Motherboards

[doubledose]

Anyone have recomendations on new mother boards with 5 pci slots? Seams like these are getting very hard to find. Everything is going pci express. Would like to stay with intell chipset. Need the 5 pci slots for my tuner cards. Also how many usb tuners can you put on a system?

[tenax]

having just researched new mobo options, i couldn't find one with 5 slots anymore period. the closest i came was 4 slots with an intel chipset..a biostar board with mixed reviews, a crappy manual and lousy bios support..and a very inexpensive, great board if you're not concerned about overclocking is the asrock dual 775 vsta (which i currently use and it's rock solid for the past 8 months) the lack of boards with more than 2 pci slots is becoming an issue though for those who want multiple tuners, no question, especially with many pci-e aftermarket cooling solutions like my zalman 900 which ends up taking up the pci-e slot beside it.

the asrock is dirt cheap too and they've had decent bios support since day one. and you can search and find many users who can help on anything you need with it. it takes either ddr2 or ddr1 memory, agp or pci-e vid card. it was meant to be a transition board and that's exactly what i bought it for..slowly but surely i've switched components over from agp to pci-e, just about to switch from ddr1 to ddr2. only knocks on it that some have is..it won't be a huge overclocker (not that i myself want that for a pvr system. give me stability anyday and this has it!) and that it uses a via chipset, albeit one of the best available in my mind. i've had many via chipsets with no problems. i also like it because in addition to sata drive plugs, it still has 2 ide slots...which is becoming very rare as well. most boards these days are coming with one..you can likely buy the asrock for a paltry 50-55 u.s. if you aren't familiar with the name, asrock is the "value" company owned by asus. they made a diamond in the rough with this board..less money than the crappy biostar product, way better support and components!


otherwise, there are a few msi boards available if you search their website..a lot of 3 slot boards..not sure about 4..that's pretty much it. asus and gigabyte both have a decent selection of 3 slot boards as well, but 2 is becoming the rule of thumb..one day, that'll likely be one! i've had 2 msi boards and find them to be crappy overclockers, but great stable boards. if they had a 4 slot one available with 2 ide slots, i'd grab one because i loved the 2 i had before so much. actually, if i bought a neo 2 board like i had in my old computer that i gave to my wife and kids, that would work..except i'd have to go back to an A64 processor..no thanks too hot for a pvr system in my books. i love my core 2 duo

[fje00]

Check out this sticky thread over on avsforum.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=710828

It was started back in Aug 06, and is still active. At over 150 posts long it's not exactly a quick read, but it looks to have some excellent discussion of mamaboards for htpc.

[ClamsTheCat]

You aren't going to find recent chipset mobos with 5 pci slots. Maybe 4 tops. 3 is the tops if you want SLI for dual video. Same problem with the IDE if you have a lot of IDE HDDs. I had to get a SATA DVD burner because I only had 2 IDE drive capacity on my new board.

I could have sworn I saw some OTA HD cards for PCI express though.

[pcdocstl]

I have just upgraded my BTV system using the asrock dual 775 vsta with an 805D and 2x512 DDR2 800 RAM in dual channel mode. I have not installed BTV yet but ran into an issue with IRQ sharing on this board (I'm a stickler for proper IRQ routing). My PVR500MCE would share an IRQ with other devices on this motherboard as follows:

Slot 1: shared IRQ with HD AUDIO
Slot 2: NO SHARED IRQ's!
Slot 3: shared IRQ with AGP Slot
Slot 4: shared with USB device. NOTE: Cannot install PVR500 or it's daughter card in this slot (4) due to a tall capacitor.

PLEASE NOTE! PCI Slot 1 is INACCESSABLE if you use a PCIe video card!
This board has been great simply for the fact that I can use my old AGP card, DDR400 RAM (which is not much slower than my DDR2800 running at 667Mhz), and get 2 SATA1 + 2 PATA drive ports! The only thing this board is missing is PCIe 16x (it only has PCIe 4x) and built on firewire. Bottom line is this board is CHEAP and coupled with an equally cheap 805D is a stunning performer. Will get back to you on BTV use, I am loading it from scratch this weekend.

[tenax]

i agree with all points made by pc except the comment about pci slot 1 not being useable if you have a pci-e card. i've used both a 6600 gt oc from bfg and now a 7900gs oc from bfg and slot 1 on this mobo. while there's not much of a gap between the stock fan, shroud and the back of the card, most stock fan pci-e nvidia cards 7900 and down will fit.and cool fine....even though there's not much gap. pci 1 is definitely not available if you're using aftermarket and most reviews will mention that with most aftermarket solutions. i've just switched from 1 gig ddr400 to 2 gigs ddr2 667 memory, have the memory overclocked to 700 and it's working dandy. (fsb 280 as this board sucks for big overclocking especially with ddr2) temp is 41C for the cpu and 32 for the case at idle, 34 for the case and 45 for the cpu at full-load. (silverstone L20-M case) gpu 46 at full load with a zalman 900.

