Server motherboard for HTPC?

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Metaluna

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Dec 30, 2010
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Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but assuming I added a decent video card, how well would a Supermicro X8SIA-F work for light HTPC duty?

For reasons I won't bore anyone with, I have in my possession an X8SIA-F (3420 chipset), Xeon X3440 with 8GB ECC that is currently grossly underutilized. I have OpenIndiana on it and use it as a backup server to rsync over the contents of my main server, which I generally only do every few weeks. However, when I'm working down in the basement it would be nice if I could dual-boot into Windows or Linux and play some videos. I already have a cheapo monitor down there with HDMI input and an audio passthrough/output jack, so if I get a video card that supports HDMI audio will that be sufficient, or do I need a soundcard as well?

Also, are there any virtualization platforms out there that would allow me to do something like this without dual-booting? I don't know if ESXi 5.0 allows hardware passthrough of video cards.
 
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mobilenvidia

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Sep 25, 2011
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Get some thing like a nVidia GT430 card.
Zotac make them from PCI (I have one of these in my Xeon X3470 system) all the way to a 4GB model as well and a low profile version as well.
The GT 430 is a good card that's not a slouch or over the top, should play media just fine.

But I'm thinking the passive cooled version might be of interest ZOTAC GeForce® GT 430 ZONE Edition
It has dual DVI, HDMI (with audio) and a Display port to boot as well.
96x Cuda cores 1GB RAM

Then you can wonder over to my domain (laptopvideo2go.com) and get drivers and support :)
 
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Metaluna

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Thanks for the pointers. Asus also has a passive low profile GT520 that I've been looking at as well. Much weaker GPU but low power consumption and possibly a newer video decode engine?
 
Patrick

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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My theory on this stuff is that you should build once then let it be. Otherwise you end up spending a bunch of money in the upgrade process.
 
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mobilenvidia

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The GT430 should be plenty for now, when 2560x1600 becomes standard look at it again.
You could wait for ever for newer better HW, the GT830 should be even better ;)
 
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Metaluna

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FYI, I ended up getting a PNY brand GT 430, which I was able to get for $40 from Best Buy due to some gift cards I had laying around. Very nice card and works great with the X8SIA-F and Windows 7.

A couple of things I discovered:

The motherboard doesn't seem to allow both the IPMI video controller and the external GPU to be active at the same time, so no more KVM-over-IP when this card is plugged in. You switch between them by changing which card gets initialized first in the BIOS PCIe configuration screen.

One thing I found when shopping around for these GT 430 cards that a lot of them (such as the PNY and Galaxy models from Best Buy) are billed as single-slot width cards. But they actually have heatsinks wide enough to cover about half the adjacent slot, rendering it unuseable. On consumer motherboards, often they will stick a PCIe 1x, PCI, or other low-value slot there with the expectation that it will be blocked. But on server boards like the X8SIA and X8SIL, this space is occupied by a high-value 8x slot. Fortunately the X8SIA has two such slots, so I just used the next one over, but on the X8SIL you would be out of luck. The only other physical 8x slot on that board comes off the southbridge and only has 4 lanes at PCIe 1.0 speed (2.5 GT/s). Would not have been a problem in my case since I don't need very high performance out of my LSI SAS2008 card but might be an issue for some people.
 
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mobilenvidia

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Is you PNY a fanned model or passive.
My Zotac GT 430 being passive fits inside its PCIe slot without encroaching on its neighbour.

I've just bought the very first item to base my HTPC build on, details to follow.
 
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mobilenvidia

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Yes thats quite a chunky Heatsink on there, at least you'll know it's going to stay cool.

I'll probably see if can get a passive GT 430 in low profile.
The GT 430 is still the best card for this
In the 600 series only the GT 610 gets low profile at this pont
 
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