Media PC Motherboard / Spec etc. - help :)

[tinners]

Am thinking of building a new Media Center PC early August when I have seen where the prices end up of the CPUs.
It needs to be Micro ATX and have come up with a motherboard shortlist:

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R iG33 Express, S775, PCI-Ex16, DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, uATX, VGA ----- £71.19
Asus P5K-VM iG33, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/800/667, SATA II, SATA RAID, uATX, On Board VGA ----- £85.76
Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD ATI, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, uATX, VGA ----- £66.58

The other bits will be (probably)
- Micro ATX case maybe Sugo
- 430w Tagan EasyCon - TG430-U15 - 2Force Silent Modular PSU (must be modular and cheap )
- Intel E2160 Socket 775 Pentium Dual Core 2x1.8Ghz 800FSB Retail Boxed
- 2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), LN11596 TWIN2X2048-64005-5-5-12
- 256MB Asus 8500GT, Silent, PCI-E (x16), Mem 800 MHz, GPU 459 MHz, 16 Pipes, D-Sub/DVI-I/HDTV

I want something which will overclock at low heat but will not be playing any games, just DivX Xvid video / HD potentially on my 32" LCD.

Can someone help me out with the mobo choice (and maybe any other suggestions if you have them !)

Cheers

[Skinleech]

Not gonna help on the motherboard issue, but you might want to check out the new ATI 2400/2600 cards. They seems pretty damn cheap, and unlike the Nvidia cards they accelerate mpeg2, h.264/avc & VC-1 which are all the HD video formats. Nvidia don't do VC-1.

Admittedlty, VC-1 isn't as CPU intensive as h.264, but with a low spec processor, you'll still need a card with a lot of video oomph to playback any HD formats, and the ATI could be the way to go. As with Nvidia there will be some nice passive options out by then too. From what I've read ATI cards will run HD-DVD and Blu-ray on a Sempron 2800 which no fuss.

To me, that means you can ditch the idea of overclocking, and just get the cheapest motherboard that meets your spec.

[tinners]

Thanks for that, looking on Ebuyer http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128948 the 2600 PRO card is probably going to be cheaper and better than the 8500GT.

Also seems to be a silent version the PowerColor Radeon HD 2600 Pro SCS3 coming out in August.

[tinners]

anyone else got an opinion on the motherboard choices ?

Am now going to be building it in a Zalman HD160 with a Nesteq PSU

Thanks

[rajindergill]

are there any motherboards (not asrock) which have DVI connection on them?

[MrP]

there are graphics cards with HDMI outputs on them, my choice would be one of them for a HDTV.

the ATI ones do the sound as well as vision

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...ice=&OrderBy=1