HTPC Experts: Need your help

[mpjesse]

Hey guys. I've been doing some research on HTPC's and am going to be building one soon. Everything seems pretty straight forward. I've almost settled on the Asus A8N-VM CSM (you can see it here: http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=718&pid=2781).

But...

My question is: while this board rocks, it doesn't have TOSlink out for audio. Does anyone know of another Micro ATX board that has both TOSlink out and DVI out?

My goal is to not add any extra cards in this board with the exception of an HDTV tuner card.

Thanks,

-mpjesse

 

[pwnage]

I checked out Newegg, but couldnt find anything.

you may want to check out Shuttle (crashman will be here soon to dissagree) : )

or you could get a sound card to accomplish this. Turtle Beach makes good and reliable cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829118109
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829118104

to me this seems like the only way to go aside from a normal ATX mother board.

i'll keep looking to see if i can find something.

 

[pwnage]

Well i did some looking on Newegg. i couldn't find anything intel or AMD. i dont think they exist

one thing i should say, onboard video sucks. if you building a HTPC you should get a good video card. esspecialy if you are getting an HDTV tunner card and want to watch HDTV.

the board you have choosen looks fine for adding a video card and 2 PCI cards. you may have to go out side your goal in order to accomplish what you want.

 

[mpjesse]

Yeah I agree that on board video sucks. However, it appears that the on-board video will be sufficient enough for what I want it to do. nVidia says that the IGP is fully capable of handling HDTV streams. (the IGP 6150 is comparable to a GeForce 6200 in terms of performance). If it's not capable, I can always just get a cheap x300 PCI-e or something. So I do have options.

I won't be doing any gaming on this thing... so I don't need power. I just need something to act as a web browser, HDTV receiver, DVD player, music center, and video file player. And I want it to be relatively quiet and cool. Adding a video card will both heat things up and add more noise.

Anyways, thanks for looking and thanks for the turtle beach links. I still can't find anything either. The sucky part is that full ATX boards are available w/ both TOSLink and DVI out. I guess they just haven't made their way to MicroATX yet.

-mpjesse

 

[Crashman]

Hola. Can't find you a board, but I did find something better: You know the Turtle Beach Montego DDL? Too expensive and you didn't want to add a card.

Well, Diamond has a DDL card too, it's cheap, and then you just have to get over adding the card.

 

[mpjesse]

This card is perfect. A lot of ppl who bought it on newegg.com used it for a HTPC- they said it works great. Only thing they recommend is to not use the Turtle Beach drivers... i guess u should use the CMedia ones.

Anyways, thanks!

-mpjesse