Small Form Factor Asus A7V400MX any good?

hi i am planing to build a htpc and iam looking now for a decent motherboard. i thought about an Asus A7V400MX with a xp3000+. can somebody tell how this one is? about the on bord sound and grafic.
thanx

 

For an htpc its okay, although as it only has VGA out it wont connect to a TV, you'll need a TV card or a graphics card with TV-out.

The on-board graphics card is'nt brilliant anyway. A graphics card with a minimum of 128mb is preferred if you intend to playback HiDef films.

The onboard sound would do as it has an sp/dif socket for connecting to an amp. I have used the same onboard sound on a different Asus board and I thought it was good.

 

I've built a machine with this board before.
It's a great board for the price, it has the same quality of all Asus boards.
I didn't try any high-res vidoes (played DVDs fine), however WMP10 visualisations at full screen were a little choppy.
The sound can be used with S/PDIF but you have to purchase an extra bracket for this.

One feature I like about this board is that when you go into standby mode it completely shuts off the PC, IE fans off, HDDs off etc., but when you switch it on again it's there within 10 seconds.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

 

thanx guys. so it means for me find a decent low profil graf&sound card. have to look around for that.

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=66313

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EDIT: Sorry just saw your location. However most FX5200s are low profile, so thats the type of thing to go for.

 

the xp3000+ seems abit overkill for htpc unless your planning post processing on dvds

 

what do u think would be a better processor. how far can i go down?

 

2500 mobile would be good as you wouldn't need a big heatsink for it.

 

thing is the airflow in the case is not the best. so i thought anyway of cooling with a fan. whats anyway the differents to the mobil cpu`s. only voltage or other stuff too?

 

they are easy to oc past 3200 speeds while still keeping a low temp, mine is at 2.4ghz with a lame zalman heatsink with idle temp of about 42C with load at around 48C

 

Yeh get an XP-M2500 use it stock (runs at low voltage) then if you need more power just run it at 3200 with a simpe FSB adjustment.

 

asus a7v400mx mobo

I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to add that I have sold 15-20 PC's in the last 6 months or so, almost all with sempron 23-2400's, 256-1gig mem, and almost all to business customers. i have long been a fan of asus products, and you can't go wrong with a 3 year warranty (and ive never had to RMA even one board). the ob audio and video are adequate for most users, def. not for gamers, but just adding a 5200fx 128 card makes for a good cheap gaming machine. very good board for the money. and the 23-2400's run xp pretty damn fast with these boards. my only complaint is that it seems that some (not all) of the manuals have the dip switch settings backwards from what they are on the board. all-in-all an excellent mobo for most home and soho applications.

Jason English
Manager
Surferz.Net DBA Radical SystemZ
Greenville, NY

 

I bought the "SE"-version (with SATA) of this board for my upcoming project. No problems so far, althought I just tested that it works...