Don't tell me you only just found out about those. They've been out for like a year, if not longer. The Haswell refresh is from July.
Much smaller than a Mac Mini, for the record. It's almost a third of the volume of a Mac Mini. Doesn't support 2.5" drives either, unlike the Mac Mini.
I really like the idea and gave a lot of consideration for a MAME build, but they're simply too expensive for something whose only selling point is the miniature form factor. Granted, THAT is a damned impressive, but the price you pay can easily be done better by building a system yourself and just having it be a tiny bit larger.
But I looked and cases are not that small. And then thought of Mac Mini, which is $499.00 for the cheapest version but with ram and SSD, it becomes 899$. And then looked at the Intel NUCs. Apparently, I saw them in 2013 and made this thread but had no recollection.
Oh wow.. haha, this was 2013 Sorry mate, I thought it was a recent one, heh. Yeah.. once you add RAM and a HDD, the NUC prices just shoot up like the Mac Mini does. Form factor is awesome, absolutely, but the price is terrible.
It's less than a Mac mini, but still.
I can probably find RAM somewhere here, and I can use an external HDD, but then it loses its appeal.
True but then, those are American prices. $350 (not $305 like the site claims) for the barebones NUC, but the UK/EU price is actually £280 ($433) and then there's RAM £58 ($89), HDD £70 ($107) and others; £18/$30 for wifi, £83/$128 for OS. That $550 US price actually ends up being closer to £509/€651 which is $790.
Damned US prices
One thing I have seen and like the look of, is the new slimline portable PCs.
$103 for a 1.8Ghz Baytrail-CR quad, 2GB DDR3, built in wifi/wired LAN, 16GB ROM with eMMC expandable storage cards and various other things. It even comes with Win8.1 preinstalled. These things look like they could be great for a HTPC though may lack some grunt for high-end emulation. Even has a 3000mAh battery though egh, you'd use AC power.
It's less than a Mac mini, but still.
I can probably find RAM somewhere here, and I can use an external HDD, but then it loses its appeal.
That's $550 - $92 (Windows license) - $24 (DVD burner...or do you actually want that?) = $434 really
And some of those prices look a little weird. $86 for the 840 Evo 120 GB? That's €75 ($90) here, so that dollar price is higher than it should be. Only by $10, but still.
In fact, looking at our prices, the base Mac Mini is €519. For that price I can get the D54250 + 8 GB of DDR3L + 250 GB (!) SSD. Or something like this:
This is €80 more than the base Mac Mini and when I compare this build to that:
- The same amount of storage...but as an SSD (Apple only offer their Fusion drive)
- Faster memory (which is good for the iGPU), an extra €30 or so would double it to 8GB.
- 116.6*112.0*34.5 vs. 196*196*36 in millimeters - the Mac Mini is almost 3 times as big
It's less than a Mac mini, but still.
I can probably find RAM somewhere here, and I can use an external HDD, but then it loses its appeal.
That's $550 - $92 (Windows license) - $24 (DVD burner...or do you actually want that?) = $434 really
And some of those prices look a little weird. $86 for the 840 Evo 120 GB? That's €75 ($90) here, so that dollar price is higher than it should be. Only by $10, but still.
In fact, looking at our prices, the base Mac Mini is €519. For that price I can get the D54250 + 8 GB of DDR3L + 250 GB (!) SSD. Or something like this:
This is €80 more than the base Mac Mini and when I compare this build to that:
- The same amount of storage...but as an SSD (Apple only offer their Fusion drive)
- Faster memory (which is good for the iGPU), an extra €30 or so would double it to 8GB.
- 116.6*112.0*34.5 vs. 196*196*36 in millimeters - the Mac Mini is almost 3 times as big
I'd say that's pretty darn good
There is also the i3 variant with the same small form factor, as well as much cheaper RAM sticks and SSDs. I don't really need some fast SSD as 840, anyone will do really.
You are not making it easy for me.
Also, kind of sad that I get more excited for these small shits than i7 5960X.
Dude, these things have been tempting for 2 years now
The form factor is ridiculous, some of them (like this one) come with an IR port built in (great for an HTPC because then it works with my Harmony). When my HTPC breaks (if it ever does :joy:), it'll be replaced by one of these. Only difference to the build above is that I'd stick to a minimal SSD, since it literally only needs to hold a little bit of software, don't need much storage at all. I'd probably be done for around €400
What exactly do you want to use it for? You say you don't need a "fast SSD like an 840" but there's not much point in looking for something else. The 840/850 offer some of the best $/GB ratio out there.
My problem right now is, they are not optimized for 4K HEVC. I doubt the Intel HD 5000 will be able to provide HEVC (H265) HW decoding acceleration, and even i5 is not powerful enough to full 4K HEVC remux playback. These are bound to start appearing sooner or later. Don't get me wrong, I have fond memories of trying to squeeze every last performance drop and optimization to play 1080p on non-accelerated Core 2 Duo laptop CPU with ATI crap, with CoreAVC, but eh, at this point I just want stuff to work so I can turn off the brain, not have to worry about turning off AERO and selecting VMR9 because it is just fast enough to play smooth while having proper vsync, as opposed to VMR7, which is faster, but has no proper vsync.
