ABIT AN-M2 - motherboard - micro ATX - GeForce 7025 > Reviews > Excellent HTPC Motherboard

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Stability	Very stable
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Cheap, Up to date, Loads of functions and features
Disadvantages:	Onboard Graphic uses sytem memory

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I brought this motherborad for my custom built media centre pc about 3 months ago the specs are:

CPU
- Designed for AMD® Socket AM2 Processors with 2000M T/s system bus using Hyper Transport Technology
- AMD® Cool 'n' Quiet Technology

Chipset
- NVIDIA® GeForce®7050PV/nForce 630a
- Dual Head Display Controller Full NVIDIA nView multi-display technology capability, with independent display controllers for one digital HDTV and one analog monitor.

Memory
- 4 X 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. memory capacity 8GB
- Supports Dual Channel DDR2 800 un-buffered ECC / Non-ECC memory

HDMI
- Integrated TMDS interface with HDCP key

Graphics
- Integrated GeForce7 Series Shader model 3.0 DirectX9 graphics
- Programmable PureVideo HD Video Processor

LAN
- Gigabit Ethernet (Marvell 88E1116)

Audio
- On board 7.1 CH HD Audio CODEC (Realtek ALC888)
- Auto Jack Sensing and optical S/P DIF Out

IEEE 1394
- Supports 2 Ports IEEE 1394 at 400Mb/s transfer rate (Texas Instruments Chip)

Serial ATA
- 4 x SATA (RAID) 3 Gb/s
- Supports SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD

Internal I/O
- 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88M B
- 1 x Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33 IDE Connector
- 4 x USB 2.0 header (support 8 ports)
- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connector
- 1 x IEEE1394 header
- 1 x S/P DIF Out header

Expansion Slots
- 1 x PCI-E X16
- 1 x PCI-E X1
- 2 x PCI

Back Panel I/O
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
- 7.1 CH HD Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
- 4 x USB2.0, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector, 1 x 1394
- 1 x HDMI, 1 x D-Sub, 1 x S/P DIF Out

Form Factor
- mATX form factor 244 x 244 mm
- PCB Color: Blue

RoHS
- 100% lead-free process and RoHS compliant

This motherboard is a very good cheap solution to a new pc or and upgrade. Abit have very good software and hardware and are a company you should trust i have been purchasing from abit for ages and i have never had any problems.

If you are wanting to build a decent stable and long lasting Media cnetre PC, then the abit AN-M2HD motherboard is a good purchase it sells for about £40-£50.

Inside the box you find:
4x Locking SATA cables
The backing plat
1x abit driver CD
1x HDMI to DVI cable
1x PCI bracket with FireWire (small and large) and two USB connectors
1x floppy disc cable
1x IDE cable
1x Abit AN-M2HD

To bring power to this motherboard, you'll need a 24 pin ATX plug, and a 4 pin plug. Both of these sockets on the board are near the top.

The only down side i found with this Motherboard is that the onbord grphics uses sytem memory which is annoying and may slow it down.