MicroATX - Seeking opinions.
Right, so I'd like to hear some thoughts on MicroATX configurations. Not on whether it's good or bad, but on how to get the most out of it. I don't have any experience working with MicroATX configurations and could use a little advice from those who have.
First, stated purpose: Home theater. Initially, I'm only interested in using it as a movie player (Retail DVD and downloaded movies).
It needs to have at least one external 5.25" drive bay (For a DVD-ROM) and at least two internal 3.5" drive bays. I've been leaning towards the ATC 620C-BX1 because it is not too cramped, but not too large to fit in the livingroom rack. It meets all of my needs as far as bays go, and it is attractive.
For the motherboard, the Chaintech 7NIF2 looks to be the most attractive MicroATX model that I've come across. It is feature-filled for such a small package. It basically has everything I need at the moment; LAN, video with TV-out and audio. None of the onboard components are terribly impressive, but then, they don't need to be. For only $89 @ Newegg, it seems like a bargain to me. Has anyone used Nvidia's GF4 iteration of TV out? How was it? I know that TV out is still relatively low resolution, but keep in mind that most (If not ALL) movies are only encoded below 800x600, so this isn't too big of a deal.
Processor wise, I will probably stick my AGOIA 1600+ in it. Memory wise, I will just pick up slow RAM. I have no intention of overclocking this thing; there's simply no need. I want it to be silent if possible, or at least very quiet and unintrusive.
Now comes the fun part. Storage. I want to equip this system with enough storage to hold all of my movies, hence the need for extra drive bays. I'm thinking 2x250GB WD SE's, but perhaps there is a better option? RAID 0 is out of the question, because stability is key here. I was actually contemplating RAID 1, but that might be overkill. Afterall, these movies are all on CD's anyway. The point of storing them on a HDD is convenience and redundancy more than anything; however, it would be a real pain to lose them all to stripe corruption. Heat is another issue. I was thinking that I could keep the harddrives cool by installing one of them in the 3.5" bays and another one in the spare 5.25" external bay using simple extenders. Then some very low volume fans could keep a bit of air moving over them during operation. While I certainly don't have 500GB of movies (Currently 210GB to be precise), some room to grow would be nice, and I do plan on eventually equipping this system with a TV card so that it can be used as a TiVo (See thread in Digital Media forum for more information). It could also store and play MP3's and other files.
Speaking of which, while we're at it, we may as well have a discussion about the merits of certain TV cards. That's one area I know nothing about.
So anyway, all input is welcome; especially from those who have maybe built a home theater system or worked with MicroATX or TV out before.
First, stated purpose: Home theater. Initially, I'm only interested in using it as a movie player (Retail DVD and downloaded movies).
It needs to have at least one external 5.25" drive bay (For a DVD-ROM) and at least two internal 3.5" drive bays. I've been leaning towards the ATC 620C-BX1 because it is not too cramped, but not too large to fit in the livingroom rack. It meets all of my needs as far as bays go, and it is attractive.
For the motherboard, the Chaintech 7NIF2 looks to be the most attractive MicroATX model that I've come across. It is feature-filled for such a small package. It basically has everything I need at the moment; LAN, video with TV-out and audio. None of the onboard components are terribly impressive, but then, they don't need to be. For only $89 @ Newegg, it seems like a bargain to me. Has anyone used Nvidia's GF4 iteration of TV out? How was it? I know that TV out is still relatively low resolution, but keep in mind that most (If not ALL) movies are only encoded below 800x600, so this isn't too big of a deal.
Processor wise, I will probably stick my AGOIA 1600+ in it. Memory wise, I will just pick up slow RAM. I have no intention of overclocking this thing; there's simply no need. I want it to be silent if possible, or at least very quiet and unintrusive.
Now comes the fun part. Storage. I want to equip this system with enough storage to hold all of my movies, hence the need for extra drive bays. I'm thinking 2x250GB WD SE's, but perhaps there is a better option? RAID 0 is out of the question, because stability is key here. I was actually contemplating RAID 1, but that might be overkill. Afterall, these movies are all on CD's anyway. The point of storing them on a HDD is convenience and redundancy more than anything; however, it would be a real pain to lose them all to stripe corruption. Heat is another issue. I was thinking that I could keep the harddrives cool by installing one of them in the 3.5" bays and another one in the spare 5.25" external bay using simple extenders. Then some very low volume fans could keep a bit of air moving over them during operation. While I certainly don't have 500GB of movies (Currently 210GB to be precise), some room to grow would be nice, and I do plan on eventually equipping this system with a TV card so that it can be used as a TiVo (See thread in Digital Media forum for more information). It could also store and play MP3's and other files.
Speaking of which, while we're at it, we may as well have a discussion about the merits of certain TV cards. That's one area I know nothing about.
So anyway, all input is welcome; especially from those who have maybe built a home theater system or worked with MicroATX or TV out before.
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Comments
The difference was that I went ultra-cheap and made it out of spare parts
I play all my movies over the network (my main rig has plenty of storage, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money to duplicate it) or sometimes off a CD. So you may consider a small hard drive and networking it to your main rig.
And I love the Radeon TV-out. Easy as pie. It starts up, detects that there's nothing hooked up to the analog out, but that there is to the S-video, and automatically uses it from post onwards. No configuration necessary. And it's just powerful enough to run Tripex 3 at TV resolution with full screen AA, which amuses my guests to no end
I've not used nVidia Tv-out before, but I've heard from other people that it's not quite as good as ATI's. Unless you had the two side-by-side though, you probably wouldn't notice.
The board you picked out looks great for this application! And that Coolermaster case is about the sexiest case on the planet. Too bad it's so expensive though. If cost is a problem, check out the desktop case made by Lian-Li. Almost as sexy, but signifigantly cheaper.
I hear what you're saying, though. I may end up putting the massive storage in my main computer and then playing movies over the network.
I'm planning on building a really cheap version of this project with spare parts initially like you did, but in the future I would like to build something more permanent and substantial. I scaled back the storage to 'only' 360GB, and got the price down to around $500 @ NewEgg including the sweet case.
I've heard the same things about nVidia's TV out. The funny thing is, this Chaintech board is cheaper than most of the other boards that are based on nVidia's nForce2 IGP, but it is the ONLY one that offers TV out. So I figure, if the TV out sucks on this motherboard, I can always slap a cheap ATI video card in there. It has an AGP slot and everything.
Another perk is that this system with its support for the latest processors and video cards could eventually be made into a half-decent gaming machine for LAN play. Technically speaking, this thing could have a 3000+ Barton in it and 512MB of PC3200, and a Radeon 9800+ could fit in the case too. The problem I'd be faced with then would be cooling... Nothing a few blowholes and external fan enclosure modification couldn't fix.
SO,
I know Chaintech doesn't make the greatest motherboards, but there's nothing drastically wrong with them for standard use that I should know about, right?