Mini ITX case with i7 - is it enought for 4k video?

[marka01]

hi,

I am looking to build mini ITX barebone, to replace my laptop connected to TV, which is struggling with 4k movies. The purpose of mini ITX - Multimedia, movies, 4k content.

I would need your advice on weather i7 7700k is enough to process 4k movies (since it has integrated HD 630 already?). Or shall I still get a discrete video card?
I would prefer a PC to be more silent, rather than powerful, hence the main purpose is to watch movies.

My starting parts were these:
1) mini itx https://www.********.co.uk/products...atx-case-black-windowed/ca-1d5-00s1wn-00.html or Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case
2) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 or maybe DDR4-2666 Memory is enough
3) Intel - 600p Series 128GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive. Do not need any SATA since I have a few 2TB drives
4) Corsair - CXM 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (not fully sure which power supply to go for)
5) this is where I stopped...

Any build changes and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks !

 

[marka01]

I just did some investigation and apparently best to go for z270 chipset motherboard. Any suggestions ?

 

[Avalon]

If you are just wanting to watch 4K video then much lesser hardware had that ability. My NUC only has an i5 4250U, it'll still manage compliant 4K encoded content with about 10% CPU usage, a 7700K seems like massive overkill unless i've missed something and you want to create/edit 4K content?

 

[marka01]

Thanks for advice. just for 4k movies streaming. no editing. will also use for virtual machines windows 2012/2016 r2. As I understand i5 7500 does not have HT (Hyper-threading) ? Not sure how much does it mean in 4k or virtualization?

 

[Avalon]

4cores, 4 threads have a look below, VT- features are more important than HT for virtualisation, but it all depends what you want to do and why/how.

https://ark.intel.com/products/97123/Intel-Core-i5-7500-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i5-processors.html
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...reading-technology.html?wapkw=hyper+threading

 

[HoneyBadger]

7700k for 4K streaming will work fine, it as mentioned it's a massive overkill.

 

[CaneyJ]

Check out the updated "Vorke V1 Plus" which has the Apollolake J3455 CPU.

It has a HDMI 2.0 output and boasts 4K @ 60fps.

It's a full system with 4GB SODIMM RAM Stick, 64GB MSATA SSD which can both be upgraded, comes with Windows 10 and has room for an extra 2.5" hard drive for mass-media.

There's gigabit ethernet and AC wifi as well and you can grab one for around £155.

 

[Avalon]

Check out the updated "Vorke V1 Plus" which has the Apollolake J3455 CPU.
It has a HDMI 2.0 output and boasts 4K @ 60fps.
It's a full system with 4GB SODIMM RAM Stick, 64GB MSATA SSD which can both be upgraded, comes with Windows 10 and has room for an extra 2.5" hard drive for mass-media.
There's gigabit ethernet and AC wifi as well and you can grab one for around £155.

Don't forget he's now thrown VM's into the equation in a later post without any info on type,usage or number and that 4GB of RAM is soldered direct to the board on the Vorke.

 

[marka01]

hi, thanks. I actually already went for z270 motherboard and i5 7500 as I got a good deal. The only thing I am still uncertain is which memory to go for. The price for ddr4 2400 and 3000 are similar but i5 7500 seems to support only memory up to 2400 while MB can support up to 3600 Mhz.. Will everything still work well if i go for ddr4 3000 ?

 

[Avalon]

Both will work fine.

 

[LePhuronn]

Streaming 4K content and powering VMs are about as opposite ends of the use spectrum as you can get. You can stream 4K content on low-end CPUs with small amounts of RAM. VMs benefit from lots of cores and as much RAM as you can throw at it. So really the question you should be asking is spec advice on building a VM machine, and by virtue of that spec it'll stream 4K without issue.

 

[Avalon]

Streaming 4K content and powering VMs are about as opposite ends of the use spectrum as you can get. You can stream 4K content on low-end CPUs with small amounts of RAM. VMs benefit from lots of cores and as much RAM as you can throw at it. So really the question you should be asking is spec advice on building a VM machine, and by virtue of that spec it'll stream 4K without issue.

Specification 'drift' happened after having it pointed out that the posted spec was ridiculously OTT for the stated purpose. If it were a genuine priority consideration, it'd have likely been in the OP as it's kind of a big and obvious one - you generally don't forget that you need to run several VM's on a box that you originally stated was primarily for 'Multimedia, movies, 4k content' as your primary requirement.

 

[marka01]

Specification 'drift' happened after having it pointed out that the posted spec was ridiculously OTT for the stated purpose. If it were a genuine priority consideration, it'd have likely been in the OP as it's kind of a big and obvious one - you generally don't forget that you need to run several VM's on a box that you originally stated was primarily for 'Multimedia, movies, 4k content' as your primary requirement.

Thanks. I do understand what you are saying. And yes it's main purpose is 4k. I had no issues with a few VM OS running on my old i5 3rd gen laptop. So I was assuming a new i5 7th gen would not have this problem either anyway (so that's why I did not mention VM originally. Anyway I have one more question in regards to storage configuration since I have now all parts ordered and ready to assemble:
For the storage I went for Samsung 960 NVMe SSD + 3 x 3.5" 7200rpm (Raid 5). Does it make sense at all to implement Intel Optaine SSD into this build in any way? Since I plan to install OS on 960 NVMe, and use Raid 5 for media storage. Not sure how would Optaine work in this scenario or if it could work at all with Raid 5 or NVMe SSD? I was reading that Optaine does not work with Raid builds unless sytem is installed on a RAID? Please share your thoughts.

