Media Centre - Motherboard Issue

oafc0000

oafc0000

oafc0000

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Joined
7 Aug 2003
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152
Hi Everyone

I am in the proccess of desiging a Media Centre and ideally would like to chosse a Micro-ATX board. One problem, Im very quickly filling all its slots up.

MSI K8NGM-2-FID is the board im planning on getting.

First of all, I need TWO tuners, for obvious reasons. Windows Media Centre dosent seem to support any Dual DVB-T tunners, so will have to get two single tuners. So there goes my x2 PCI slots.

I am planning on using the onboard Graphics, Geforce 610. But upgraded to a better Graphics cards should always be an option (HDTV & Games) and im not sure if Media Centre will work on a Gefore 610. So goes the PCI-Express slot.

I need to buy a sound card which has a digital out, as my home cinema system only input which will do sorround sound is a digital in. So I am missing one PCI slot.

I have thought about possably getting one internal and one usb tuner. Would that be a realistic option?

Or does anybody know a Micro ATX board with all of this stuff onboard? Or should I give up and go for a full ATX board.

Any help would be apperciated!
 
Hauppauge state that the WinTV-PVR-500 is supported by mce, and its a dual tuner card, maybe thats an option. Its not exactly cheap though.
 
Get a Terratec 2400i. It works fine in MCE, at least in my MCE2005 anyway.
The 6150 will work fine as well. Just download latest drivers from terratecs website.

I use the Asus A8N-VM CSM (micro-atx), with the 6150 graphics, get the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder as well however, fitted out with an x2 3800 and 1Gb of RAM. Fortunately I have a local etailor who happens to also sell the additional tv-out and spdif modules as well. I also happened to pick up an internal mce remote receiver as well from there.

At the moment I have 2 spare PCI slots and the PCI-Express x16 slot free for a future upgrade when the 6150 can't cope.

Theres no reason your MSI board shouldn't cope with MCE. Hoever I wouldn't expect gaming from the machine. It is afterall based on the 6200 afterall.

You won't need a soundcard either, just track down somewhere that sells the spdif output bracket for the board. Your MSI has a realtek 880 so is a good solution.

This may be hard to do, a lot of places are selling the boards but not the additional modules to round out for a full media centre. Is rather annoying.

These 6150/430 boards are excellent for MCE work.
 
I splashed out on an mcubed hfx case.

http://www.mcubed-tech.com/eng/hfx.htm

I also use the cpu and hard drive coolers as well. Just a single 500Gb Seagate at the moment. The case is designed to be fully passive but I mounted a 92m silenx fan in the case just to get a bit of airflow.

Whilst I love the case you do need to be prepared to wait for it as they are hard to get hold of and expensive. I was lucky that only took 6 weeks to arrive and the case including the northbridge and cpu heatsinks is just over £400.
 
Just noticed that the TV-out connector for the MSI is "Optional" and I cant find out were to get hold of it!

I have found somewhere that sells the Sound bracket though.

Im thinking about going for a ATX instead, this is a pain in the you know what.
 
I found only one place in the UK selling the optional brackets for the Asus. Even in the US the forums were full of people complaining that no one seems to sell the optional part for the 6150/430 boards. It is a real shame as they are great boards.
 
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