Help me pick out a motherboard for hybrid core

[jondecker76]

I am looking for a good working core motherboard to build my system around. What I would like (in order of importance):

1) Intel Quad Core CPU chipset (the 2.4ghz quads are just barely over $200!)
2) PCI slots - its getting hard to find good mobo's with lots of PCI slots! I'm figuring I'll need 2 for NICs, 2 for tuner cards, and a couple extras would be nice
3) 4 sata ports (1 for system disk, 3 for raid5 storage)
4) esata port (for later storage expansion)
5) Onboard gigabit ethernet (dual gigabit ethernets a huge plus)


I want to be able to stream to 5 MD's and leave some headroom yet for future expansion..


any suggestions?

[forumworx]

I'm in the same boat.

I Plan on having 2 DVB-s Tuner cards and 1-2 ATSC Tuners.

I want to be able to capture 1-2 streams simultaneously and stream other stored content to 1-2 MDs.

I'd like extra PCI or PCIe slots, the more the better.

Can't wait ti hear some suggestions, I've been scouring the net but can't find something I like.

[forumworx]

Here's another interesting note.

How about adding a PCI riser card?

There are risers out there that will give you 3 slots.

There are also risers that provide 3 PCI slots behind a bridge, which seems like a foolproof approach.

So if you get a mATX board with 2 PCI slots, add 2 risers and you can have 6 PCI slots.

ANy thoughts from the hardware gurus would be appreciated.

[jondecker76]

Wow, I was unaware that you could extend the number of PCI slots with a riser card (or any card for that matter). If we can find out for sure if this is true - it would make selecting a mother board so much easier!

[MediaMonkey]

I am not sure if you can add multiple (e.g., two each) PCI cards on riser boards attached to two adjacent PCI slots.
I went with AMD, so it is not entirely what you are looking for. The specs are:

Motherboard: Foxconn N570SM2AA-8EKRS2H
             (which is same as this Newegg item)
             (has two Network connections - one for Internet from my home network and the other connected to an 8 port switch for a separate media network)
Video Card : ASUS EN6200LE
CPU        : AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz
RAM        : 2GB DDR2-800
Harddisk   : 500 GB SATA-300
Drives     : DVD drive/writer
External Dr: Sony XL1B3
InputDevice: Media center compatible Keyboard/Mouse combination
             (BTC 9019URF)
           : Gyro Mouse
           : Gyro Remote (not yet connected)
IR Remote  : USB-UIRT
           : Microsoft Windows XP Remote
OTA TVTuner: ATI HDTV Wonder (unable to get sound - not sure if it is compatible)
           : HDHomeRun (not yet installed)

Media Director ======
In my testing setup I am using an old motherboard with minimum configuration as MD. 

Motherboard : Intel D815EGEW with built in Video/Network/Audio
CPU         : P3 1 GHz 
Memory      : 256MB SDRAM 
(Power consumption of this setup is only about 40W or so. 
I will use similar configuration for all my MD where I don't much processing power like music players. 
Beefed up MDs are required only to decode HD contents)

I decided on external TV tuner because it won't take up PCI slots or system resources. Not sure if you need much processing power in the core, if you are not using it as MD. As far as I know, MDs uses its own resources to decode HD contents and all that. So that means even if you are going to have core/MD hybrid, still the processing power required won't be too high. I am also very new to LMCE so take my advice with a pinch of salt!

[forumworx]

I am not sure if you can add multiple (e.g., two each) PCI cards on riser boards attached to two adjacent PCI slots.

Yup they have versions that would be right facing and others would face left.

All depends on if there is space on the motherboard, ie. parallel headers and stuff like that.

[fibres]

Any info on a reliable board to use an intel quad core chip would be great.

Im currently using an amd board but would love to upgrade to intel quad core.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards

[1audio]

There won't be a lot of benefit to a faster processor on the core past a certain level. And i reclaimed 1 GB of the 2 GB of ram from my core when I could never see it being used. And saw no down side when it was removed. The real benefit of the bigger board is more slots. You can get dual nic's on some MB's which can save a slot. I use an external tuner so the slots don't make a difference to me. I tried an M2N-E MB and it worked fine but I decided it would be more useful to me as a desktop computer. More power helps decoding video- but once you are there excess doesn't do much for you. Save the money and use it for more things like light modules or extra tuners.