Universal abit`s been through some rough times but they`re bouncing back. Today we take a look at an AM2 board that`s designed for HTPC people in mind. Since I`ve built a few HTPC machines in my days I was pretty interested to see what abit has in store so with that here`s my take of the NF-M2 nView motherboard.

The mATX board from universal abit is a socket M2 motherboard that supports AMD AM2 processors. For the northbridge, this board contains the GF6150. The southbridge chipset is the nForce 430 The small size of the mATX lends itself to HTPCs as this motherboard is marketed towards.



The layout of the board is pretty good and contains a lot of features. Something that I really like is that the board has four DIMM slots for memory. That should give you plenty of memory expansion room. They are also color coded so you can easily tell which slots to put your memory in for dual channel access. Area around the CPU isn`t bad so you should be able to put on some nice silent coolers. The CPU power connect is nicely placed on near the top outer edge for easy access. So many other boards I`ve encountered had this connection more in the middle but the NF-M2 nView`s CPU power connector sits in an easy to reach area. Color wise, it features a nice mix of blue and black.

There`s one PCI-E X16 slot for you to upgrade to another video card as well as one PCI-E X1 and two PCI slots. The PCI-E slot utilizes my favorite current design in a retention clip. The push button clip is located on the outer edge of the PCI-E slot and does not sit underneath the video card like in most motherboards. This makes accessing the clip a lot easier and I was able to easily pop cards in and out of the motherboard without using a pair of tweezers to flip the clip. I hope more motherboards use this new design as it`s a lot simpler and easier on the hands than the normal retention clip. With the included sound and GiG-E network card, you can fill up the PCI slots with TV tuner cards. In my setup, I have one Hauppauge dual tuner card as well as ATI`s HDTV Wonder for OTA HD TV. With those two in the system, you`re pretty much left with nothing left until more products come out using the PCI-E X1 slot. This is a mATX board so real estate is a premium. With that, the two PCI slots should be good for most people who aren`t building monster machines such as a Hydra like HTPC.

Besides video, sound is very important when setting up a good HTPC system. For the NF-M2, the motherboard supports 7.1 surround sound. There are both connections via digital S/PDIF and mini jacks giving you the flexbility to connect a few speaker setups to it. If you have, for example, the Logitech Z-5500`s then you`ll be well off connecting the motherboard to the speakers via the S/PDIF as it`s just one cable. Lower end speakers will have the 1/8" plugs that the NF-M2 nView can take advantage as well. Most receivers have S/PDIF connections and this motherboard will accommodate those pretty nicely. I personally have all my HTPC connections to my receiver this way.

If you don`t have a video card supporting PureVideo, you can use the onboard video of the NF-M2. While it`s nothing that will blow your socks off, the onboard video should be sufficient for most of your video needs. It doesn`t have HDCP compatibility so there`s one reason you would need different video card down the road but other than that the onboard video will display beautifully on an HD TV while saving you power and sound over plugging in another video card. Less heat generated from an add-on video card equals a cooler HTPC and the NF-M2 onboard video is a great included option. There are two connectors here, one for VGA and one for DVI so that you can get dual monitors out of this one board without an additional video card. If you have a setup like mine, I have a DV...