[H]ardNews 7th Edition

ASUS A8V Deluxe:

The team at the Tech Report have the ASUS A8V Deluxe on the test bench in their self described “benchmarking sweatshop”. Though the TR review staff had a few minor concerns about the board, overall they felt it was a good bargain. You can see our recent review of the A8V here for comparison purposes.

The A8V Deluxe's street price hovers around $140, which is a pretty incredible deal, all things considered. With 8-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11g Wi-Fi, Firewire, support for four Serial ATA and six ATA devices, and plenty of RAID options, the A8V Deluxe is a steal.

ASUS Extreme AX600XT/HTVD:

If you are building a new HTPC box this ASUS Extreme AX600XT/HTVD PCI-Express card can do decent gaming, has ViVo capabilities and has HDTV support built right in.

ASUS put together a comprehensive packaging that covers a wide audience, depending on what you need. For gamers, the ASUS Extreme AX600XT/HTVD provides very good performance with many of today's popular titles, without sacrificing image quality in doing so.

Gigabyte 8TRS350MT:

Speaking of HTPCs, the Radeon 9100 Pro IGP powered Gigabyte 8TRS350MT motherboard with its TV-out and 5.1 sound would be a good candidate for a slim-line entertainment PC.

Gigabyte have done a fantastic job putting this board together. The board not only looks great, but for a uATX board the layout could not get much neater. It is good to see Gigabyte being quick to support this ATi chipset, although the adoption would only seem natural given the two companies relationships.