*Official* Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H Thread (NVIDIA 9400 mATX HDMI 8 channel LPCM) - Page 3

Why would you throw in another graphics card? The whole point of this board is to use the onboard graphics for a silent HTPC.

My HTPC rig also has to ba a game rig. I like to game from time ot time on the projector.

The black level issue was apparent on a standard Vista install. TV Pack is now shipping (and adds some pretty good functionality for us Europeans - OTA EPG, subtitles, digital text, Press Red interactivity etc.) - and the H264 DLL is required for us to get HD (which was present in the Fiji beta and pulled).

I think you'll find a LOT of UK HTPC owners are running TV Pack and the H264 DLL.

The black level issues with SD content were there in standard Vista Media Center...

Very interesting board. I guess the obvious question is how does it compare the ASUS P5Q-EM based on the Intel G45 chipset. Intel has made some strides in getting the IGA issues worked out (but maybe not 24Hz) so given that, would the Gigabyte represent a worthwhile upgrade from the ASUS? It does appear that the Gigabyte is using a superior onboard audio solution. Having only two fan headers on the Gigabyte is a bit limiting -- but does keep fan noise to a minimum.

What do you think?

Do you use S/PDIF or analog? As for S/PDIF, there is no difference between ALC1200 and ALC889A, GIGABYTE's ALC889A supports Dolby Home Theater (it's still good for S/PDIF gamers), though. As for analog, neither ALC1200 nor ALC889A beats a good discrete sound card (obviously). ALD889A (or any other onboard codec) is mediocre at best as an analog sound device.

If you are satisfied with P5Q-EM, there is no reason for 'upgrading' to GA-E7AUM-DS2H?

I'm just comparing the boards. Dolby Digital Live can help with quick temporary hookup via S/PDIF for 5.1. I have an HT Omega Claro + soundcard.

I'm setting this MB up and I only see the 1st HD, the LG DVD drive and one of the 1TB drives in the bios (have two). In Vista 64 I can only see the 1st drive and the LG DVD drive. Why is this?

What do I need to change to see SATA2 #3 and SATA2 #4 connectors working? And then why don't I see either of the 1TB drives in Vista64?

All drives are:
250GB WD
LG GGC-H20L "?HD drive
Two 1TB Seagate HD's.

What is your BIOS AHCI setting?

SATA2 #3 and SATA2 #4 connectors works only in the RAID or AHCI mode. Select

- BIOS Setup > Integrated Peripheral > OnChip SATA Mode > AHCI.

You have to do this before installing OS. (And Windows XP requires the AHCI driver [creat a driver diskette and press F6 or slipstream the driver into OS]).

1. Is the 1TB drive initialized? Go into disk management.
2. Sata ports 3 and 4 only suppot AHCI/RAID mode. pg 27 of the manual

I didn't install AHCI before the Vista install. I've been reading a little about AHCI and I'm still not sure what it does. Could you give me a better idea of what it is? Do I need to clear the disk and set up AHCI and reload Vista?

One of the 1TB drives show up in the bios but not in Vista.

AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) is an interface to SATA drives that supports hot-plug and NCQ. Read this article to enable AHCI driver in the registry in Vista.

You might want to do a reinstall to make things easier if you want to use the board for Raid/AHCI. Page 82 of the manual starts the walkthrough on how to install.

Does your harddrive show up in disk management?

Only the drives and LG DVD drive that I plug into SATA2 0, 1 and 2. I can swap them around and they show up when I check the bios but only drive C (250GB WD) and the LG show up in Vista. Every one of them show up in the bios on the first 3 SATA connectors when I swap them around but only the first two show up in Vista.

Hogweed75,

You keep saying Vista. Is it when you look at my computer or in disk management. You might have to download something from Seagate to initialize the drive so Vista can see it.

"My Computer" in Vista. You may be right on the Seagate software. I just looked through my disks and found the Seagate Utility disk. That may fix that part of it. I'll try the "hack" to see if I can get AHCI working. If that doesn't fix it I'll wipe the drive, set up AHCI and then reload Vista and the Seagate software. Thanks!

Hogweed75,

Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. See if your drive is there, if it is you have to initialize and format the drive before you will see it in MY Computer.

