A Look AMD's Maui Home Theater PC Platform

A Look AMD's Maui Home Theater PC Platform - HotHardware

AMD Maui Home Theater PC: A Cutting-Edge Entertainment System

In this article, we'll take a closer look at the AMD Maui home theater PC, a cutting-edge entertainment system that combines advanced technology with a sleek and powerful design. This system is built around the MSI Media Live Diva 5.1 motherboard, which features an integrated DX10 Radeon graphics core and supports the latest in HD video processing.

The motherboard also boasts an integrated inter-cell D-to-Audio DA3 chip, which provides a built-in 100-watt 4-channel 5.1 amplifier. This means that users can connect standard speakers directly to the system without needing a separate amplifier, making it an ideal solution for home theater setups. However, for those who prefer to use higher-end amplifiers or need more channels, a 7.1 channel preamp card is also available as an option.

At the heart of the AMD Maui home theater PC is the AMD Phenom X4 9350 ECP processor, which is cooled by a low-profile silent flux CPU cooler. This cooler uses an evaporator chamber and tubes filled with liquid coolant to cool the CPU, making it an energy-efficient solution that works well even at lower temperatures. The system's cooling system also features a dedicated fanless design, which makes it ideal for use in small or quiet environments.

The AMD Maui home theater PC comes equipped with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, which provides ample memory for running multiple applications simultaneously. The system also features an AMD Theater 650 TV tuner card, which allows users to access live TV and on-demand media content from the web or locally stored sources. Additionally, the system includes a high-efficiency Corsair 450-watt power supply unit (PSU), which provides reliable power to all components.

One of the standout features of the AMD Maui home theater PC is its integration with Windows Media Center. The system comes pre-installed with this popular media center software, which provides users with a seamless and intuitive interface for managing their digital media content. With Windows Media Center, users can easily access and play back photos, music, video, and television content from various sources, including the web and locally stored devices.

In our testing, we found that the AMD Maui home theater PC excelled in all aspects of its performance. The system's cooling system performed admirably, keeping temperatures low even during extended use. We also saw smooth playback of high-definition Blu-ray discs using ArcSoft TotalMedia, which provides a robust and user-friendly interface for navigating and playing back digital media content.

In terms of power consumption, the AMD Maui home theater PC is relatively energy-efficient, with idle power consumption at around 70 watts. However, under load, the system's power draw increases to around 100-115 watts, depending on the specific usage scenario. Overall, this level of performance and efficiency makes the AMD Maui home theater PC an excellent choice for those looking to build a high-end entertainment system.

Inside the System

Let's take a closer look at some of the components that make up the AMD Maui home theater PC:

* AMD Phenom X4 9350 ECP processor: This quad-core processor is cooled by a low-profile silent flux CPU cooler, which uses an evaporator chamber and tubes filled with liquid coolant to cool the CPU.

* MSI Media Live Diva 5.1 motherboard: The motherboard features an integrated DX10 Radeon graphics core and supports the latest in HD video processing. It also boasts an integrated inter-cell D-to-Audio DA3 chip, which provides a built-in 100-watt 4-channel 5.1 amplifier.

* AMD Theater 650 TV tuner card: This TV card allows users to access live TV and on-demand media content from the web or locally stored sources.

* Corsair 450-watt power supply unit (PSU): The PSU provides reliable power to all components of the system.

* Seagate hard drive: A standard SATA hard drive is used for storage, providing ample space for digital media content.

* Blu-ray player: An ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player is used to play back high-definition discs.

Hardware Components

The AMD Maui home theater PC features a range of hardware components that work together to provide an exceptional entertainment experience. Some of the key components include:

* CPU Cooler: The low-profile silent flux CPU cooler uses an evaporator chamber and tubes filled with liquid coolant to cool the CPU, making it an energy-efficient solution.

* Power Supply Unit (PSU): The Corsair 450-watt PSU provides reliable power to all components of the system.

* RAM: 2GB of DDR2 RAM is used to provide ample memory for running multiple applications simultaneously.

* Hard Drive: A standard SATA hard drive is used for storage, providing ample space for digital media content.

