VIA ME6000 Ideal for HTPC?

jfsavage · Post by **jfsavage** » Thu Jun 05, 2003 12:16 pm

Looking at the VIA ME6000 it would appear to the an ideal basis for a home theater PC. Are there any caveats that people have found in using this motherboard?

Are there recommendations for a quiet case that I could use? It would need to support a full size DVD-ROM rather than a slim (laptop) drive.

Also, I found it difficult to uncover details of things like the video modes that the graphics subsystem supports. Has anyone found this?

surprise · Post by **surprise** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:16 am

I've got an Epia M100000 with 1GHz CPU. With slightly lowered quality settings
it plays DivX movies fine, but i seriously doubt an Epia M6000 has enough
power. Reviews say the same. While the M10000 has a small, whiny fan, you
could replace it with a better fanless cooler made out of copper. I don't have
the necessary equipment to cut copper, and don't know of any fitting copper
cooler for the Epia platform. A successfull try to cool an Epia M8000 (german):
http://www.itx-corner.de/p6/modules.php ... e&artid=10
Of cause you void your warranty.

Tore · Post by **Tore** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 10:31 pm

You might also want to have a look at the Sigma Designs XCard and the Jove player (www.8dim.com). The output of the XCard is equal to the output from a good DVD player, and the Jove player has a nice OSD (on-TV) menu (which you can configure), and some extra features.

HearNoEvil · Post by **HearNoEvil** » Thu Jun 12, 2003 9:01 am

Tore wrote:You might also want to have a look at the Sigma Designs XCard and the Jove player (www.8dim.com).

I agree with Tore on that one. Sigma Designs have release new drivers for the card, so now it supports all versions of DivX, which according to some early reviews, it didn't on the date of release. You should then be able to wach all kinds of movies without any problems.

You could, of course, also go all the way and get your hands on that lovely hush-box, which is available at http://www.mini-itx.com/store/hush.asp or http://www.hushtechnologies.net. The beauty of it (a part from the looks of it) is, that the CPU is passively cooled - even at 1ghz.