 |
Audio Quality
With an HTPC-oriented motherboard such as this one, the audio quality of the onboard sound card is important. To perform this test I listened to a few different tracks of varying styles on my main PC with a dedicated Asus Xonar DS sound card and then listened to the same songs on the A75-ITX and compared. The headphones used were Sennheiser HD555s.
The audio quality was generally what you can expect from onboard. Lows have less impact and highs are not as defined. Overall the sound is shallow and tinny compared to a dedicated card. Keep in mind though that these differences are not great and probably wouldn’t be noticed to the untrained ear unless listening very carefully.
Unfortunately, there is no option for an add-in sound card internally so if one feels the need for better quality, it has to be external.
WiFi
The built-in WiFi is a very neat and useful feature of this board. In an already cluttered area such as an entertainment system, the less cords there are the better. To test the WiFi I moved the computer to the other side of my house and tested internet speed as well as streaming movies. The router was approximately 40 feet from the PC with 4 solid walls in between them.
The PC displayed that it was getting 3 out of 5 bars and showed no drop in internet speed with a 15Mbps connection. Streaming videos showed no difference from a wired connection.
The results were good. The wireless was recognized instantly with no set up aside from drivers and was just as fast as a wired connection in my home.
Bluetooth
Another neat feature of this motherboard is its bluetooth compatibility. My phone found the computer and was connected quickly once bluetooth was turned on.
The main benefit I could see from this is being able to connect bluetooth devices such as a keyboard and mouse with no need for a receiver.
Overclocking
One slight disappointment that I experienced with this board is its lack of overclocking features. It would have been nice to have at least a little room to play with the CPU speed. There were however some RAM overclocking options. Speed could be adjusted in large increments (1066, 1333, 1600, etc.) and timing could be adjusted. Not having overclocking options was to be expected somewhat though seeing as this a very small board aimed at the HTPC sector, not performance and therefore this can not really be held against it.
[…] TechwareLabs […]