* Blu-ray Player: An ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player is used to play back high-definition discs.

Components

Here are the components that make up the AMD Maui home theater PC:

* CPU Cooler: Low-profile silent flux CPU cooler

* Motherboard: MSI Media Live Diva 5.1

* Power Supply Unit (PSU): Corsair 450-watt

* RAM: 2GB DDR2

* Hard Drive: Seagate SATA hard drive

* Blu-ray Player: ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player

In Conclusion

The AMD Maui home theater PC is an exceptional entertainment system that combines advanced technology with a sleek and powerful design. Its integration with Windows Media Center provides users with a seamless and intuitive interface for managing their digital media content, while its cooling system ensures reliable performance even during extended use. With its range of hardware components, including the low-profile silent flux CPU cooler, Corsair 450-watt PSU, and ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player, this system is an ideal choice for those looking to build a high-end entertainment system.

Specifications

Here are the specifications of the AMD Maui home theater PC:

* Processor: AMD Phenom X4 9350 ECP

* Motherboard: MSI Media Live Diva 5.1

* RAM: 2GB DDR2

* Hard Drive: Seagate SATA hard drive

* Blu-ray Player: ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player

* Power Supply Unit (PSU): Corsair 450-watt

* Cooling System: Low-profile silent flux CPU cooler

Conclusion

The AMD Maui home theater PC is a powerful and feature-rich entertainment system that offers an exceptional user experience. Its integration with Windows Media Center provides users with a seamless and intuitive interface for managing their digital media content, while its cooling system ensures reliable performance even during extended use. With its range of hardware components, including the low-profile silent flux CPU cooler, Corsair 450-watt PSU, and ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player, this system is an ideal choice for those looking to build a high-end entertainment system.

Overall, the AMD Maui home theater PC is an excellent choice for those looking to build a high-end entertainment system. Its range of hardware components, including the low-profile silent flux CPU cooler, Corsair 450-watt PSU, and ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player, make it an ideal solution for users who want a powerful and feature-rich entertainment system.

Specifications

Here are the specifications of the AMD Maui home theater PC:

