If you want to build your own HTPC media center computer or buy a ready one. This article is for you. I will reveal how to build a great energy efficient media center that will be able to play Full HD movies... The main key to build good media center is a choice of good computer motherboard. What can sound strange for you it is not about the strongest possible CPU. When you choose a motherboard you should carefully watch out on two things.
Most important is...
Most important thing when choosing a sufficient motherboard for your mini media center is video hardware acceleration. You should carefully watch on it. Currently the best available on market video acceleration chipset is released by NVIDIA ION and ION 2. This GPU is able to play Full HD movies without any usage of your computer CPU! It is why you really need it! Your computer may be doing other tasks while you are watching movies!
It should be energy efficient!
It should be energy efficient computer. It is why it would be very bad idea to buy a motherboard without GPU and add external card. Moreover you should make sure that your mainboard is not consuming to much energy. Both of this elements are pointing to choose a motherboard in Mini-ITX format!
So what to choose...?
I would strongly suggest choosing a barebone nettop that can be easily expanded. The one that I want recommend is ION powered and is ideal choice to play a full hd movies. The heart of this nettop is energy efficient Mini-ITX motherboard from ZOTAC. If you are a person that do not feel like building a computer from scratch the best choice for you would be Zotac MAG. It is available in two versions. Fanless with single core CPU and dual core Atom for even bigger performance in multimedia usage. MAG needs only HDD and memory to be added. It is a perfect choice for your HTPC!
This post has been written by Chris Kreci, the author of Mini Motherboard blog that is writing daily about Mini-ITX and HTPC solutions.
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