Asus C60M1-I,a passively cooled AMD C60 based mini-ITX motherboard for around £60!!

[scaryjim]

Oh, the Intel HD2000! Damn them for their far too similar naming schemes

Yeah, should be HD2000 graphics in the celery, it's a Sandy Bridge based part. Lower clocked than on the Pentiums and higher (and possibly than on the higher clocked celeries) and it's had Clearvideo HD stripped out - not sure if that takes *all* the hardware media decoding out or just the HD portions, but it definitely leaves the C60 in a better position for HTPC usage.

[lonoise]

I'm really stumped as to why one would need audio via hdmi for anything serious. Maybe, only maybe if you're trying to use that for HTPC and plug into receiver.

To me the only way to go about sound from computer is via USB DAC. Then into receiver/amp.

Still, for HTPC I would use underclocked a6 with streacom fc8 case and some a75 mobo.

But this baby (c60) is perfect for any music projects. Add some itx case, ssd, cd drive, couple of gigs of ram, pico psu and usb dac and you've got yourself audiophile quality music device for £300. Such stuff costs thousands if you buy a package.

[DanceswithUnix]

I was under the impression that some DVI ports can carry audio e.g. HD4xxx ATI cards, using some unconventional use of pins but required a proprietary DVI-HDMI adapter, and in the case of the ATI cards, this practice was discontinued due to the inclusion of a physical HDMI port.

Are you saying I'd be able to use a regular DVI-HDMI adapter on this board and get audio through?

Sorry, missed this comment at the time.

It seems that such features are negotiated between source and display, so as long as both ends are capable you should be able to get encrypted video and audio over DVI as these days it is treated as "HDMI with a funny connector". As it is negotiated there are no guarantees that your setup will work until you try it, but it often does.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-De...ility_with_DVI

"DVI connectors on PC video cards have also been increasingly able to take advantage of HDMI features such as audio output."

I have known someone use a passive DisplayPort++ to DVI-D adaptor, with that plugged into a passive DVI-D to HDMI adaptor, plug the end of the chain into a cable to a TV HDMI port and sound worked through that lot. That was a Dell i5 based laptop.