It won't be due to their lukewarm attitude to XBMC, XBMC relies on another project for the the VA/dvrs, the name/s escapes me right now. You're probably thinking of ffmpeg. The newer Nvidia "feature set C" cards (including the G210, GT220, etc) apparently support some further VDPAU capabilities tha...

I have an old Socket 939 motherboard that I could potentially use for a low-budget HTPC build (I pretty much blew all my disposable cash on upgrading my TV, as a necessary precursor to building this machine). Currently it has an Athlon 64 3200+ and an Nvidia 8400GS video card, and with that combinat...

The 5050e may be better from a certain perspective, but it seems to be dead as a doornail (as mentioned above). I can no longer locate any vendors that stock it or any similar parts. So, unless anyone knows differently, if you want a dual core at such a low power level, you'll need to resort to this...

This seems like the best solution so far for a front-end HTPC (or will be once they get the USB issue ironed out). For those running Linux, XBMC with VDPAU video acceleration will take full advantage of the Nvidia hardware.

As I understand it, one reason Ogg Vorbis is less supported is simply because it requires more horsepower to decode: .OGG uses floating-point arithmetic whereas .MP3 is integer-only. Now, this is becoming less and less of an issue as technology advances, but at this point Ogg Vorbis has less tractio...

Windows or Linux? Also, is this a dedicated HTPC or set-top type of box, or just a small PC that will be playing video content from time to time? In any case, the complete mobo/CPU set still seems to be cheaper on the AMD side. Provided you have a graphics chipset that can accelerate the video playb...

It's pretty clear from the photos that there is at least one SATA header on the board. And some of those other mysterious unused connectors may be, for example, LVDS for a laptop-style LCD panel connection. But for some reason the kit VIA provides still uses PATA. Having said that, however... what t...

I think the Intel Atom board (the D945GCLF2, I think) has a fan partially because it was designed to be cheap. There are other Atom boards that are indeed fanless. Anyway, Intel themselves have said that the Atom's main design goal was low cost, with power consumption being secondary. If you believe...

What Nvidia's chipset has, that nothing else has currently, is hardware-accelerated HD video decoding under Linux (VDPAU). In my opinion, this is what makes the Ion potentially so appealing as a lightweight HTPC platform, because it gives you the ability to use a much lower-power CPU than you would ...

VDPAU has the potential to make this little guy a blockbuster for a Linux home theater box - though the drivers are far from mature. Ironically, Blu-Ray playback probably works too with the aid of wine.

I'm contemplating building a HTPC box, but I currently only have a standard-def TV (it would cost me more to upgrade the TV than to build the HTPC, so I'm choosing the latter for now). Anyway, this means I need S-video, or component, or (as a last ditch) RCA composite video out, and none of the moth...

I got Linux working with very few problems on the Biostar TF7025-M2. If I did it all again I would spend the extra few bucks for the TF7050, just for the additional bells and whistles. I used Gentoo, which is quite a different experience from Ubuntu, but the underlying issues are much the same. Nvid...

Here's the best tutorial I've seen (somewhat oriented toward electronics for music, but still describes the characteristics of all the various types):

http://www.hoohahrecords.com/resfreq/ar ... citor.html

For some reason power cords longer than standard (7 ft.) seem to be pretty hard to find, at least among the free ones that come with everything. Independent of any other considerations, hang onto the long one; you never know when you'll need it.

There have been some rumblings in the IT datacenter world lately about moving to DC power distribution within the datacenter. A lot of telco equipment already runs on +48V... I guess, under this architecture, you'd have just a few very large AC power supplies, which could be made highly efficient mo...

In a laptop, almost everything runs on the lower voltages - for instance, laptop hard drives run on +5V, whereas their desktop counterparts run on +12V (for the motor at least). If you think about it, you could probably eliminate the +12V rail out of a system more easily, if you started from the gro...

Someone may have posted this before, but I couldn't find it... anyway, this article has quotes from a Google representative who states that they build their own servers to get better thermal and power efficiency. Here's an excerpt: Another reason that Google builds its own servers is equally simple:...

For what it's worth, I work for a company that makes appliance-based firewalls, among other things. Some of our newer boxes use VIA CPUs, either Eden or C3, and recently we've been noticing that the "system" temperature sensor sometimes reports very high temps (up to 90 C in one case). I'd speculate...

It's interesting that the two different diameters of fans contribute to the bad character of the noise. I was considering using multiple sizes of fans in a system build, the idea being to avoid avoid "phasing" fan noise, as you would get with two fans spinning near (but not exactly) the same speed. ...

Awesome... this is sounding better and better.

Is the final board going to be bare copper as well? Trying to solder a bare board is hell compared to a solder-masked one, especially if you're trying to do SMD by hand. (At least it is for me - I'm not the greatest solderer in the world, but I do all right.)

Any opinions on whether ECC would be worthwhile for something like a HTPC or PVR box, which stays on all the time mostly unsupervised?

Well, there's these guys . I've never dealt with them, but they have what looks like the AMP equivalent for .98 apiece. I looked all over Jameco, Digikey, and Newark but couldn't find that part (Mouser, has it on a 200-unit minimum order). The Electronic Goldmine, normally a good source for all thin...

Is this the one you're after? It's the only one I could find.

Generally speaking, trying to "undervolt" an induction (AC) motor is at best a waste of effort, and at worst a good way to wreck the motor. Mostly this is because the motor is specifically designed with a certain number of windings and poles to work on a certain voltage and frequency - speed control...

That actually sounds pretty awesome... I was considering trying to develop such a thing myself (true "closed-loop" fan control is the Holy Grail of quiet and reliable PC systems, at least for me), but I'd have to learn a lot from scratch, and I just don't have the time or energy for that at the mome...

They really seem hell-bent on making these things taller and taller, don't they? Maybe one day someone will make a passive heatsink that will fit in a wider variety of cases/enclosures (i.e. something about the size of an XP-120, but not designed for a fan - for those of us running Semprons or other...

That would be good news, if the board does indeed support the Turion. I had originally planned to use a fanless tower heatsink but it looks like most of the ones out there are too tall for the enclosure I had in mind, so I was hoping to be able to use a large heatsink such as an XP-120 and cool it s...

I'm looking into building a HTPC using either a Turion or an undervolted Sempron 64, and the Biostar Tforce Socket 754 board is the best choice I can find for the general features I want. I've read elsewhere that it won't work with the Turion, but does anyone have experience running it with a Sempro...

Well, the official SSI power supply specs are here: http://ssiforum.org/specifications.aspx Interestingly, the EPS1U 2.1 spec doesn't list any requirements for wire harness connectors, but the newer 2.93 version does have the 8-pin connector listed as "required." You sometimes hear that 8-pin connec...