Oh no, for HEVC you'll want to wait until it's supported in hardware. Look at what that did for h264, you now get smooth h264 playback on pretty much any mobile chip. You're right in that it'll come sooner rather than later, but Intel's scheme is a little behind schedule
It won't take that long though, Broadcom and Qualcomm at least have already said it's coming in one of their chips this year. The rest will follow quickly.
And we've all been there with CoreAVC...I still am, just to make sure that GF9300 in my HTPC does most of the grunt instead of the E7200
VESA mounting a NUC would be the only way for me really, doesn't get neater than that
I must say though, I got a Chromecast for Christmas and I'm surprised at how well that works. Use one of many compatible apps with it and so far it hasn't struggled to play anything (I gotta admit I haven't tried any real high bitrate material yet, but the 1080p webrips off Netflix and the likes are all flawless). I had to move my access point a little to make sure it had a strong signal (the Chromecast is pretty sensitive to interference with that tiny antenna), but besides that everything's been smooth sailing. I just stream original source material, but you could use Plex for example (only app I've tested that I know for sure is available for iOS too ). That might be worth considering too, if it really is _just_ about media playback (and assuming you store that media elsewhere). It's not locked to Android or anything and so far I've been very impressed with it.
That's the wonders of hw accelerated playback, even the shittiest ARM (and that's what Chromecast, Raspberry Pi, etc. are) can play 1080p high profile encode.
I use Plex, to play stuff on my old iPad 3. That's its only use right now anyway. I'd use Infuse, but the iPad 3's wireless support is terrible, so it stops playback.
You should seriously consider a Chromecast then. It is dirt cheap and it works brilliantly as long as you've got a decent WiFi signal around your place. The WiFi in the Chromecast is better than the iPad's. I don't get the same speeds as with my N4, but it does 40-50 Mbps just the same, which is more than enough.
2.4 GHz N only with the current version. There's rumours that a 5 GHz version might come soon (there's a new FCC entry that mentions 5 GHz for it) and I'm sure an AC version will come at some point too.
The way it works is that you use the app (which can be Plex for example, but there's also plain DLNA apps), connect it to the Chromecast and then hit play. At that point it sends the URI to the media to the Chromecast, so it streams directly from the source. And I've so far used it to stream from Plex Media Server, from NFS shares, from Samba shares, media stored on my phone and things like Netflix and YouTube. None of them have stuttered, although with some things there's a small buffer period at the start of playback (PMS and from my phone), but that's only a couple of seconds at worst. And you can also use the Chromecast extension on your laptop for example to send whatever you're watching in Chrome straight to it
YMMV of course, but that's the case for me and my AP is on a different floor from the Chromecast and it's still enough.
It won't take that long though, Broadcom and Qualcomm at least have already said it's coming in one of their chips this year. The rest will follow quickly.
Yup, they've already got HW-accelerated x265/HEVC in the Cortex-A5, at least the one they're using in the Minix X6 media player.
I'm drooling over that as a meaty upgrade to the, rather poor and substandard, "SmartTV" functionality in my 42" Thompson TV. Right now I'm about half a second away from clicking "buy" on a Rikimagic MK802-IIIs (£25 with free shipping, it's about as powerful as my Xperia Ion but offers a substantial upgrade over whatever crap is running in our TV, not to mention being full Android so yay for US Netflix) but yeah.. the X6 kicks seventeen and a half shades of crap out of it. 4x the price though, so out of my range for now :\
Don't Sabin, I've had one of those MK802 pieces of shit (probably an older one though). You can have the access point right next to them and they'll still struggle to hit 5 Mbps
I'm pretty sure Google are waiting for chips with HEVC support, that's when we'll see a Chromecast 2.0 with AC too
As far as I'm concerned, they could make it a little bigger than it currently is as well, because it's crazy how small and light it is for what it does.
Damn it We need to replace the lacklustre "SmartTV" stuff in the TV, it's terrible. DLNA+HDD exploration only and it has *terrible* codec support, no 5.1 (seriously.. 5.1 MKVs? Won't play), dodgy x264/MP4 support. Many things won't stream but they do play from an external HDD but you can't "explore" network locations, only DLNA and it's a real PITA. Not to mention the terrible "apps" for it.
Sounds like the Chromecast is an ideal solution for you too
Use the phone to explore your network locations and what not, click play and have the Chromecast play it (exactly how I'm using it atm, that + Google Music)
I think a large part of why it doesn't lag is because there is nothing running on it. All it does is stream shit, there's no UI or anything. You use your phone/tablet/laptop/PC for that.
Chromecast is just a streamer and doesn't really have much of any app support. I don't just want a streaming device, I want full capability. Thanks though.
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but had no recollection.
Sorry mate, I thought it was a recent one, heh. Yeah.. once you add RAM and a HDD, the NUC prices just shoot up like the Mac Mini does. Form factor is awesome, absolutely, but the price is terrible.