Thanks for your help everone! Got it working. See all the drives now. Loaded the Seagate disc. Didn't get one with the last couple of OEM drives and forgot I needed to load it. The page that renethx referred me to took care of the AHCI problem easily. Then went into the bios and set it for AHCI. Then went back into Vista and started the Seagate program. Running the Seagate program I found the two 1TB drive and set them up as NTSF logical drives. After that when I went back into "My Computer" the drives were there.
Thank you!!!

Does anyone have any information about further availability of the product? It seems that Newegg is the only one that has the mobo in stock and I'd rather order it from someone else. Any idea when other retailers will stock it?

Thanks!

^^ What he said.

I just read and posted on the thread about the 9300/9400 chipset and am strongly considering this board, then find this thread and realise it might have been the better place to post. Don't want to cross-post though, so any input from people in this thread would be much appreciated.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=968

Hi there,

I received the board last week and I am now in the process of building the HTPC using the following components:
Case: Silverstone GD-02MT (with LCD and remote)
MB: GA-E7AUM-DS2H
CPU: E5200 (2 x 2.5GHz)
HDD: WD Caviar Green WD10EADS (1TB)
SAT S2: Terratec Cinergy S2 PCI HD

Connected to the LCD Sharp LC46XL2E

I use Vista Ultimate 32bit and the iMON / iMEDIAN Soundgraph software provided with the case. The idle GPU temperature is around 50C and I plan to test it under load in a very near future.

One problem that I am trying to solve right now is the nVidia DualView behaviour:
I have two screens - the case LCD screen connected over VGA and used for iMON / FrontView and the LCD TV connected over HDMI.
If I start the computer with both screens connected and powered on, everything is fine.
If the LCD TV is off during the system startup, nVidia automatically switches from DualView to the single available monitor (case LCD) and uses it as a primary monitor. If I turn on the LCD TV after that, nothing happens.

Did anybody face this problem? Is there any workaround to prevent nVidia from disabling DualView if the primary monitor is off?

It's a normal behavior. Launch NVIDIA Control Panel and restore DualView mode. Or save DualView mode as a profile and load it by a hotkey.

Think this post would have been better off in here...

When I bought a laptop, I built an HTPC out of my old desktop computer and, realising that there wasn't a do-it-all board, decided to use what I had and just stick it in a nice case (Silverstone LC17), but with a full ATX board and a HUGE graphics card, the case it pretty rammed and I haven't been able to get all my hard drives in. This is what I ended up with...

Motherboard: Asus P5B-E Socket 775
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 (2.13Ghz) Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB Cache
RAM: Kingston 2GB KIT (2X1GB) DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 CL5 Non Ecc 1.8V
Graphics Card: Gigabyte 'Silentpipe II' Fanless NVidia GeForce 8600GT 256MB Dual DVI PCI-E (GV-NX86T256D)
PSU: Hyper Type-R Modular 580W
CPU Fan: Zalman 7000B Alcu (with Socket 775 Adaptor)
Drives: 4x SATA Hard Drives (only 3 fit in for now!), 1x SATA LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/DVD-RW, 1x IDE DVD-RW

What I'm now considering is replacing the motherboard and graphics card with this Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H, giving me much more room in the case, or perhaps even going for a smaller case (but given that I need at least 4HDs and 1 optical, perhaps not!)

Just wondering if this would be a good buy as I'm looking for something that will work with my current setup and also with any likely/foreseeable future upgrades.

I'm currently connecting to a Sony STR-DG910 by HDMI and optical, which is hooked up to a 5.1 speaker system and a Screenplay 7210 720p projector. For now, I have to use optical for the audio (7210 is DVI, not HDMI, and if I send sound via HDMI from any source to my amp, as soon as I switch the projector on, it kills the sound). I think my next upgrade would be a 1080p/24-capable projector, which this board would be ideal for, and that would then let me switch to HDMI for audio too.

My other issue with my current kit is that it doesn't sleep/hibernate (it'll go into these modes but not come back) and, really annoyingly, that I have to have my amp and projector on when I boot my HTPC or I can't get an image from it, no matter what I do. No idea if that's the computer's fault but I don't get it with any of my other sources, so I'm really hoping that a new mobo (with integrated graphics) would fix this...

I realise that's a lot to dump on you in one go, but can anyone foresee any problems with what I'm wanting to do, and with the kit (RAM, CPU, fan, PSU, IDE DVD-ROM) that I'm planning on plugging into it?

Well I got it up and running over the weekend!

