Over the past year a quiet revolution has been going on in the motherboard world. The Micro ATX form factor has always been tainted by the inevitability that it would be an all-in-one solution delivering average but stable performance for business use. Now, thanks in a big part to NVIDIA’s nForce2 chipset, there are Micro ATX boards that rival their big brothers in terms of performance and features.
Besides boring business use, the biggest potential market for Micro ATX is home theatre. We’ve already seen numerous home theatre PC cases that only support Micro ATX motherboards and until now we’ve been unable to find such a board that includes TV-out.
Albatron has also seen the gap in the market and as such is one of the first manufacturers to leap in with TV-out support via a blanking plate for its KM18G Pro board. By taking this one, admittedly small, step Albatron has turned a decent mobo into a great one for home theatre use.
Our testing of this board was not focused on performance; BIOSes for Micro ATX boards are almost invariably lack the advanced tweaking features seen in full-sized ATX mobos. The board still keeps pace with its bigger brothers, but we focused on features and functionality.
And it rocks. The nForce2 chipset delivers all the capabilities you need to get a decent home theatre PC happening, with quality video and audio. It provides a solid foundation and unlike Mini ITX boards and barebones units, it has three PCI slots, enough space for TV-tuner cards and other home theatre essentials.
Congratulations to Albatron for looking at this segment of the market and adding the functionality that was sorely lacking. If you want a cheap, powerful board to build a home theatre box then the KM18G Pro is one of the best motherboards available.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012