 

[LePhuronn]

Is a RAID 5 really necessary for just storing media? If you're starting to put multiple 3.5" drives into a case then you're almost defeating the purpose of going ITX since cases to accommodate these drives are comparatively big (and that Thermaltake V21 is a Micro ATX case too). Also I don't see what benefit Optane would bring to the table; you're already running NVMe SSD for OS and just sreaming media from a drive doesn't require fast access, so caching to Optane is superfluous.

I don't wish to sound brusque, but I'm really confused by what you're trying to achieve now and if you're just throwing things into a spec because it sounds cool. Why do you want RAID? Why do you need RAID? Why do you want Optane?

 

[marka01]

well, I can explain it more in detail. I already happen to have 3x3.5" new disks which I don't need to purchase. So why not to use it for raid 5? For that reason I went with micro ATX rather than ITX. I could use those disks individually and have 6TB instead of 4TB but I don't need that much of space and thought it would be nice to have extra speed and 1 disk failover advantage over storage space? I will be storing not only media but VM OS's too, will be copying, downloading and accessing Raid 5 on this PC over network.
Also I am not completely rejecting the idea to try some PC game on this PC at some point. I might go for discrete graphics card in the near future. I want this PC to be all rounder rather than just strictly for 4k streaming. I came up with this idea throughout the process of assembling my first micro ATX box. So my apologies I was not clear from the beginning. There is a saying that 'Hunger grows while eating"...

 

[LePhuronn]

Right OK, so this is going to be a general-purpose machine now. Cool.

In which case, that Thermaltake seems to tick all your boxes: space for drives, space for a discrete card in the future, space for a PSU that has enough connectors to power everything up.

I'll still question the need for Optane if you're using the RAID for NAS purposes, unless you're using a 10Gb connection your drive access times will be sufficient for network traffic.

 

[marka01]

thanks. well I was looking at optaine FAQ and found out that you cannot accelerate RAID with optaine unless Optaine is "inside" the raid volume where the OS resides:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...nd-storage/intel-optane-memory/000024018.html :
I want to set RAID up on my system. Can I accelerate these RAID volumes with Intel Optane memory?
Intel Optane memory cannot accelerate a RAID volume. An Intel Optane memory volume can reside in the same system as a RAID volume. The operating system must be on the SATA drive accelerated by Intel Optane memory.
Note In a system with this configuration, we recommend using the Intel RST application to manage your RAID volume and Intel Optane memory volume.

I can see from this article that NVMe SSD is probably even better than Optaine hybrid: https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/04/intel-3d-xpoint-optane-memory-review/

For the networking I don't use high end switch or router yet. Just default Virgin Media router at home (which I doubt even has 1 Gb/s ports). And then motherboard I went for also is limited to 1GbE LAN port: https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/PRIME-Z270M-PLUS/specifications/

 

[Avalon]

C'mon, this is starting to get silly now. You've gone from asking if a ridiculous spec is capable of doing the job of a celeron and then decided you want to run VM's and now game with R5. Decide WTF you want, if it's just to ***** cash on new hardware then that's fine, but be honest with yourself and us.

 

[marka01]

Yes I have gone up a bit and I did explain why. Have you read my explanations? If not then why swearing? I got all parts over ebay quite cheap under 600$ all inc. So cheaper than your ridiculous NUC.

 

[Avalon]

The word the forum language filter has decided to redact - in my personal opinion - isn't inappropriate in this setting, it's certainly not swearing and I own t-shirts with it prominently displayed. I probably wouldn't wear them to the kids school assembly, but it's not by any stretch of the imagination swearing.

Yes, I have read your explanation(s), i've also spec'd and built systems for people since the 90's, it's fair to say in that time i've seen people try to justify hardware choices that make little sense based on what they say they want/need. Amazingly enough those same people will often invent additional requirements to justify the choice they've already made, pointing this out often falls on deaf ears, because even though they asked and you explained why it wasn't suitable or something else would be better, they will ignore it because they've already decided before they asked the question.

I'm not saying that's what you've done, but you can understand going from a 'Multimedia, movies, 4k content' spec request in ITX to a VM host with R5 storage (workstation/home server territory) to chucking Optane and now potential gaming into the mix. Is it any wonder i'd suggest you decide what you actually want it to do? R5 is generally an awful choice for a home user, you're unlikely to have a spare drive or the skill set to deal with recovery or have a UPS and the facility to shut down an array cleanly in the event of power failure, sooner or later that will end badly. Personally I can see a great software solution for you, but i'd be hated on said forum from now till eternity if I pointed you in that direction.

As to my NUC, i'm not sure why it would be relevant to this, the only time I mentioned it was to illustrate that a 4250U was capable of 4k playback at 10% CPU usage and that hardware acceleration is part of the package in most modern intel CPU's. Also $600 for a NUC? I've got 3 of them, the total bill probably comes close to that all in.