[pcdocstl]

Originally Posted by tenax

i agree with all points made by pc except the comment about pci slot 1 not being useable if you have a pci-e card. i've used both a 6600 gt oc from bfg and now a 7900gs oc from bfg and slot 1 on this mobo. while there's not much of a gap between the stock fan, shroud and the back of the card, most stock fan pci-e nvidia cards 7900 and down will fit.and cool fine....even though there's not much gap. pci 1 is definitely not available if you're using aftermarket and most reviews will mention that with most aftermarket solutions. i've just switched from 1 gig ddr400 to 2 gigs ddr2 667 memory, have the memory overclocked to 700 and it's working dandy. (fsb 280 as this board sucks for big overclocking especially with ddr2) temp is 41C for the cpu and 32 for the case at idle, 34 for the case and 45 for the cpu at full-load. (silverstone L20-M case) gpu 46 at full load with a zalman 900.

I stand corrected! I havn't tried a PCIe card on this MOBO but it looked pretty hairy . Tenax, I would like to know your impression of this MOBO using BTV since I am ready to rip through this thing this weekend. Sorry if this may be a little off topic.

[tenax]

no problem this motherboard rocks at the price..i've been running btv 4. on it with no issues since june..i've run it with ide drives, onboard and usb..and now an sata drive (750 gigs of space total..one ide, one sata and one enclosure usb2 hd) the only problem i had was not related to this motherboard..it was a hauppauge usb2 tuner..it sucked with my former msi neo board and sucked with this board as well. (would go undetected on and off) i'm running 2 pvr-150 hauppauge tuners in it since early january and zero issues at all with btv..no stutters or anything..the only thing i can't speak to on the board is the sound as i use an add on bluegears enspire dd live/dts encode/decode soundcard. relative to btv, the only thing i don't use on it is it's internal playback software. i prefer the quality of theatertek to any other software i've tried for dvd or recorded show playback. i would suggest that you don't use any newer bios than 2.1..some of the options are disabled in newer version. i myself am running 1.9 as it works just fine and nothing i've seen later adds any features that interest me hope that helps.

[Joe The Dude]

Is anyone running four PVR-500's in the 775 dual vsta?

I'm asking because when I tried that, the pc would reboot itself every 30 minutes or so if it was recording something, or if live tv was left on a single channel for longer than 20 minutes.

[myktek]

Originally Posted by Joe The Dude

Is anyone running four PVR-500's in the 775 dual vsta?

I'm asking because when I tried that, the pc would reboot itself every 30 minutes or so if it was recording something, or if live tv was left on a single channel for longer than 20 minutes.

newegg just delivered my Asrock 775Dual VSTA yesterday....hehehe

[DClarkBTV]

You will need to be more specific on what processor you want to use, memory type (DDR, DDR2), video card, hard drives, etc.

When searching for my recent BeyondTV server, I could only find 4 PCI slots on a board with Conroe support. A good example is the Asrock Dual 775 if you want to use older DDR memory and/or AGP video, while still being able to use DDR2 and PCIe video.

My server sits in a utility room connected to 3 DirecTv boxes using serial connectors and a small outdoor HDTV antenna that feed BTV Link computers around the house. I built my server using:

MSI 945P Neo3-F (4 PCI slots)
Intel Core2Duo E6600
4 GB (4 x 1GB) OCZ 5-5-5-15 Memory
1 x 160GB WD System Drive
3 x 500GB Seagate SATA2 HDD (Raid 0)
2 x PVR-150 Tuner
1 x PVR-250 Tuner
1 x ATI HDTV Wonder
ATI x700 PCIe Video
2 x USB-to-Serial Port Adapter

I wouldn't put more than 3 USB tuners on, but it depends on if they are HDTV and what quality settings you use. The bandwidth from 3 high quality HDTV feeds plus the CPU overhead for controlling the USB bus plus the software encoding of an HDTV signal would probably come close to overwhelming the USB bus and the CPU. I don't have exact MB/s figures tho.

[mapleleaf]

I have purchased two ASUS P5P800 (775) boards with 5 PCI slots. They are bit older but ideal for my purposes + SPDIF out on board. It took me a little while to find a store that still had them in stock. My BTVs are rock solid, could not be happier. Couple of retailers told me to never get ASRock since they have many returns with them…

[cannen]

This board looks pretty awesome.

It has:
- eSATA.
- 4 3Gb/s SATA
- Gigabit NIC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157096

[pcdocstl]

Originally Posted by Joe The Dude

Is anyone running four PVR-500's in the 775 dual vsta?

I'm asking because when I tried that, the pc would reboot itself every 30 minutes or so if it was recording something, or if live tv was left on a single channel for longer than 20 minutes.

I am having the same problem with only 1 pvr500mce and firewire card. pvr500 will not work at all in slot 2 or 3, will work for 30 min or so in slot 1 with firewire card in slot 2, will work for 30 min to 4 hours in slot 1 with no card in any other slot. Bottom line it reboots the machine at odd but somewhat predictable times. This is a clean build and I am removing btv and using hcwclear.exe prior to pvr500 slot changes and reinstalling both from scratch. I will do more testing in the next few days and will repost in a new thread in the BTV troubleshooting section.

[ClamsTheCat]

Originally Posted by cannen

This board looks pretty awesome.

It has:
- eSATA.
- 4 3Gb/s SATA
- Gigabit NIC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157096

Features look neat, but look at he brand....