So far the board has been good as gold
Build also has
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz
4 Gig DDR3 Ram
Antec Fusion Micro fusion Case
500gig WD 5,200rpm 2.5" (Media drive)
40gig 5,200rpm 2.5" (Boot drive, old PS3 drive)
Samsung DVDRW Drive
Still waiting on a blackgold dual DVB-T PCIe tuner card being delivered so cant 'really' test it out and give it a full review as its PVR use is its most important function for me.
Running Windows 7 32bit (retail version) SlysoftHD anydvd. Setup to boot straight into media center with media browser and MCE Tuner free plug ins. Only codecs installed are the current FFDshow tryouts and haali media splitter
So far my opinions are so far the processor and board have been great. The retail fan on the processor is perfectly quite as it is.
They're hooked up in clone mode to a Plasma and an LCD projector and connected via optical out to a 5.1 amp They've smoothly decoded anything I've downloaded within media center and output the correct AC3 / DTS signal to the amp with minimal setting up so far. The onboard graphics are easy to set up with obvious 1080 / 720 60/50/24 settings. I am disappointed windows 7 doesn’t support switching in media center between framerates to match the source material, but that’s no fault of the board.
But like i said the real test will be when the frikin DVB card finally arrives ; can it record 2 channels at once whilst im watching a 1080p .mkv ... and when they are released can it record HD DVB-T2 channels while I'm watching something else, smoothly without farting around. I have a house mate who isn't technical at all and nor did i want something that has the quirks of a computer sitting in the lounge.
The case is better than I expected (the cases that I had seen that I liked didnt have a way i could integrate a remote - silverstone, or where too expensive for me) The psu fan is very quite – far quieter in fact than the zalman psu I had in the last HTPC I built 6 years ago. I would still have preferred something in 'gloss black' but aesthetically it works and the dvd drive flap works well....
The built in imon is a POS in my opinion. It is MCE 'compatible' by emulating keyboard strokes. In practice this means that in media center it remote clicks dont respond 'immediately' or scroll through quickly. Occasionally it would have a meltdown in some of the plugins and when i pressed 'the green button' to go home it would overlay an imon window asking if i wanted to launch media centre, imedianhd or internet explorer.
The IR receiver also had a very narrow response angle - you had to point the remote AT the box.
I had enough of it and ripped the whole thing out bar the internal usb connector, (the LCD was nice enough but a bit gimmicky and also didnt turn off when shut down - but the IR receiver was part of the LCD board)
Ive internally attached my original microsoft MCE remote receiver on top of the hard drive cage and plugged it into to the imon’s usb header. It works so much better, really responsive, as you would want ;
I just need to get hold of some ND gel now to tint the window on the front of the case so you cant see it.
I am tempted to swap the boot drive out for a SSD but am trying to decide if its justified. It is slower to boot than I would like, but I don’t really boot it – just put it to s3 sleep…
Turned into a longer review than I intended, but you did ask.
