Intel NUC Celeron vs i3/i5?

sansnom · 16 Sep 2015 at 15:14

Gents

I'm overhauling my home media setup and I've decided to get:

**Synology DS214+ NAS for basic file sharing and maybe a single stream transcode using synology apps every now and then

**Intel NUC Celeron 847 for main living room playback. The nuc is intended to run Win 7 Pro with Kodi on startup, torrent downloader, netflix and other web streaming and possibly a single transcode request at any one point in time

I'm trying to keep the costs down to sub £550 for the whole setup so obviously this will be hugely affected if I go the i3/i5 route.

My question is, is it an appropriate choice for NAS and HTPC? Is the NAS overkill and is the Celeron underpowered? I'm concerned that even with only Kodi referencing a media library of 1000+ 1080p's, playing one of them and downloading in the background it will struggle and most likely can't even do a single transcode anyway regardless of whether I have kodi / downloading going on or not.

I'm leaning towards the celeron because a) price b) low power, no fan noise unlike the i3/i5 which I hear can be quite noisy in a living room. I know there's a fanless option but that's going to add even more cost so don't want to go down that route unless the Celeron absolutely won't suffice.

Thoughts/Opinions/Suggestions?

vintage-x · 16 Sep 2015 at 18:03

Transcoding is going to be slow from what I can tell.

The box will play anything perfectly fine.

I have a 4 year old amd duel core in a htpc and it doesn't skip a beat with anything I play even 30gb blue ray rips just fine using kodi.

sansnom · 16 Sep 2015 at 19:04

Good to know playback won't be an issue but how about netflix/web streaming in HD and downloading in the background? Would it struggle doing those things at the same time?

Also I think you're quite right about the transcoding which leaves me with two options:

1. Get an i3 or i5 and put plex server but then clients need plex too

2. Get a NAS with hardware transcoding like the DS214play instead

I'm not sure if the DS214+ does software transcoding very well or at all?

Amp34 · 16 Sep 2015 at 19:50

What are you transcoding too? Not the NUC I presume?

sansnom · 16 Sep 2015 at 21:28

Amp34 said:
What are you transcoding too? Not the NUC I presume?

no, maybe guest devices like phones or tablets every now and then. It's really just a "maybe" case, but not necessary which is why I'm not focusing on the transcoding component much but would like to have it on the off chance it's needed.

kaktus · 17 Sep 2015 at 10:47

can't see you'd anything other than a Celeron for a main tv htpc running kodi and downloading. Raspberry pi2 handles it perfectly well and it's even less powerful than a celeron afaik

Question is, if you want to do a single transcode do you want your NAS to do it or do you want your HTPC to do it? I'd say the NAS is the better way to do it and I don't see why the DS214+ couldn't handle a single transcode but I don't use synology NAS and I have no idea if they have a software app for that. Maybe someone else could jump in and shed some light on that