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<blockquote data-quote="SpeedFreak" data-source="post: 78121" data-attributes="member: 24590"><p>I've just completed building a system with very similar components (<-- See specs). My system is completely fan-less - a mostly standard mCubed HFX with only minor alterations. I'll describe my own experience since our systems are so alike.</p><p></p><p>My mainboard is the socket 939 version of yours, so it's also based on GeForce6150. I also looked a similar ASUS mainboard, but my research caused me to reject it. Apparently there are multiple unresolved issues with it.</p><p></p><p>The onboard GeForce6150 does get extremely hot and without the airflow, normally provided by nearby fans, the puny heat sink on it is completely insufficient. I have cooled it with heat-pipes instead and this works quite well.</p><p></p><p>The CPU is also cooled with heat-pipes. I purchased an additional heat-pipe kit for it, just in case, but I've never managed to get it beyond 45 degrees, so that won't be nescessary.</p><p></p><p>My mainboard didn't come with a S/PDIF bracket and it seems they are very hard to come by. Be aware that the mainboard doesn't provide optical/TOSLINK - only RCA/coaxial. I plan on DIY wire the S/PDIF to one of the RCA outputs on my case. In the mean time I'm simply using the analog outputs.</p><p></p><p>The Plextor SATA DVD drive I've chosen is very silent once you've slowed it down - at max speed it sound like a small jet. I chose a SATA drive to avoid the IDE cables.</p><p></p><p>My harddisk, a 500Gb Western Digital, is also very quiet and cool and so far I haven't had any heat problems. The disk is enclosed in a VerticalSilence internal case which reduces vibration and seek noise and provides cooling. I had purchased a heat-pipe set to cool the disk, but so far it hasn't been nescessary. I plan to add two identical drives later for a sum of 1Tb in RAID 5 - if I can manage to find room in the case.</p><p></p><p>The display is a Samsung 32" LCD at 1360*768p60 with 1:1 mapping on the VGA port. I initially had it connected via DVI/HDMI at 720p but discovered that Samsungs are unable to use 1:1 on the HDMI port. IMO the GeForce6150 should be able to handle 720p, but so far I haven't been able to get acceptable quality with MediaPortal.</p><p></p><p>Graphics setup has mostly been a trial and error process and I'm far from convinced that I've found the optimal settings. With the default graphics settings the quality was terrible with excessive skips and stuttering and I lost 20-30% frames! Disabling vertical synch helped, but the quality got even worse. None of the other GPU setting made any difference at all.</p><p>I too am using PureVideo. The only setting I have found that helped any was to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Smart" in the MediaPortal NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder Setting. Now I'm not losing frames and this is the setting I'm currently using.</p><p>Incidentally unchecking "Use Hardware Acceleration" doesn't have any visual effect on my system other than using a bit more CPU. Also the Jitter dropped from 20-30 to 0.</p><p></p><p>My experience is that once you've updated all the drivers to get past the endless bluescreens, the system itself runs quite well. Unfortunately I don't think MediaPortal is quite able to take full advantage of the hardware at present.</p><p></p><p>I put 2Gb RAM in my system in the hope that it could be used for buffers and cache in order to minimize disk access, but MediaPortal doesn't seem to utilize available RAM at all.</p><p></p><p>The dual cores also seem somewhat wasted on MediaPortal. The GUI is quite sluggish at times and I've experienced major lip-synch, audio skipping and video stuttering with both TV and ripped movies. The CPU is definitely underutilized running at a typical 5-10% utilization. I do wish some of that excess CPU capacity could be used improving the video quality. I've noticed that just watching TV yeilds about 2000 context swithes per sec and close to 50% kernel time, so maybe there resource contention issues in MediaPortal.</p><p></p><p>Finally make sure you install AMDs CPU driver:</p><p></p><p> <a href="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe" target="_blank">http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe</a></p><p></p><p>and the XP KB896256 hotfix:</p><p></p><p> <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256</a></p><p> <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=WindowsXP-KB896256-v3-x86" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/search?q=WindowsXP-KB896256-v3-x86</a></p><p></p><p>The hotfix solved the worst of my stuttering problems.