The overall experience with the Hiper HMC-2K53A-A3 media center barebone definitely has been a pleasant one.

Yet there are a couple of things that could be improved. For example one DIMM slot is used up by the IR-receiver PCB. Once I pulled it out I noticed it is not even drawing current from the DIMM slot, and that didn't make much sense as by limiting the mainboard to one DIMM. It just sits there in the DIMM slot.

The second thing you need to bare in mind if you had in mind to go a little more high-end, this mainboard does not support quad-core the lovely new AMD Phenom processors (I've tried btw). It surely that would have been a nice feature especially considering the prices these processors have. For that to happen a new revision mainboard based on AMD's 780G must be implemented or even NVIDIA's soon to be released GeForce 8200 mainboard based hybrid solutions, which just offer a stackload of decoding options and features.

Right now it's no biggy though, as a generic X2 AM2 processors is powerful enough for the functions we need the HTPC to do also. Two other things I've noticed, heat. It's great to have a passively cooled mainboard yet the reality is that there is very little ventilation inside the chassis. Hefty decoding at for example 1080P will lead to a fair amount of heat. And though the chassis has some decent cooling to deal with it resulted in one fan being a bit noisy (the big one placed over the chipset south-bridge). Accumulated the result is an average of 38-40 DBa weighing noise level, which is okay for a regular PC, yet on the borderline of acceptable for a HTPC, which at all times should be as silent as possible.

Definitely good about the product is the embedded HDMI (HDCP ready) graphics solution. We decoded both DVD and High Definition 1080P content over both the CPU and GPU absolutely fine, but obviously if you choose to use the CPU for decoding say x.264 files, get at the very least a higher specced dual-core X2 processor. A good example is the 59 USD  AMD Athlon X2 4800 or Athlon X2 4850e . Such a processor will be sufficient for the task at hand in combo with the right software (think CoreAVC codec / FDDSHOW latest beta) both have multi-threaded processor capabilities and just work really well with Windows Media Center.

In the end the Hiper HMC-2K53A-A3 Media Center barebone offers a lot of functionality for roughly 299 USD. Don't forget, you receive the chassis with VDF module, the mainboard with integrated graphics, memory card reader, power supply, nice remote control, sufficient enough audio options and next to Ethernet even wireless Wi-Fi. So if you add a 60 USD processor, spend 40 bucks on memory and 50 bucks on a nice HDD, 25 bucks on the cooler and you are good to go for roughly 475-500 USD, the prices in EUR are not that far off either by the way.

The bottom line: This product is loaded with good features and video/audio outputs. A slight worry remains the noise level, and I know I'm a tad anal when it comes to noise levels but still, that's important for a HTPC. Other than that this is a well though trough product at good value at an okay price with pretty nice aesthetics and without doubt perfect size and silhouette.

Thanks go out to the Hiper Group for this product sample.

Hiper Media Center HTPC Slimline barebone
SKU: HMC-2K53A-A3
Price: 299 USD
Info: hipergroup.com

Since the Hiper MCE products are hard to find, here are a few e-tailers:  France, Europe, UK, USA.