News Headlines
- Tue, Jun 18
- The Division E3 2013 Impressions: Best bulletholes in glass technology in years
- EA's Frostbite 3 games ship optimized for AMD, NVIDIA has to wait until after launch
- What's different in New Super Luigi U? Luigi is green, also plenty else as shown in latest trailer
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 'Vengeance' map pack confirmed, launching July 2
- Deadpool's harem introduced, adds Rogue, Domino and Psylocke to the cast so he can call them hot
New Articles
Related Articles
MiniMax Home Entertainment Center!
HTPCs are becoming increasingly popular in the enthusiast community, however two of the largest problems with HTPCs are size and cost. Users usually solve the cost problem by searching for cheap parts, or by reusing parts from old PCs. After all, HTPCs don't need to be all that powerful. The size problem, however, is a little bit harder to solve. One solution is to use a mini ITX motherboard.
Mini ITX boards come in a few different varieties. Some of these boards are like any other motherboard, only smaller. You can find ITX boards that support AM3, AM2, 775, and 1156 sockets. Or you can find solutions, like the Nvidia ION, that have the processor attached to the motherboard. However, some users feel that the latter don't fit the requirements they'd be looking for.
Asus feels differently and developed the AT3IONT-I Deluxe. This is a mini ITX board based on the Nvidia ION chipset, and it is equipped with an Intel Atom 330 processor. Not only that but it is capable of full HD playback, and comes pre packaged with a wireless card. Another great little feature is the Home Theater Gate, which is like an OS before you even get to the OS.
Will this fanless solution work well as a home entertainment center, or will it fall a few feet short? Before we find out, let's pull it out of it's packaging and take a closer look at the board.
Article Index
|
|
If I had cable TV instead of satellite I would really look at making this into a HTPC. I've always liked them and have always wanted to make one but they're pointless when you have satellite TV with a DVR.
I do have a bit of a comment on the benchmarks. Since this board is designed to be a HTPC and has a built in ATOM processor, its obviously not meant for heavy gaming or anything too heavy on the processor. I would have loved to see how well this would have functioned while using the HTPC options. If you were to get a dual TV tuner and put it in there, how well would it perform at recording 1 show in 1080p while watching another show in 1080p? Its understandable if the reviewer didnt have a TV tuner and couldnt test this out, but that would be one of the key things I would look at while looking at the review of a HTPC.
What is the rated output for the power brick? I assume its capable of running that board along with 4 hard drives and a few other things (not necessary a high end video card though).
Overall, I thought it was a great review. It made me want to go out and get that board and see how small of a HTPC I could make with it
I've actually got a box of used TV tuners I pulled out of a friends old tv server. I'm not sure if any of them work, but if any do I'll test that out for you and let you know the results.
Thanks
If you want to run a Highend Card you'll run into trouble, because you'll have no means of powering the card. That and I doubt the Powerbrick would be able to handle a high end card.
But as long as the card can pull all the power it needs from the PCIe slot you'll be fine.
As for the TVtuner question, all the cards I have are PCI, and this board doesn't have a PCI slot.
you'd need to either need to get a PCIe tuner, with the sacrifice of a gpu. Or a USB tuner.