* Processor: AMD Phenom X4 9350 ECP

* Motherboard: MSI Media Live Diva 5.1

* RAM: 2GB DDR2

* Hard Drive: Seagate SATA hard drive

* Blu-ray Player: ArcSoft TotalMedia-equipped Blu-ray player

* Power Supply Unit (PSU): Corsair 450-watt

* Cooling System: Low-profile silent flux CPU cooler

Conclusion

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everybody Marco chiappetta for hot hardware here over the past few months we've shown you quite a few sneak peeks at AMD's Maui home theater PC platform if you're unfamiliar with Maui it's basically a combination of AMD processor chipsets graphics and peripherals in combination with AMD live software components assembled in a compact home theater PC form factor at the heart of the platform is an MSI motherboard that features d2 audio technology that can be configured with either a 5.1 amplifier or up to a 7.1 channel preamp you've got to see this thing it's pretty cool check it out our MD Maui home theater PC came assembled in this slick and media pc enclosure as you can see the most dominant feature on the front of this case is this readout right here this weed out can display various information like PC health data for example or information about media being accessed through windows media center edition just above the display is this drive bay we've got a blu-ray drive in this system here and at the bottom is a full down panel and behind it you can see a USB port built-in flash card reader firewire port a couple more USB ports and eSATA port and headphone and microphone jacks just above them or the power and reset switches there's lots of stuff to see on the back of the AMD Maui home theater PC here's a standard ATX power supply in a couple of cooling fans that came with the end media pc enclosure that was used in the i/o backplane you have HD component output db15 VGA output spdif inputs and outputs and an hdmi output with audio we should note that that hdmi output can also be adapted to DVI using an included dongle just next to that or a few USB ports al and Jack firewire port and to the right of that are various analog audio inputs and outputs next you can see the cable and antenna inputs on the AMD theater 650 card and to the right of that is something new what this is is a connector block that allow you to wire up speakers directly to the amplifier that's built in to the MSI motherboard using this system more on that next there's a lot going on inside our AMD Maui home theater PC I thought we'd point out a few of the more common components first ones that you're likely to have seen before first we have AMD's theater 650 TV tuner card here we've covered that on hot hardware quite a few times in the past here you have a standard SATA seagate hard drive aceite blu-ray player and here we have a high-efficiency corsair 450 watt psu we should point out that this system consumes about 70 watts while idling and under load it can consume about a hundred to 115 wats depending on what you're doing with the system here is a standard ddr2 RAM used in the MD Maui home theater PC but next to it is something you may not have seen before cooling the AMD phenom x4 9350 ecp you powering this system is a low-profile silent flux cpu cooler this cooler is interesting and that it uses an evaporator chamber and tubes filled with liquid coolant to cool the CPU as the liquid and the evaporator chamber is heated it runs through the tubes then through this radiator where it's cooled and the cycle completes again does a very good job cooling this low-power cpu and works fine without a dedicated fan mounted to it with a higher-end cpu that probably wouldn't be the case but here it works quite well our AMD Maui home theater PC is built upon MSI's media live diva 5.1 motherboard this motherboard uses aim these 780m chipset which features an integrated dx10 Radeon graphics core we should also note that the graphics core built in here can offload much of the HD video processing duties from the host CPU to smooth playback what makes the board more interesting though is the integrated inter-cell d to audio da three chip that's on board that sound chip works in conjunction with this card here which is probably something you haven't seen before what that is is basically a built-in 100 watt 4 channel 5.1 amplifier if you want to use standard speakers that are not amplified with this rig like you would use in many home theater setups there's no need to have a separate amplifier if you prefer to use a higher-end amp however a 7.1 channel preamp card is also available as an option one of the beauties of AMD's Maui home theater PC platform is the seamless integration of AMD hardware and MD live software components with Windows Media Center we've got a few of the apps running now and are going to show them to you here first up is AMD's live Explorer this application give users easy access to various on demand media that's either stored on the web or on the user's pc you can also access locally stored photos music video and television right from one interface other live components show up on the right it's within windows media center that a lot of the excitement happens though so we're going to show you that now if you're unfamiliar with media center it's basically a 10-foot interface that runs on top of Windows that lets users control their pc using a remote control here you see the menu running on the AMD Mallory PC since our system is equipped with an AMD theater 650 TV card we thought you show you some live TV right in action just give it a moment for the app to load the ante woman's value this team in this chase impressing congratulations you want to give you a couple minutes to celebrate with your team as you can see it works just like any other set-top box you pick your channel you hit enter and it's going to take you right there in addition while you're watching TV you can even switch to other apps you can see the TV continues to play in the background there next we're going to move on to some blu-ray playback using arcsoft totalmedia we've got a casino royale blu-ray disc in the drive right now just give it a moment the apps going to load and you'll see how the machine plays back full 1080p content now blu-ray discs do take a few seconds to load that's why you saw that delay there let's turn up the volume once again so you can hear the audio as you can see perfectly smooth video playback let's bring up task manager and see how the system is being text so even with a full high def blu-ray disc playing if you're looking at only thirty five to thirty six percent max CPU utilization with an AMD phenom quad core on the rig that's obviously going to go a little higher if you've got a a dual-core in there we