Building The Ultimate Home Theater PC

Sample Configurations

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FunctionsIntel Pentium MAMD Athlon64
HTPC caseHiper Media ChassisHiper Media Chassis
MicroATX motherboardAOpen i915GMm HFSAOpen s760GX-M
TV tuner (analog / DVB-T)AverTV Hybrid +FMVideoMate DVB-T300
Recording of TV programs onto hard drive possibleyesyes
Playback of DVD, WMV, DivX and other installed video formats possibleyesyes
DVD burner and playerYes, with slimline driveYes, with slimline drive
Audio outs7.1 sound5.1 sound
Video outsS-Video, composite, HDTV components on motherboardS-Video, composite on TV tuner card

Unusable System Components

Onboard components that the Biostar board lacks

In selecting the motherboard, we ran into some very weird and funny problems. Probably one of the most widespread was the lack of system components such as integrated graphics. In a normal mini-case or a desktop, that is hardly ever a major problem, because usually another graphics card is used.

But that is not an option in the Hiper Media Chassis. Only one expansion card fits into this case. In our case, it should be a TV tuner. We had a choice of the following motherboards:

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ManufacturerModelSocket typeCPU
AsusP5GD1-VM775Intel P4 Prescott
AsusK8S-MX754AMD Athlon64
AsrockK8Upgrade-760GX754AMD Athlon64
BiostarK8NHA-M754AMD Athlon64
Foxconn865M478Intel P4/Celeron

The Biostar motherboard has no onboard graphics