Nvidia 6150 motherboards and htpc build questions/help - Page 4

Something I am mildly interested to find out myself. I will let you know if I get a chance to test it. If it doesn't, I will just put my A710 in. The Realtek chip supports 44.1khz for a start, but other than that it is unknown.

-Suntan

has anyone seen the MSI 6150 board? I read a review using an MSI board, it had DVI and Component output, just cant seem to find the spdif.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=974817

But this was a sample sent in my MSI, but I cant see them anywhere on sale.

It looks like it has both S/PDIF-Out and S/PDIF-In. In the first shot, on the left side of the board, about the middle of the PCI slot, there are a pair of three pin connectors that look like they're for S/PDIF jacks.

And is that an optical out I spy on the BTX?

Does anyone know where you can buy the optional digital audio connector for the Asus A8N-VM CSM?

Steve,

I wonder if this will work - check the ebay - Item number: 5834775145

Roman

The picture on Ebay matches the picture in the owners manual for the motherboard. It should work unless the pinouts are different for some reason, and you could change them probably if needed.
Thanks!

Well,

I have done some searches and failed to find at least one comment from anyone who installed it on this new motherboard and was using it successfully. I belive the one that was designed for this board only have an optical output, and you need to call Asus and directly order it from them. I like the coax output better, so I wish someone had this one working already.

Roman

FYI,
Maybe, but the picture of the add on connector in Asus's owners manual shows both toslink & coax connectors. Just like the one on Ebay.

Anyone using the Asus A8N-VM CSM have heat issues with the video chip. I read a review today about this board and the reviewer said he had the board mounted in a well ventilated case, and during the test it overheated and shut down. This was during heavy video processing. The reviewer said that a fan would probably need to be placed over the video chip if you use it. This is not good since we are all trying to eliminate as many fans as possible, and one of the reasons we are looking at this board is passive cooling of onboard components.

Suntan and/or Steve52,
the question of cooling/powering the 6150 MBs brings me to the question of cases. I look at this MB as all in one replacement (i.e. NO plug-in cards) for what I have now, which would allow a smaller (would be nice) and quieter (needed, if I'm going to spend the money)
case. I currently have an old desktop case which sticks out the rear of ancient "entertainment center" and is clearly audible. I'm not overly concerned with looks (my wife has lived with the beige desktop ATX case for years) but noise is an issue. I'm hoping that the lower power consumption (& thermal output) of a 6150 MB would allow more latitude in quiet case selection. Anybody have any sub-$100 suggestions?

Well, I haven't gotten my stash of commponents yet (stupid snowstorm) so I can't really comment.

I chose a cheap/basic mini tower case as it will be hidden in a custom vented media cabenit anyway. For the same reason, I don't worry too much about noise as the cabinet absorbs most all of it (my current socket A cooler is horridly loud). That being said, I read good things about the arctic cooling Silencer 64 cpu heatsink so I bought it. Will let you know how it works out.

-Suntan

FYI...I purchased the Asus spdif coaxial + optical Module from Excaliberpc.

Regards,
Ricky

Anybody else notice that the nvidia ethernet driver on the a8n-vm csm doesn't let you select jumbo frames? Is this some asus specific limitation, 'cause I've seen claims that the nforce4 chipset supports this.

My a8n-vm csm with athlon 3500 slowly&steadily heats up my HTPC enclosure. ASUS q-fan counters this by slowly increasing the RPM of the stock cpu fan until it's inappropriately loud for the living room (after say 2 hours of high-def. decoding&playback thru software).

Added an exhaust fan to the back of the HTPC case and that slows the process down.

Didn't use to have such problems with a 2.4ghz p4 in the same case. But then again, the motherboard wasn't smart enough to crank the CPU fan's RPM, so it just always ran hot and quiet it seems.

Since ATX cases are designed to vent out the back, HTPCs built from them and put in equipment racks with closed backs looks to be a problem. Guess I wish my HTPC case vented in&out the front.

I puchased one of those from A+A eBay Store for my A8N-VM CSM.
Item number: 5828578258

I will let everyone know if it works when my motherboard arrives. Pin-out matches, so I think it will work.

BTW, Asus posted new BIOS (0506) today.

Thanks for the heads up gerick!

nice mobos and nice solutions for a small form factor set-up!

Question is which case?

I didn't think the 6150 or 6200 was capable of High def output, i thought minimum needed was a 6600 video card. Anyone experience artifacts or tearing with a standalone video card or with the Asus/Gigabite mobo?

wonder how the sound is with SPDIF too. I know bits are bits...

That's the S/PDIF bracket I got from the same guy on ebay (cat.buddy). I used both the optical and coax output and they work fine.