hope you've enjoyed this look at aim these Maui home theater PC platform once again this is Marco chiappetta for hot hardware thanks for stopping byhello everybody Marco chiappetta for hot hardware here over the past few months we've shown you quite a few sneak peeks at AMD's Maui home theater PC platform if you're unfamiliar with Maui it's basically a combination of AMD processor chipsets graphics and peripherals in combination with AMD live software components assembled in a compact home theater PC form factor at the heart of the platform is an MSI motherboard that features d2 audio technology that can be configured with either a 5.1 amplifier or up to a 7.1 channel preamp you've got to see this thing it's pretty cool check it out our MD Maui home theater PC came assembled in this slick and media pc enclosure as you can see the most dominant feature on the front of this case is this readout right here this weed out can display various information like PC health data for example or information about media being accessed through windows media center edition just above the display is this drive bay we've got a blu-ray drive in this system here and at the bottom is a full down panel and behind it you can see a USB port built-in flash card reader firewire port a couple more USB ports and eSATA port and headphone and microphone jacks just above them or the power and reset switches there's lots of stuff to see on the back of the AMD Maui home theater PC here's a standard ATX power supply in a couple of cooling fans that came with the end media pc enclosure that was used in the i/o backplane you have HD component output db15 VGA output spdif inputs and outputs and an hdmi output with audio we should note that that hdmi output can also be adapted to DVI using an included dongle just next to that or a few USB ports al and Jack firewire port and to the right of that are various analog audio inputs and outputs next you can see the cable and antenna inputs on the AMD theater 650 card and to the right of that is something new what this is is a connector block that allow you to wire up speakers directly to the amplifier that's built in to the MSI motherboard using this system more on that next there's a lot going on inside our AMD Maui home theater PC I thought we'd point out a few of the more common components first ones that you're likely to have seen before first we have AMD's theater 650 TV tuner card here we've covered that on hot hardware quite a few times in the past here you have a standard SATA seagate hard drive aceite blu-ray player and here we have a high-efficiency corsair 450 watt psu we should point out that this system consumes about 70 watts while idling and under load it can consume about a hundred to 115 wats depending on what you're doing with the system here is a standard ddr2 RAM used in the MD Maui home theater PC but next to it is something you may not have seen before cooling the AMD phenom x4 9350 ecp you powering this system is a low-profile silent flux cpu cooler this cooler is interesting and that it uses an evaporator chamber and tubes filled with liquid coolant to cool the CPU as the liquid and the evaporator chamber is heated it runs through the tubes then through this radiator where it's cooled and the cycle completes again does a very good job cooling this low-power cpu and works fine without a dedicated fan mounted to it with a higher-end cpu that probably wouldn't be the case but here it works quite well our AMD Maui home theater PC is built upon MSI's media live diva 5.1 motherboard this motherboard uses aim these 780m chipset which features an integrated dx10 Radeon graphics core we should also note that the graphics core built in here can offload much of the HD video processing duties from the host CPU to smooth playback what makes the board more interesting though is the integrated inter-cell d to audio da three chip that's on board that sound chip works in conjunction with this card here which is probably something you haven't seen before what that is is basically a built-in 100 watt 4 channel 5.1 amplifier if you want to use standard speakers that are not amplified with this rig like you would use in many home theater setups there's no need to have a separate amplifier if you prefer to use a higher-end amp however a 7.1 channel preamp card is also available as an option one of the beauties of AMD's Maui home theater PC platform is the seamless integration of AMD hardware and MD live software components with Windows Media Center we've got a few of the apps running now and are going to show them to you here first up is AMD's live Explorer this application give users easy access to various on demand media that's either stored on the web or on the user's pc you can also access locally stored photos music video and television right from one interface other live components show up on the right it's within windows media center that a lot of the excitement happens though so we're going to show you that now if you're unfamiliar with media center it's basically a 10-foot interface that runs on top of Windows that lets users control their pc using a remote control here you see the menu running on the AMD Mallory PC since our system is equipped with an AMD theater 650 TV card we thought you show you some live TV right in action just give it a moment for the app to load the ante woman's value this team in this chase impressing congratulations you want to give you a couple minutes to celebrate with your team as you can see it works just like any other set-top box you pick your channel you hit enter and it's going to take you right there in addition while you're watching TV you can even switch to other apps you can see the TV continues to play in the background there next we're going to move on to some blu-ray playback using arcsoft totalmedia we've got a casino royale blu-ray disc in the drive right now just give it a moment the apps going to load and you'll see how the machine plays back full 1080p content now blu-ray discs do take a few seconds to load that's why you saw that delay there let's turn up the volume once again so you can hear the audio as you can see perfectly smooth video playback let's bring up task manager and see how the system is being text so even with a full high def blu-ray disc playing if you're looking at only thirty five to thirty six percent max CPU utilization with an AMD phenom quad core on the rig that's obviously going to go a little higher if you've got a a dual-core in there we hope you've enjoyed this look at aim these Maui home theater PC platform once again this is Marco chiappetta for hot hardware thanks for stopping by\n"

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