
AthlonXP, as the core is starved for data all the time. While
it is fun to overclock the AthlonXP, for a HTPC, overclocking
won't add much to the experience.

The main advantage of buying a motherboard without integrated
graphics, is you can shop for a video card that does everything
the HTPC needs. Right now, I have a lowly FX5200 I've been testing,
and it has "almost complete" DirectX9 support in hardware. There
are some low end ATI cards that are DirectX8 in hardware. But all
of them have some form of IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform)
support, which helps with DVD playback. And, in my testing last
night with some games, the fanless FX5200 runs pretty cool for
such a pathetic 3D performing card. The cool operation is an
important factor in being able to drop case fan speeds.

The next level of support, is in further video decoding features.
ATI has hacked its shaders in the 9600 to provide support for
some other playback features. Nvidia now has a full video processor
block in its 6200/6600/6800 family, of which the 6200 is PCI
Express only (a shame, as it would have been perfect for a HTPC -
bad marketing on Nvidia's part - they should have replaced the
AGP FX5200 with an AGP 6200...). The status of the video processor
on the 6800 is still unclear, and I would look for user confirmation
that HDTV playback is using minimal processor resources, before
buying one of those. That leaves the 6600, and the only issue
you might have with it, is exactly how hot it gets and how bad
a fan it uses.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238

Power for 6600GT. A vanilla 6600 may have lower numbers, but
won't be able to match a Fx5200 for cool operation:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce6600gt-oc_3.html

You should do a lot of reading about the various video cards,
as selecting a clear winner is tough. My choice of the Fx5200
was a casual one (price).

My machine is not an HTPC, but is just an ongoing experimental
build I've been playing with. I'm not really into multimedia,
so buying some version of MCE is not in the cards for me.

There are probably some private forums where HTPC construction
is discussed, and they will be a better source of info than
a motherboard group, for this kind of thing.

For Nforce2 issues and RAM selection, I recommend the forums of
nforcershq.com .

Have fun,
Paul
 
Thanks! You have certaily given me alot to think about and to research. I
have read every opinion about microATX versus a full sized board so I don;t
know what to do at this point. Haven't even thought about "under" clocking
to conserve power and reduce heat! Always had the opposite goal which is
why I have so many fans running in this computer case I am using now. HTPC
does present some interesting challlenges. I am sure my first one will not
be the best one. Or even a good one! Thanks again for your input.
Ted

 
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