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SpeedFreak, post: 78121, member: 24590"] I've just completed building a system with very similar components (<-- See specs). My system is completely fan-less - a mostly standard mCubed HFX with only minor alterations. I'll describe my own experience since our systems are so alike. My mainboard is the socket 939 version of yours, so it's also based on GeForce6150. I also looked a similar ASUS mainboard, but my research caused me to reject it. Apparently there are multiple unresolved issues with it. The onboard GeForce6150 does get extremely hot and without the airflow, normally provided by nearby fans, the puny heat sink on it is completely insufficient. I have cooled it with heat-pipes instead and this works quite well. The CPU is also cooled with heat-pipes. I purchased an additional heat-pipe kit for it, just in case, but I've never managed to get it beyond 45 degrees, so that won't be nescessary. My mainboard didn't come with a S/PDIF bracket and it seems they are very hard to come by. Be aware that the mainboard doesn't provide optical/TOSLINK - only RCA/coaxial. I plan on DIY wire the S/PDIF to one of the RCA outputs on my case. In the mean time I'm simply using the analog outputs. The Plextor SATA DVD drive I've chosen is very silent once you've slowed it down - at max speed it sound like a small jet. I chose a SATA drive to avoid the IDE cables. My harddisk, a 500Gb Western Digital, is also very quiet and cool and so far I haven't had any heat problems. The disk is enclosed in a VerticalSilence internal case which reduces vibration and seek noise and provides cooling. I had purchased a heat-pipe set to cool the disk, but so far it hasn't been nescessary. I plan to add two identical drives later for a sum of 1Tb in RAID 5 - if I can manage to find room in the case. The display is a Samsung 32" LCD at 1360*768p60 with 1:1 mapping on the VGA port. I initially had it connected via DVI/HDMI at 720p but discovered that Samsungs are unable to use 1:1 on the HDMI port. IMO the GeForce6150 should be able to handle 720p, but so far I haven't been able to get acceptable quality with MediaPortal. Graphics setup has mostly been a trial and error process and I'm far from convinced that I've found the optimal settings. With the default graphics settings the quality was terrible with excessive skips and stuttering and I lost 20-30% frames! Disabling vertical synch helped, but the quality got even worse. None of the other GPU setting made any difference at all. I too am using PureVideo. The only setting I have found that helped any was to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Smart" in the MediaPortal NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder Setting. Now I'm not losing frames and this is the setting I'm currently using. Incidentally unchecking "Use Hardware Acceleration" doesn't have any visual effect on my system other than using a bit more CPU. Also the Jitter dropped from 20-30 to 0. My experience is that once you've updated all the drivers to get past the endless bluescreens, the system itself runs quite well. Unfortunately I don't think MediaPortal is quite able to take full advantage of the hardware at present. I put 2Gb RAM in my system in the hope that it could be used for buffers and cache in order to minimize disk access, but MediaPortal doesn't seem to utilize available RAM at all. The dual cores also seem somewhat wasted on MediaPortal. The GUI is quite sluggish at times and I've experienced major lip-synch, audio skipping and video stuttering with both TV and ripped movies. The CPU is definitely underutilized running at a typical 5-10% utilization. I do wish some of that excess CPU capacity could be used improving the video quality. I've noticed that just watching TV yeilds about 2000 context swithes per sec and close to 50% kernel time, so maybe there resource contention issues in MediaPortal. Finally make sure you install AMDs CPU driver: [url]http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe[/url] and the XP KB896256 hotfix: [url]http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256[/url] [url]http://www.google.com/search?q=WindowsXP-KB896256-v3-x86[/url] The hotfix solved the worst of my stuttering problems. [/QUOTE]
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