New NUC, HD5000, 4x USB 3.0, infrared sensor

Bit the bullet and ordered a ZOTAC ZBOX CI320 NANO PLUS
Bit of a bargin for £195 comes with windows 8.1 bing, which is just windows (core edition) with browser home page set to bing. Which you can change.
Hopefully it'll be powerful enough for basic streaming and htpc tasks.
Just need to get a freesat USB stick. And work out xbmc.

Should be here Friday.

http://www.zotac.com/products/mini-...x-ci320-nano-plus-windows-81-with-bing-1.html
Enjoy quiet computing in a palm-sized form factor with the ZOTAC ZBOX CI320 nano series mini-PC. The ZOTAC ZBOX CI320 nano series mini-PC features a special passive-cooled chassis that eliminates cooling fans to create zero noise for a peaceful silent computing experience.

A powerful Intel Celeron quad-core processor provides the ZOTAC ZBOX CI320 nano series with a comfortable amount of performance for daily web browsing, e-mail checking, productivity and multimedia tasks. A preinstalled 64GB SSD, 2GB of DDR3 memory and Windows 8.1 with Bing ensures the ZOTAC ZBOX CI320 nano mini-PC is ready to use out of the box.
Click to expand...

It's actually 4gb ram not 2.
At some point will want to upgrade to a larger hdd, but at, it's fine as 99% I stream.
 
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darth.mader said:
These small PC's are the future.
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I agree, if Ms support them better.
They really need to push windows 8.1 with bing and they need to make them htpc friendly.
They need to get some decent apps. Like nowtv, free sat/freeview app etc.
Basically make it nice and user friendly.

In the mean tome, I can drop to desktop for things like nowtv, but it's not a mainstream solution.
MS really need to push into the TV section, which android on a stick and all the other small boxes have grabbed.

Can MS just implement some of my ideas, I'll give them the ideas for free.
 
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Glaucus said:
That's what the CPU section said, I just still relate Celeron with underpowered rubbish. Which really is a bit unfair, but it's hard to shake.
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Celerons these days use Core2 architecture if I am not mistaken, hardly underpowered (especially as a quad core) for HTPC type tasks.
 
Aside from the size, what advantage(s) does a NUC have over the likes of a micro atx HTPC? Or vice versa?

Looking to sell my gaming computer as no longer use it to play games and would like to put the money towards a home cinema player.
 
maj said:
Aside from the size, what advantage(s) does a NUC have over the likes of a micro atx HTPC? Or vice versa?

Looking to sell my gaming computer as no longer use it to play games and would like to put the money towards a home cinema player.
Click to expand...

Size, power draw, noise, simplicity etc.
Why assemble a micro htcp, when these miniature things are cheapest , tiny and silent.

Mines finally shipped, saying expected delivery Tuesday though :(
 
The zotac nano has arrived, made a slight **** up I thought all plus models had windows8.1 pre installed, seems not. And those aren't in sale till end of the month. Not a massive issue. Just downloading win8.1 now. So missed out in a free version of windows. However I'll use a place holder key and get win9 alpha when it's released next month.
 
maj said:
Aside from the size, what advantage(s) does a NUC have over the likes of a micro atx HTPC? Or vice versa?

Looking to sell my gaming computer as no longer use it to play games and would like to put the money towards a home cinema player.
Click to expand...

Slightly different take on these nucs and other small tiny miniature PCs.

I owned the nuc 5450 in this thread for few months, even made it 100% silent and passive.

For Internet surfing/Office its perfect, try to do anything else CPU intensive it will buckle.

Overall while I liked the silence and speed for my media playback and surfing you could tell it was lacking in many areas the speed was not as good as a normal equivalent desktop Core i5 perhaps it was the cache and full sized CPU but I found the 2 cores to be gasping for air and lacking.

If Intel had released the Core I5 or i7 version with quad it would have been perfect and a keeper for me.

Its a bit tricky to explain but for example I tried a 1080p TV tuner and it ate a good 30-40% of my cpu speed and I noticed slow downs in my surfing with 3-4 tabs etc same applies for anything CPU intensive like I wanted to try ubuntu via Virtual machines but it was sluggish and too slow even with 8gig of Ram.

On a normal Core i5 you have a proper Quad 4 cpus so you can pretty much throw anything at it and get top speeds.

Either way sold it am back to the performance platform. While there are some proper quad mini pcs they run uber hot and noisy and can't handle passive properly and even on load they still eat electricity although much less. The way I see it from a price/performance point of view you could spend £500-600 on an intel nuc + parts or move to an Core i7-4790k or 5820K set up, fine tune it for energy saving and still whack the lot in a micro or mini-atx (4790k) build for around 200 quid more, with benefit you get speed and power when you require.

I think most folk here used these nucs/mini pcs for media machines or surfing/office boxes and kept there gaming beast next to them :)
 
looking at building a Nuc for some Openelec+Plex use, and am wondering if its pretty much the same spec in most of them regarding Msata and memory, picked an i5 incase i use it for something else at a later date (reason i got a 2.5inch version as well). and i will be picking up a power cord of the rainforest as well and i might pick up a wifi+bt card of there (any recommendations on a card) does the below look ok


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel NUC D54250WYKH 2.5" Intel Core i5 Haswell Barebones Micro PC £299.99
1 x Corsair ValueSelect "Low Voltage" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz 204 Pin SODIMM Kit (CMSO8GX3M2C1600C11) £65.99
1 x Crucial M500 120GB mSATA SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CT120M500SSD3) £59.99
1 x OcUK Value HDMI to HDMI Mini C Cable 2M [CDLHD-202] £4.99
Total : £440.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
The NUC kit itself doesn't come supplied with a remote, but the CIR sensor should be compatible with most Windows Media Centre remotes.
 
Are these good for bluray streaming (lan) dts etc from a server? I need a pled front end and think this might be only way although expensive client!
 
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