Revo 3700 as a Media PC

K@rl · 18 Nov 2010 at 10:52

I've seen the Revo 3700's advertised at a very cheap price and have been looking for a Media PC for a while at this kind of price.

Has anybody had any experience with them?

Want something to be "always on", stream movies and also play youtube vids for my little one.

I also want it to run VM ware server with 2003 so I dont have to run my main PC all the time. Its only a backup Mail and nameserver so its not really used.

Any thoughts? Am I asking too much from a little box like this?

a1ex2001 · 18 Nov 2010 at 14:27

VMWARE will probably kill it stone dead if your pushing it with other apps at the same time, it really isn't what these little boxes were designed for! Do you really need a backup mail and nameserver in a home environment?

KiNETiK · 18 Nov 2010 at 14:35

I have been looking to get an R3700 to use as a media pc as well. However I am looking at using XBMC with it. Could you please PM me where you have seen it advertised at a very cheap price please?

With respect to VMWare, I run it on my 4 year old Macbook (2GB RAM) without a problem but that is only using TinyXP and not server 2003..

chippy08 · 19 Nov 2010 at 00:21

I use the old R3600 its ok for torrents playing films in to tv but if you get the r3700 make sure you get the one with 4gig of memory as i had 1gig in mine and it struggled.

K@rl · 19 Nov 2010 at 13:49

Its from a popular "e"lectronic buy-ing website. Isnt a patch on OC though.

I like to have control of at least one server for my domain services, so I have it at home. No need in having specific server hardware just for that. At present it only runs 256MB of ram and is rarely over 5% cpu on my current PC.

It comes with 2 gig, I would have thought that would be enough for WIN7 and VM.

Might just buy it anyway and see how it fairs.

paulh · 23 Nov 2010 at 16:35

I got mine last week, 4gb, win7 one.

Running xbmc on it and after all the updates and a very small amount of setting up it plays 1080 mkv's over the network no problems at all.

iamtheoneneo · 25 Nov 2010 at 14:07

before i built my htpc i looked at these. then realised that running xbmc on it would be slow as anything and for a little extra i could get myself 4x the spec and actually do more then just movies on it.

TigerUK · 26 Nov 2010 at 01:46

i;ve been trying to sell my cracked case VIA Nano U2250 netbook on ebay, sold it for 150 and then had it sent back as they weren't happy with the speed, i was wondering not not use it as a nettop, as i need one

Is there any issue with using a netbook as a nettop, or do i need one of these dedicated machines?

twe · 2 Dec 2010 at 16:40

iamtheoneneo said:
before i built my htpc i looked at these. then realised that running xbmc on it would be slow as anything and for a little extra i could get myself 4x the spec and actually do more then just movies on it.

xbmc is fine on the Acer Revo 3600 I have, doubt if you can get anything else that uses only 65watts of power or less though, so it's a little different to what you think, i.e. all to do with speed.

pumaz · 2 Dec 2010 at 21:52

TigerUK said:
Is there any issue with using a netbook as a nettop, or do i need one of these dedicated machines?

Unless it's using an ION GPU It's not going to be fast enough, It's the Nvidia ION that gives these Nettops the ability to play 1080p etc.

steinooo · 5 Dec 2010 at 22:52

iamtheoneneo said:
before i built my htpc i looked at these. then realised that running xbmc on it would be slow as anything and for a little extra i could get myself 4x the spec and actually do more then just movies on it.

could you expand on that please?

K@rl · 6 Dec 2010 at 15:27

im yet to dive in on this but I see they have the ION2 chipset, from what I have read that should make quite a nice MPC?

PiKe · 6 Dec 2010 at 15:33

K@rl said:
im yet to dive in on this but I see they have the ION2 chipset, from what I have read that should make quite a nice MPC?

Correct.

tom-17 · 6 Dec 2010 at 21:21

This looks really nice, wouldn't mind one next to my tele.

Would be interested to hear from anyone with one, that or wait for a decent review to appear...

Methanoid · 8 Dec 2010 at 08:02

@tom, there are many reviews out there. Google

Been reading several myself this morning

iamtheoneneo · 8 Dec 2010 at 09:58

twe said:
xbmc is fine on the Acer Revo 3600 I have, doubt if you can get anything else that uses only 65watts of power or less though, so it's a little different to what you think, i.e. all to do with speed.

yes the whole 50p a year to my power bill, shucks how will i cope :rolleyes:

Methanoid · 8 Dec 2010 at 10:40

Does anyone actually KNOW the power consumption of this box, rather than posts above that suggest its very little?

PiKe · 8 Dec 2010 at 10:42

Methanoid said:
Does anyone actually KNOW the power consumption of this box, rather than posts above that suggest its very little?

It's no more than 13 watts at idle.

And FWIW my normal sized PC with a core duo only uses 60watts idle.

Methanoid · 8 Dec 2010 at 10:48

Pike, sorry but I find that figure rather hard to believe. What device did you measure with?

Earth[Tera].bin · 8 Dec 2010 at 11:13

Currently using my revo 3700 with xbmc, no problems at all. I removed the Linspire linux and replaced it with Gentoo. Took a while to get the wi-fi working but aside from that runs like a dream and more or less silent.