AOpen Micro-ATX Pentium M board

[willawake]

hmm this is an interesting looking board. I have been thinking about HTPC solutions but neither shuttle or the EPIA boards look interesting because they all use crap caps. So i was looking for small cases and came across the Antec Aria which is a small cube case that accommodates micro-atx boards.







http://www.antec.com/ec/productDetai...?ProdID=08130#

review
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article146-page1.html

it is not a great solution because the psu is proprietary which is something i dont really like cos i prefer components to be easily sourced but anyway, lets look at the motherboard :



the i915GMm-HFS is the second pentium m motherboard that aopen hit us with and is basically an evolution of the i855GMEm-LFS and based on intel's new 915gm chipset. so why the hell would you want a pentium m solution. well after hearing one of the new lga775 p4s with a stock cooler it was not gonna be a great solution for HTPC. too loud indeed. pentium m can provide good speed but with lower power and reduced cooling needs.

This new board offers dual marvell gigabit lan (yes i do like the marvell chips), onboard 7.1 sound, component video out or svideo, rgb/dvi from the new intel onboard 900 chip, 2xfirewire, 4 external/4 internal usb 2.0, 2 sata1 and 2 sata2 (supporting hotswap) with silicon image sata raid. it can support ddr1 or ddr2.

pretty nice but personally if i had designed it I would have added an ATI Theater 550 Pro chip for killer tv support and also a via envy sound chip for killer onboard sound and with spdif and optical out.

it is interesting to see a lot of what look to be rubycon zl caps on aopen's board. they just had to include those two yellow fujitsu caps though when oscons would have made it perfect.

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2098&s=1
http://macuser.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/7...915gmmhfs.html
http://global.aopen.com.tw/products/mb/i915GMm-HFS.htm

presently i am getting into HTPC solutions. i have finally found a use for the P3 1.2 and tusl2 which is presently providing non stop windows media player 10 audio through a sblive which is using the kx project driver. i cant complain about the sound quality it is pretty ok and i need something doing random audio otherwise i tend to not bother changing the cd. i plan on getting an ati 550 pro tv card which is doing digital decoding of the analog tv and is supposed to be great quality. i want the ati card rather than the sapphire version cos it has a cool remote with mouse control.

i will probably get a m-audio revolution sound card cos i like the m-audio audiophile which i have on my main pc. not too expensive either and with the great via envy chip. then i might install windows media center. presently it is connected to an AOC 17" crt on my main desk. i might spring for another samsung tft but only if i can find a monitor arm which works so i can use it at my desk and quickly swivel the monitor to the bed next to the desk for very lazy dvd watching. with wireless kbd and mouse (preferably wireless kbd and trackball) it would be a nice solution.

[willawake]

of course for those with money to burn there is the X15e from http://www.iuneed.com/ whose site does not work in firefox......

[willawake]

the nmedia htpc 100 is kinda interesting though





http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005...tpc_100/1.html

looks cheesy as hell though

[willawake]

htpc still have to overcome STORAGE. people want multiple hdds these days in a sata raid to store all their mp3 and movies.



looking good



looking good



DOH!.......could fit at least 5 sata there but only space for one. cooling would have to be upgraded also. look to supermicro for consultancy guys.......could stick another two drives with velcro or just forget about it and convert a 3u/4u chenbro or supermicro to htpc

[gg1978]

That's a pretty cool little board. I just got a Dell Inspiron 6000 Laptop with the Pentium M 730 (1.6Ghz, 533FSB) with the i915PM chipset and X300 ATI graphics.. Pretty sweet little laptop, but it won't be my HTPC anytime soon, although i do use it as a remote for my "real" HTPC.

Also a mobile Athlon XP on a uATX mobo that properly supports it would be nice. They have a 1.35Vcore one that dissipates 35W, which should be doable with a decent large passive HS, and a quiet 120mm fan.. The only uATX board i can think of that supports the mobile AXP's is the Biostar M7NCG or something like that though.

[MD Willington]

Not entirely true, any socket A board will support a mobile AXP...

Some of them actually recognize the bridging of the mobile processors.

MD

[willawake]

another solution i was looking at which will reduce the jitter and interference from computer sound cards is the benchmark dac1. the problem is that this unit will only do stereo so is no use for home theater sound but personally i listen to a lot of stereo. so basically you feed the dac1 with the optical or digital output of the sound card and it converts the sound to analog for your amp. (oh so that is what a dac does lol)



only problem is that it costs $800-1000

[willawake]

or you can just feed the optical or coaxial output of the soundcard into a beauty like the Arcam AVR 250





which i would buy in an instant if i found $1500 in the street LOLFUCKINGLOL....