Now I'm thinking of building an htpc, and having it dual as a home server, my biggest question really is, what kind of graphics card should I use to hook up to my tv, and even more importantly, how do i hook up the sound? This is probably a stupid question but oh well, gpu's dont usually output sound
What TV do you have and will it be hooked up directly or through a receiver first? What kind of video do you play? What's your budget?
There are some very good motherboards these days with integrated 8200 graphics. These support HD and I should imagine most will support a connection to a SDTV through use of an adapter on a VGA port. If you use integrated gpu and sound then you can make the htpc much smaller and quieter, ie living room friendly. It all really depends on what you are hooking up to and what qualities you would like. I have my htpc outputting through s-video to an old SD widescreen CRT TV and the sound is just a 2ch feed - both connect at the TV end through a SCART adapter. If I had the money I'd love to go HD on a 32" LCD and get a good set of multi input 5.1 speakers.
If you really need a sound card and GPU I'd go for the Asus Xonar II and Asus 9400GT respectively, purely because the latter is silent and Asus soundcards seem to be popular at the moment
well I have a small crt tv at the moment, will be stepping upto a 32" lcd in the future. I mostly play tv shows and movies through the computer, since I'm never around when its on tv, and budget is what I make it, I'd prefer to keep it under 1500 usd, but thats negotiable Also, it will most likely be hooked up through my comcast box first, but I can go either way with that as well. Thanks guys, I will look into those mobo's at the asus gear.
An Asus Xonar HDAV1.3 would be insteresting. Dunno how useful it'd be or if it has a ridiculous price, though.
