Official Sandy Bridge / LGA1155 for HTPCs Thread - Page 21

Who said it was loud? I didn't use the stock cooler on my 2500k but on my i3-550 and my e3300 the stock coolers are near silent.

I know yours is a quad so maybe the cooler is a little beefier?

My revision 3.0 Asus P8H67-M LE board was shipped out from Newegg today, via UPS 3-day.

Newegg sent out e-mails about a week ago, asking if we'd like a normal or advanced (credit card hold) RMA. I went with the latter for quicker turnaround time.

After that, they called me yesterday, I gave them my CC#, and they quickly e-mailed a link to print a prepaid shipping label. I have 30 days to return the defective board.

Respect to Newegg for handling this matter efficiently thus far. I also had the option of returning the board directly to Asus, but Newegg was the first to confirm they had replacements ready to go.

I agree. Stock i3 clarkdale coolers are basically silent.

I am considering the ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE with AMD Zacate E-350

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131698

I know it doesn't support HDMI 1.4a but it will be at least a year before I move up to 3D so no hurry.

How do you think this compares to Sandy Bridge? I know it does not suffer from the 24P problem.

Gigabyte H67 board showed up at newegg, its atx but hopefully more to come.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128475

Sandy Bridge is like a V12 car. Zacate is like a 4 cylinder.

But both may get you where you need to go depending on what you are trying to do.

The stock cooler that came with my Core i7-2600K (quad) looks about the same as the stock cooler that came with my Core i5-661 (dual). The stock coolers are very quiet during light loads and media playback, but they crank up when you do something intensive like transcoding. I'm very sensitive to fan noise, so I'm using a large aftermarket cooler and a slower fan.

Fair enough. I don't transcode so I would never hear it then.

Yah thats probably true. I have a rig that handles all the "heavy stuff" that is cooled with an H50.

The htpc's will probably never see a 100% load. But if your htpc pulls double duty then you may want something better.

I haven't received that email yet, but the one I did receive from Newegg is below. Newegg seems to be doing a good job handling this mess. Right now I'm using all the sata ports on my system, and everything is working fine.

I just know i5 come with this. The only time these are near silent is when CPU usage < 10%. Start encoding with Ms Expression Encoder which will drain every single once of power the CPU has and the fan will start turning at 2000 RPM + and go up to 35db+. No match with something like what I have in my desktop pc, that runs around 500 rpm most of time time keeping the CPU 20% cooler than when I was using the factory cooler.

The stock is great for me in my htpc. But again I don't encode on it. I use my 2500k for that which has one of these.

ASUS P8H67-M LE just popped up on newegg.

Micro atx h67 board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131712

$105

I hate to say this (after all the wait & what not), but I like the Gigabyte mATX better!

The H61 boards arrived to shops in my country and they are about 35% cheaper compared to H67. But Clear Video Technology is disabled in H61 (per Intel's web site). And the CVT will be disabled in Sandy Bridge Pentiums too (per SemiAccurate). I'm unsure about exact scope of the CVT (post-processing or video decoding processes too?). Does disabling of the Clear Video Technology make H61+Pentium useless for video playback?

Sorry for the noob question, but what do you like better about the gigabyte board? Just trying to make and informed decision before I buy.

Thanx

I always like having 4 RAM slots over 2 if I can. I also really like having an eSATA connection. It also has an optical output if you ever need one.

The only thing that I don't like is that it has 5 total SATA connections compared to 6 on the ASUS.

They both look like pretty solid boards. If you know you are never going to need more than 2x2GB RAM, eSATA or digital optical out then go with the ASUS and save a few bucks. If you want those for future add ons then the $25 might be worth it.

Tiger Direct has 3 Asus h67 motherboards. Little bit cheaper on the le version.

In the past example of G45 (CVT) vs G41/G43 (non-CVT), non-CVT meant that hardware decode acceleration is disabled, but video post-processing (deinterlacing etc.) and HDMI audio work fine. Well, even Celeron dual core + G41/G43 is powerful enough to decode HD video. So Pentium SNB + H61 should be perfectly fine for 2D HD video, but may not be so good for BR 3D (say, 80% CPU usage [because of no HT] without hardware acceleration). This is just a speculation.

Does anyone happen to know what the differences in the Realtek ALC889 codec and the Realtek ALC892 codec are and if they are worth fretting over? I'm going to buy either the Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3 or the Asus P8H67-I DELUXE whenever they hit stores. If there are any other noteworthy decision making factors anyone knows of, I'd like to know. Thanks in advance.

