raspberry Pi or am1 build for media type pc?

ExoMale

ExoMale

ExoMale

Soldato
Joined
9 Jan 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
Derbyshire
which would give the better overall experience and best money spent?

its my birthday in a few weeks and going to try blag computer stuff, before i can afford to buy them myself ha :D.

but im torn which way i should go in general.


raspberry Pi (Model A will do if cheap enough and can actually play 1080p)

pro's & cons for me.

Pro:

cheap
good for learning
potentially play 720/1080 right out the box
tiny
want to make a mini custom arcade machine for some arcade gaming project

cons:

might not run 1080p or well
linux is limited for games
question xbmc over kodi version
novelty

then the am1 build

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £106.58
(includes shipping: £11.70)
​


not this case and would probably go 2nd hand for ram, same with hard drives, but rest is all i need.

pro's:

windows or linux 32bit or 64bit
small and cheap
run windows software
run games to some extent
upgradable
quad core cheapness
can run 720/1080

con's

might not run 1080 or well
might not game well enough
cost more than a Pi
not the best of APU units
upgradable, but limited



im probably missing some pointers for the above, but off the top of the head thats my pro's and con's.


the case im thinking of and just because i like the look of it is the AVP 500w Tesseract slim case, but a cheap build it should be acceptable.


at some point i can have both because i really want to make a arcade machine, but right now it be nice to have a media centre for the living room


many thanks for any response


edit: not the athlon i meant to add the sempron so relisted.
 
Last edited:
how you mean?


edit: the image thing? got rid of that now unless you noticed another fault i havent picked up on lol
 
Last edited:
I had an original PI as a media machine was a bit pants. Upgraded to a NUC (only the cheapy celeron atom one) and it works loads better. I know the PI2 is a lot better so may not be too relevent. With memory and a small ssd the nuc came in at just over £100
 
Get a Pie 2, excellent for learning Linux and you can run some of the best emulators out there. YouTube search raspberry pi 2 emulation station
 
I had a raspberry pi running Rasbmc. Then a raspberry pi2 running Openelec.
The speed of the menu's and the overall experience on the pi2 is miles better than the original pi.

I've also got an i5 NUC with 16Gb of RAM and a Samsung SM951 running Openelec. As you can probably guess. This one runs like a dream :D
 
Pi was mega slow for anything media related. Even the pi 2 wasn't good. Games run v well and I ended up building an arcade machine using one :) project log is on ocuk

If you want something cheap get an amazon fire stick and put kodi on. The schism tv build of kodi is great.
 
thanks for replies. few Pi fans i see ha, thats good.

as far as the Pi goes, if i get one and did the arcade idea, would i be stuck on that or could i switch to xmbc whenever? amount of videos ive seen of projects has only been about that particular project other than demonstrations of how to use a Pi.
 
ExoMale said:
cons:

linux is limited for games
Click to expand...

Just want to point out you'll be more limited by the Pi than by Linux when it comes to gaming, you'll not be playing Steam games on the Pi because the CPU is an ARM design. Like you said though, plenty of arcade games about for it.
 
ExoMale said:
thanks for replies. few Pi fans i see ha, thats good.

as far as the Pi goes, if i get one and did the arcade idea, would i be stuck on that or could i switch to xmbc whenever? amount of videos ive seen of projects has only been about that particular project other than demonstrations of how to use a Pi.
Click to expand...

The OS lives on the SD card, so you can have one for media duties, one for emulation and one for a Linux learning environment, for example. Power off, swap cards, power up :)

If you go Pi, make sure it's a 2
 
thanks for replies.

Pi 2 best just because its quad and had better memory/graphics or is it improved elsewhere and what does the specs mean for arcade style projects?


art:: thanks for the reply, i dont play steam games anymore, i cant be bothered with it all for the moment lol, but i wouldnt expect a Pi to do that and i had trouble trying to get window based programs on normal linux, but the Pi is all about the fun :).

Aiir:: is the athlon that much better then? i know of the old ones where the athlon was the better, so is this still the case despite both being quads? i went for sempron for few quid saving lol
 
pandem0nium said:
I bought a I3 2100t (35w) and a p67 board for the same sort of purpose. It works very well.
Click to expand...

how old is this and do you use a dedicated gpu? i am all for going old if its cheaper.

mean i could just use the 775 build im working on if i get a decent gpu, but its its a Matx case thats little bulky for what i would want from a htpc like setup.
 
A couple of months old. The parts are pretty cheap on the bay.

I wanted it to be always on as a file server so I went for a low power cpu. I also wanted space for a few hard disks, a discrete gpu for light gaming and a sound card for better sound quality going to the speakers, so I went for matx.

I have a passively cooled hd 5670 as the gpu as I had it anyway and a D2 pci soundcard I got for cheap in the mm.
 
you could look at a Gigabyte Brix? I have on coming and will be pairing it with my old 500gb ssd + 8gb of ram. Planning to use it for Kodi under Ubuntu. Went for the J1900 chip.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom