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The Best HTPC Motherboards for Your Home Theater or Gaming Setup

  1. ASRock Micro ATX DDR3 1066 Motherboard
  2. Gigabyte AM3+ AMD DDR3 1333 Micro ATX HTPC Motherboard
  3. MSI Z490-A PRO ProSeries ATX Motherboard
  4. GIGABYTE B365M DS3H Motherboard

A Home Theater Personal Computer, or HTPC, is a system built to stream media to a large television or projector as part of a home theater setup. While you can use a wide range of different motherboards for this type of rig, in general you want a board that is ideal for handling a lot of media and keeping your system running cool and quiet. Look for a motherboard with at least one good video card slot, to keep your video media playing fast and smooth. You’ll also want a ton of storage, so that you can keep as many media files as you want on your system, and options for enough RAM to keep your system running smoothly.

These HTPC motherboards can run a maximum of at least 32GB of RAM, which is more than enough for a home theater setup, though some can handle even more. They have at least one really good slot for a video card, which is sufficient for a serious media player, but if you plan on using your HTPC for gaming, then you may want to look for a board that can handle more than one video card. These boards give you at least six slots for SATA connections, which lets you have a ton of storage in your computer. Both Intel and AMD motherboards can work great for an HTPC, and these boards use chips with relatively low power requirements, which help keep your system cool without creating a lot of noise. Check out our list of the best HTPC motherboards in 2022.

Here are the best htpc motherboard of 2022

ASRock Micro ATX DDR3 1066 Motherboard - Best HTPC Motherboard Overall

There’s nothing wrong with this motherboard, but it’s just not quite as ideal as the Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H. This model has four slots for memory with support for up to 32GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM. That’s just as much maximum memory as the Intel board from Gigabyte, but the maximum speed is much lower on this model, so you’re far more limited in how fast your RAM can be with this motherboard. This model has a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, which is perfect for a fast video card. You get six SATA connections on this motherboard, which is pretty good, but nothing spectacular. The H97 chipset on this board doesn’t support overclocking while the Z97 on the Intel board from Gigabyte does, but this should still work well for many HTPC builds.

Gigabyte AM3+ AMD DDR3 1333 Micro ATX HTPC Motherboard - Runner Up

Although this is still a very good option for an HTPC motherboard, it’s just not as strong as the GA-F2A88XM-D3H from Gigabyte. This model has four memory slots and supports up to 32GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM. That’s half as much memory as the other AMD board from Gigabyte, and the maximum speed of the RAM is significantly slower with this board. You get a single PCIe 2.0 x16 slot on this board, which is perfect for a fast video card that uses the PCIe 2.0 interface, but if you want to use a PCIe 3.0 graphics card, then this motherboard won’t work for you. This board has six SATA connections, but they are 3.0Gb/s connections, rather than the 6.0Gb/s connections on other boards. You do get an IDE connector on this board, which is perfect for older hard drives that use PATA connections, so keep that in mind if you plan on using an older hard drive in your HTPC.

MSI Z490-A PRO ProSeries ATX Motherboard - Honorable Mention

While this is still a great option for a HTPC build, it’s just not as strong as some of the other models you could pick to work with an Intel CPU. This board has only two slots for memory, while many other options have four, and supports only up to 16GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM. That should be plenty of memory for a HTPC, but only having two slots limits the way in which you can set up your RAM, and makes this choice a poor option for building a powerful HTPC to also work as a gaming rig. You get one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot on this board, which works well for a solid middle-of-the-road video card, but won’t work if you want to use a PCIe 3.0 graphics card. There are only four total SATA ports on this board, two SATA3 and two SATA2 connections which is less than most other comparable boards. That limits how many hard drives you can set up with this board, so keep that in mind if you want a ton of storage.

GIGABYTE B365M DS3H Motherboard - Consider

If you prefer Intel to AMD, then this is probably the best option for you when choosing an HTPC motherboard. It has four memory slots and can support up to 32GB of 3100 DDR3 RAM, which is more than enough for a home theater rig. This model has a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, perfect for a high-performance graphics card. While that’s not ideal for building an HTPC that is also meant for playing demanding PC games, it’s perfect for streaming media or playing video and audio from a hard drive. There are six SATA connectors on this board, so you can build it with a ton of storage for your media content. The CPUs that work with this motherboard have pretty low power requirements, so you can keep your system running well without creating a lot of extra noise to keep your rig cool.

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