GIGABYTE mb support a hybrid BIOS of dual BIOS and EFI loader (non GUI; only keyboard works). ASUS, ASrock and MSI support UEFI with full GUI. Although this is not important at all in actual mb functionality, this is the first time to see that the second largest company in the mb industry is behind the competitors.

Well that's interesting. Do you know anything about the differences in the realtek stuff? I'm just wondering. I'll probably go with the Asus unless something comes up. I do like how the Gigabyte has 2 HDMI outputs though. I wonder if it can output audio through both at the same time.

889 vs 892 does not matter.

Dual HDMI does not matter either. If you want to connect to two HDMI devices, use the DVI port with a generic DVI-HDMI adapter. Clarkdale/SNB support dual (simultaneous) video/audio stream over HDMI+DVI. This post.

A common misconception is that DVI does not support audio. This is perfectly wrong as far as PC is concerned. Every current GPU, integrated or discrete, supports HD audio (bitstreaming, of course) over DVI with a DVI-HDMI adapter (AMD requires a proprietary adapter, though).

+1

Exactly my reasons for finding the Gigabyte better then ASUS from what's on Newegg right now. The extra RAM slots (for possible future expansion), eSata & Optical out.

I will however hold my horses cause only 1 H67 mATX motherboard from each is out on Newegg yet ... there should be a couple more to come which should give a choice/variety. At that point a fair comparison can be made.

Personally, over the years I've found that I'm very unlikely to upgrade a platform beyond how I originally built it. By the time my needs change enough that I need to start looking at boosting performance, the hardware has changed enough that it tends to be more attractive to replace the whole MB/CPU/RAM. By then, RAM has changed, and the older type is more expensive than the newer faster type, and CPUs are so much faster that you get much more bang/buck than just by adding more outdated/overpriced RAM. Upgradability used to be important to me, but I found I just didn't take advantage of it very often. It's one thing if I PLAN to expand in the near future (maybe waiting on RAM prices to drop a bit more), but the "just in case" never seems to happen for me.

It certainly is hard to choose between Gigabyte and Asus, both are at the top when it comes to Motherboard brands

I was initially going for a Gigabyte GA-H67MA-UD2H-B3 but switched to an Asus P8H67-M Pro B3 at the last minute as the Asus allowed for fine-tuning of a chassis fan speed which the GB seemed to lack (means one less fan controller to attach for my case fans!). Feature-wise both were good as each other.

I could not agree more. When I started building my own PCs about 10 years ago I would always pay extra for "upgradeable" parts, but then found myself truly upgrading every 2 years at a minimum. By then, everything was usually faster and cheaper to just replace the MB/CPU/Ram, etc. I remember purchasing a stick of RAM on ebay and paying about 2x more than faster stuff on the market just because I wanted to finally say I had upgraded. I even went from an AMD 2100 to a 3000 or something like that because I was too stubborn to just buy new stuff.

So, for this thread, I have decided to stop the "upgrade" trend and purchase the right H67 board for my needs right now..not what I think I will upgrade in 2 years (which seems to be most people's normal upgrade cycle). My vote is if you aren't going to upgrade in 6 months (like to turn your HTPC into a gaming PC when new games like Battlefield 3 or the next Oblivion comes out), then save your cash.

I don't disagree with either of you to be quite honest; and especially in my case considering that I will *only* be using this build for media playback purposes ... no encoding, gaming etc. And I quite agree that by the time an upgrade comes into picture - technology usually had advanced to the point where you're thinking about the "next" leap already.

At the same time, for $10 or so more - I'd still rather have 4 memory slots then 2. If the difference was $40, perhaps not. But for $10 it does make sense. Additionally - sometimes when you start compounding software upon software (which isn't too out of the box) - once in a while you'll find a resource-hungry application which will get the job done. I like to keep that option open.

But to be fair - RAM Slots is not the primary reason. I think that would be eSata. My media is on an eSata RAID Enclosure and I do want to directly connect it to my HTPC. Gigabyte is offering my eSata while ASUS is not ... although I haven't seen what's up at Tigerdirect.Com yet ... like I said, more models need to hit the floor before a fair comparison can be made. I might everything I'm looking for at a decent price in another ASUS model then the one that's currently up at Newegg. It's still early in the game.

SandyBridge核心Pentium G840预览评测
English translation

OK, no graphics test!

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