ASUS M3A-H/HDMI Full ATX Motherboard

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Hi All,

Have been visiting this site as a guest for some time now and have finally decided to join.

I am currently building my first dedicated Media PC and have been looking at this http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...29&modelmenu=1
as the motherboard for my setup. There are only a handful of sites in Australia that stock this MB at the moment.

Was wondering if anyone has had the opportunity to try this board and if it is any good.

Reason for going Full ATX is that I have a Thermaltake DH 101 case and the extra PCI slots will allow for some future expansion.

Regards,
Paul

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Ok, well I decided to get the Asus M3A-H HDMI and an AMD 4850e CPU.

I installed the motherboard in a Thermaltake DH-101 Case with 1 x 160 Gb sata2 and 2 x 1Tb sata2 drives, 2gb DDR2 ram, WinTV 150 MCE tuner card and a 450W power supply.

The case fans are quiet enough to not be heard during movie playback.

Installed the operating system and drivers without any problems. The bios gives plenty of options to choose from and has been stable so far.

Installed 1 x LG Blu-ray/ HD-DVD combo drive with Cyberlink software, also installed ffdshow to allow playback of different media formats other than mpeg-2.

Plugged HDMI to my Pioneer amplifier which picked it up straight away, audio is run via digital rca out. Getting both video to screen and audio to amp with no problems.

Using a Harmony 880 remote to control the media center, works great.

I still have some things such as setting up the PVR and getting MCE to play Blu-ray without having to minimise and run PowerDVD.

Overall am happy with this setup.

Paul.

[getafix]

Welcome to the forums.

I am looking at this exact motherboard as the new AMD chipset seems to be excellent. Where did you get it from and at what price?

Cheers
G

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Hi Getafix,

Sorry to take so long to reply. I ordered this board from Austin Computers in WA because at the time they were the only ones who stocked it. I noticed too that the price has dropped to $119.00 ex postage.

Have been very happy with this board so far no real problems except for the instant on feature that played up a little so I have disabled it in bios (comes factory disabled).
Besides that its a nice quiet, cool and stable board

Heres a link to Austin Computers site but it pays to look around u may find a better deal elsewhere. http://www.austin.net.au/ProductList...9/Default.aspx


Regards,

Paul.

[nayfen]

hi be gentle first post

got the same board as well. had been looking for an upgrade board for a while and heard that it was comming out. had it month or so. money well spent (umart)
running a 8650 cpu,
4g 1066mhz ram,
1x 750Gb samsung sata 2
hd 2 x 80Gb hds,
LG blu-ray,
antec 380w psu
sliverstone LC17 case.
I use hdmi to my pana 42" plasma. great picture espically blu-ray

my box isn't silent but quieter than expected. 5 fans (1x cpu, 2x case 1x psu & 1x hd caddy

still stuffing around with the leadtek 1000s tunner. need to fix up reception. loose channel 10 after 6:00pm every night

nayfen

[getafix]

Thanks for the replies

I have decided on get the Giga-Byte GA-MA78GM-S2H. I cannot get this board in South Africa, but fortunately I have family in Brisbane (I was there last year, great place) and my mom is coming back in two weeks and is bringing me one of those.

I have also ordered the Phenom 9750 CPU (locally)

Cheers
G

[j_maxwell]

Hi, I have just setup a media centre with a ASUS M3A-H HDMI MB. I have 2 issues which I have no idea how to fix (latest drivers are installed and catalyst 8.6).

1. If I turn the pc on with the tv set to the HDMI input it displays fine, however if I change the tv to any other input, then change back to hdmi (pc), its a blank screen... (its not the tv cause I've tested it with a PS3 and the pc isnt asleep of anything because I have vnc into it and use it fine - just wont display)


2. The coax sound output on the board wont pass any signal. As the pc is booting my amp detects the port, but once windows takes over no signal. The drivers are installed and the sound is set to the AC97 ports.


Two very weird things that I have spent hours trying to sort out.... Anyone have any suggestions...

Thanks guys

[GarryL]

Originally Posted by j_maxwell

Hi, I have just setup a media centre with a ASUS M3A-H HDMI MB. I have 2 issues which I have no idea how to fix (latest drivers are installed and catalyst 8.6).

1. If I turn the pc on with the tv set to the HDMI input it displays fine, however if I change the tv to any other input, then change back to hdmi (pc), its a blank screen... (its not the tv cause I've tested it with a PS3 and the pc isnt asleep of anything because I have vnc into it and use it fine - just wont display)


2. The coax sound output on the board wont pass any signal. As the pc is booting my amp detects the port, but once windows takes over no signal. The drivers are installed and the sound is set to the AC97 ports.


Two very weird things that I have spent hours trying to sort out.... Anyone have any suggestions...

Thanks guys

I am no expert, but here are my experiences:

I have an older (bought Jan 07) MB: Gigabyte GA-945GMF-S2. I have SPDIF connected to my amp. In Jul 08, I installed a new VGA card: ASUS EAH2600XT-HDTP; this uses an AMD chipset & has 2 DVI sockets & is connected to my TV via HDMI.

1. If I connect a monitor as well, only one display works; it seems to depend on which DVI socket is used. This is not usually a problem.

2. AroundJul 08, I lost all sound; it seems like a similar experience to yours.

My PC has some s/w by Realtek for audio. I have disconnected my PC from the TV & amp & set it up on a desk with 2 simple PC speakers. I still don't get any sound, even just using the Realtek test output signal.

However, I also have the Linux Ubuntu OS installed on ths PC. When I play a recorded TV program, using VLC, I do get sound.

On another approach, if I play a recorded TV program, using VLC, on the XP OS (with the amp & TV connected), & set the audio to SPDIF, I get a horrible, loud, buzzing noise from the speakers attached to the amp.

I did wonder whether the HDMI cable may have affected the sound, but the desk-top check was done without that.

I would be interested to know whether you have had any success with your problems.

Regards, Garry.