Hi folks,

I'm embarking on my first HTPC-project, building everything from scratch. I've had a look at the following mainboard, Biostar P4M80-M4, the price seems more than right and I would like to have quite a small system. I'm throwing in a separate graphics card (CLUB 3D GF 5200 AGP 128M VGA+DVI+TV) and, naturally, a digi-TV tuner card (TechniSat AirStar 2 DVB-T PCI). These should be Linux-compatible. I'll probably get me a separate sound card as well, but haven't yet decided on which.

I'll probably use VDR, but might select MythTV - haven't yet made any final decisions. The distro is also open...Ubuntu or Debian are the first choices.

Now, I don't have any previous experience with the mATX-motherboards (nor with HTPC:s!). So, my questions are:

1) Would this be a good choice for a mainboard? And if it isn't, which one would *you* choose?!

2) Any suggestions for the processor? I've understood that anything between 1GHz and 2GHz is just fine when running a HTPC (I won't do any HDTV or other heavy graphics crunching).

3) Memory? Again, I've understood that 1GHz should be fine.

4) The mainboard seems to have an integrated graphics card - I hope/presume this won't cause any problems with an added card.

Grateful for any comments or suggestions.

Have a nice one.

Zup

1) I see no reason that you can't use this board. Most PVR machines use mATX
2) The norm (among my friends) is around 1.5GHz. The geeks using multiple tuners use 2GHz or more.
3) I don't know anyone using more than 512MB.
4) Just disable it in the BIOS. Normally the settings says something like "VGA BOOT FROM" and then you select AGP,PCI, or ONBOARD.


--EDIT--
Use a good hard drive. 7200RPM with a decent amount of cache.