Looking for Mobo advice

[Street66]

Happy New Year all

I'm looking to put together a PC to (mainly) act as media centre/server, but would also need to run office apps & occasional games (not bleeding edge though).

I'm leaning towards the AMD64 939 platform, and reckon the requirements are as follows:

Stability & silent running are top priority
PCIe x16 slot - for future proofing.
PCI slots - at least 2 and preferably, 3 for TV Tuner, WiFi & decent sound. These last two could be incorp into the board - which would be a bonus.
SATA - would be nice to have SATA2, but don't see this as vital.
RAID/JBOD - again, a nice to have, but not vital.
USB2 - Min 4
Firewire - Would be nice to have 1394b, but again not vital.
Gb LAN

Above all else, I need this to be quiet/silent - so passive chip cooling is good, as is active fan control etc.

I'd love all this to be available on a mATX board, but am happy with ATX if needed. Do I need to mention that cost is also a factor?

Any suggestions?

[Paul]

Have you looked at the mobo suggested for the workhorse, or GTOs suggestons?

cheers, Paul

[gto-pontiac]

ok with mATX its might be hard to find MoBo with 3 PCI with 1PCIe
i recomend going for a Gigabyte or Asus mobos
the GA-K8NXP-SLI got 1394b. but this board got SLI so you don't need that.
anandtech had winter buyers giude up yesterday.
I'll do my gidue when i'm back in Australia.


its cold over here in japan and where i am has 70CM of snow and -1 MAX -7Min

[Paul]

its cold over here in japan and where i am has 70CM of snow and -1 MAX -7Min

Skiing!!

cheers, Paul

[Street66]

I just spotted the Gigabyte K8N 51PVMT-9, Asus A8N-VM-CSM & Foxconn 6150K8MA-8KRS, all mATX with PCIex16 and 2x PCI slots (Foxconn has 3!) and with on-board GeForce 6150 video.

I presume with on-board graphics processor, this should cut down on the noise factor as I wouldn't need a seperate card & fan?

Would the 6150 be ok for HD-TV needs, or would it struggle? My TV tuner PCI card has its own processors, so that should take some of the load off.

Does the GPU sharing the CPU's resources make a difference if you're not likely to be gaming heavily? How about video editing etc.?

Of course the nice thing about using one of these is that I can put it in a lower profile case (eg Silverstone LC11M) which is more "living-room friendly", and save some money on the graphics card, but still upgrade later if needed, by using the PCIex16 slot.

If I really need better sound quality, I can always put a PCI soundcard in and use a USB WiFi instead of a PCI one.

Does anyone have any comments about using these boards? Do they have a tendency to run hot/loud or cool/quiet?

Many thanks for any help you can give me!

Cheers,
Street66

[gto-pontiac]

i don't like to play game with on-board graphics, but since it has PCIe slot you always can up-garde later.
with HD-TV setup you don't need graphic card, onboard should to fine, as long as the new mobo has TV、S-video out so you can out them on to your TV.
or you can buy a HD-TV with DVI in-put.
with sound on board sound is good.
but i like the separeate sound card with external unit

[Paul]

Get a low noise CPU fan to go with it, the standard ones are not good. You will also need a low noise power supply, it's the fan that's noisy.

cheers, Paul

[Street66]

Just thought I should let you know i've gone for the Asus A8N-VM-CSM.

Running it with AMD64 3500+, Zalman 7000 AlCu cooler, 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 250Gb HDD, Pioneer 110D DVD drive, 2x512Mb generic memory in the Silverstone LC11M case 300W (silent) power. PCI cards are the DVICO Dual DVB tuner and Netgear 108Mbps WiFi.

Will let you know how it all goes....