Here's what I ended up with:
Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H
Intel E7200 2.53 GHz Processor
CORSAIR TWIN2X4096-6400C5 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 DDR2 800
Thermaltake Bach Media Lab Case - VB8000BNS
Antec Mult-Station Elite Internal IR receiver w/VFD (custom install)
LG GGC-H20L Duo Blu-ray/HD-DVD-ROM Blu-ray Burner
250GB Western Digital Hard Drive - Initial Program Drive (Had already)
(3) Seagate 1TB Hard Drives ST31000340AS (Setting up RAID 5)
COOLMAX CUG-700B 700W Power Supply
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
Thermaltake CL-C0034 Copper Heatsink & Fan (Northbridge Cooling)
Adesso WKB-3000UB Wireless Keyboard
Logitech Harmony 720 Remote
Sunbeam RHK-EX-BA Rheobus-Extreme Fan Controller Panel
Vista Home Ultimate SP1 64

Set up the audio and tried a SD disk and right off had HDMI video to my 52" 720P DLP and DD 5.1 surround sound from the Toslink to my external processor. Tried a Blu-ray and said it didn't regognizes the type of disc. Updated both of the PowerDVD 7.3 and Ultra 8 programs and then grabbed the firmware update for the LG drive. Whalla! Blu-ray plays with DD 5.1 surround. I don't have any way to play surround from the HDMI yet although I was getting audio from my TV speakers via HDMI along with the Toslink outputs.

No real issues with getting anything going except making sure everything was updated. Video looks very good although I need to do some tweeking. I did have a little problem with PDVD 8 Ultra being out of sync with the first Blu-ray disc. Rebooted the program but that didn't help. Rebooted the HTPC with the disc in the drive and when it rebooted then PDVD 7.3 automatically booted up and played the disc perfectly with DD surround. I need to try PDVD 8 Ultra again to see if there is really a sync problem. Anything I should look for?

I still can't find LG GGC-H20L driver ver. 1.03 except from opendrivers.com. Are they OK to download from? I can't seem to find the driver on the LG site.

I was also thinking of using "My Movies" with Vista Media Center. What do you think of this program? Is it worth using?

These forums have been an incredible help to me. Without them I would never have attempted to build my own HTPC. Shoot! I've never built a "from scratch" computer before period!!! Just took a lot of reading.

Thank you for all of your help! Thanks to Carlton Bale for starting this forum and especially to renethx for all your work in the forums. The main "Guide to Building a HD HTPC" forum has been perfect for me.

Hogweed75,

Glad to hear this build went alot better than the other. You really don't need to update the firmware on your LG, unless your going to do a lot of burning with it. It only addresses writing with the drive. If it ain't broke don't fix it. I have no problems with 1.02 in multiple drives. If you get MyMovies I would invest in TMT as it will play back from harddrive and works great with it.

Hi, how did people here connect the case-fans to the single 4-pin SYS_FAN header? I'm helping a friend out building a HTPC.

The case is an OrigenAE S16T, which has 3 3-pin case-fans (1 intake, 2 outtake). I can connect the intake to the PSU with 5v, but I do want some control over the 2 outtake fans.

So I need to go from a single 4-pin Sys Fan Header to 2 3-pin Casefan's, without loosing the power the control the fans and without burning out the Sys Fan Header.

I read in the manual that there is a BIOS option to switch between 4-pin and 3-pin without loosing RPM control fo the CPU. But there is no mention of the Sys fan.

Also, has anyone got some links to webshops or articles about all this? They don't seem to be easy to find :-(

Thanks DJWikiera. I have heard a lot of good thing with TMT over PDVD. If the Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 starts working correctly soon I'll probably be purchasing that it and I know it comes with a special version of TMT. Although I'm not sure if it's just a trial version or not. I may still have to pay for a full version if it's just a trial.

Myself, I would save the money and not buy the Xonar. I'm still messing with my build of the Gigabyte board also. Video quality is great with this chipset. The chipset-integrated HDMI audio works on my system(Onkyo705) just fine. Don't be swayed by the hype of HD Audio, chances are you'd never tell the difference.

I don't believe that the fans are PWM with 3 pin so you wouldn't be able to control from onboard. You would need a controller to adjust the fan speed. The BIOS feature allows you to change voltage if you have a 3 pin connector, that will allow you to slow the fan down but not make it automatic like a PWM fan. I have the S14 case with smaller fans and have no problem with sound from them.