No tearing/distortion/whatever with the 6150's built in video. I wonder why folks think you need a beefier card. Even advanced timings are configurable using the nvidia driver with the 6150 (eliminating need for powerstrip). I've tested vga output at 1920x1080 and 1368x768. windvd only uses about 60% of my cpu during playback of 1920x1080i content. FF/REW of course uses more, but I have no problems using any ff/rew speed.
Strange question. Sounds exacdtly like it did with my old p4p800-vm motherboard (or any other). BTW I connected the 2 motherboard's coax spdif pins to an rca mono jack directly (and that directly to my receiver with spdif coax). No problem... Some say I'm "lucky" because the voltage is theoretically mismatched. If you are concerned about that you could always add a couple resistors...

bcc,

big test for me. I had a SB Live, went to an M Audio Revolution then to an RME DIGI96 sound card. Going to onboard SPDIF would be a big step back but i will try it and see. Not all cards/boards are created equal and many will argue that point. Many will argue that bits are bits and they all sound the same...my experience is no way.

But let's not go there and go OT about the bits are just bits debate

you use an rme digi96 for spdif out? ... there is no "debate". There is no difference in spdif output from any card. All jitter introduced by any card requires reclocking right before the d/a converter.... that's where the difference is made. I have owned the m-audio delta 1010 and the RME hammerfall 9632 and the purpose of owning those cards is for hich quality d/a conversion for analog output and not spdif. NONE of those cards make any claims that their spdif output is "better" in any way.

The issue here is whether or not this motherboard will output 44.1 in a bit perfect fashion without upsampling to 48. Also people want 48 bitperfect output for perfect DTS functionality. People want both of these to select automatically by the driver depending on the signal you feed the card.

RIght now I do this with the chaintech and it's old "bugged drivers" coupled with ASIO4ALL.

i am a troublemaker

i'll leave it at that

Hi!

Sure, but I prefer DVI onboard since, I might use the 6600GT for something else and run the HTPC on the internal DVI, or use a dual graphics setup, or whatever comes to my mind in the future :-). I just prefer DVI everywhere since I have a complete digital video system.

Apart from this, the Foxconn performed better in some reviews (can´t find them at the moment) and allows better overclocking (which is not really of so much interest in a htpc). And the Foxconn suports Wake-On-Lan from S3-Standby, USB and so on, which many boards don´t do (from S3, not Power off which most boards do). And this is highly important for my needs. However, I dont know if the Gigabyte can do this, I just know the Foxconn can...

As long as you know what you are getting/what you want, that's what counts. A lot of people wouldn't make the connection that if they put a gfx card that supports dvi then they wouldn't need dvi onboard. They just tend to gravitate towards the one that gets talked about the most on the boards.

I hear you about keeping options open though.

-Suntan

Can these 6150 mobo handle light gaming? I mean gaming on minimal settings. Nothing outrageous. I don't need to have the options maxed out.

I have installed the new BIOS on the Asus board and now my memory works fine at 200Mhz, I don't need to slow it down anymore and everything, including Cool'n quiet, seems to work fine :-)

Sorry it took me so long to reply. My internet has been down all day. Don't know of any sub $100 cases that would look nice for HTPC use. They are all way to expensive in my opinion. I have been looking at the the Ahanix MCE 301 & 302, but they are more expensive than that. I have been reading some of the posts in this thread today, and now I am getting worried that the passive cooled video chip on the Asus board will require a noisy fan to cool. All this may be a problem for me. I don't want to sit down to watch a movie and have to listen to all those fans running, and getting louder the longer I watch due to heat building up. The heat and noise problem was one of the reasons why I started looking at the Asus board to begin with.

I am using the Asus board with a Athlon64 3200+ (Venice) and its stock cooler, in an Antec Overture case in a not so well ventilated cabinet. It doesn't seem to overheat so far. It was before with a P4 2.8 system and that was one of the reasons for me to upgrade.
The stock cooler is a bit loud and I am planning to change it soon. What's a good quiet amd cpu cooler ? I was using one of those big Zalman on my P4 mb and it was pretty quiet. I am planning on putting in one of these, it seems like it would fit.

Btw, for those asking, the Antec Overture case is a pretty decent HTPC case and can be found in the $100 price range. It's an ATX case though and now that I got this Asus mb, I'd like to find a smaller microAtx case. The Ahanix ones look nice but are a bit pricey. The Antec Minuet may be not bad.

With some hindsight I'd suggest:
Put a zalman-cnps7000-cu on the cpu instead of the stock heat sync/fan,
Get a case with good air flow,
install a quiet case fan (such as silencer or nexus),

Then hopefully as the CPU gets busy and requires air flow, the HTPC stays quiet.
The silverstone lc11 looks like it might be an OK case, except the 300W power supply is probably too small (the asus manual even claims you need 15A on the +12V line which the silverstone PSU does not provide).

BTW, if you're just sitting down to watch a low-def movie, cool-n-quiet can keep the cpu underclocked and so the system heats less.

fwiw, Anandtech has a review of the ASUS board up now. Although they didn't specifically test any HT stuff.

-Suntan