Thin ITX system opinions

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 12:07

Hello!

Having come to rely on the raspberry pi I've got sat under my TV but feeling like it is sometimes a bit weak, has problems here and there, looks messy etc. I've been thinking about replacing it with something more solid. Trying to avoid spending a fortune, so maybe around £200ish, anyone got any ideas? I was thinking of something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte H61TN Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Thin ITX Motherboard £77.99
1 x Akasa Euler Fanless Thin Mini-ITX Case - Black £69.95
1 x Kingston 30GB SSDNow S200 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (9.5mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SS200S3/30G) £39.95
1 x Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £31.99
1 x Corsair 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz 204-Pin SODIMM Module (CMSO2GX3M1A1333C9) £17.99
Total : £249.26 (includes shipping : £9.50).

If my understanding is right then the thin-ITX boards have a built in DC PSU, and the Akasa Euler comes with an AC power brick which I could use to power it. It's not the most powerful system but I assume if I threw OpenELEC on there it would cope pretty well with its normal watching duties. However what would you say are the chances of it running any other basic things? (For instance some basic 2D indie titles on Steam, or other basic games/emulation)?

Marine-RX179 · 20 Aug 2013 at 12:13

How about do a build around the Intel NUC?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?keywords=Intel+nuc&_=1376997164276

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 12:22

Interesting... so I guess I could go with something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel NUC DCCP847DYE Intel Celeron DDR3 Barebones PC £139.99
1 x Crucial M4 32GB mSATA Solid State Drive - (CT032M4SSD3) £43.99
1 x Corsair 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz 204-Pin SODIMM Module (CMSO2GX3M1A1333C9) £17.99
Total : £213.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).

Other than being a bit cheaper, are there any advantages to this system based on a barebones NUC versus putting together the one I posted before?

Mr Gimp · 20 Aug 2013 at 12:29

That sounds perfect for a media system for a project I'm working on too, and is a lot cheaper than expected as well!

Marine-RX179 · 20 Aug 2013 at 13:41

uncle_rufus said:
Other than being a bit cheaper, are there any advantages to this system based on a barebones NUC versus putting together the one I posted before?

Well, the biggest benefit of the NUC is its small size. If you don't need it to be this small, you could always go for a mini-itx build (but would be a good bit bigger).

I would however suggest that regardless of which you are going for, 4GB memory and 64GB SSD should be minimum.

Not sure if you seen this, but:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18535551
Granted it is only a SATA II SSD, but that capacity for that price really can't complain.

teppic · 20 Aug 2013 at 14:19

For running Linux, 2GB is fine. But 30GB isn't going to store many films.

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 14:37

Marine-RX179 said:
Well, the biggest benefit of the NUC is its small size. If you don't need it to be this small, you could always go for a mini-itx build (but would be a good bit bigger).

I would however suggest that regardless of which you are going for, 4GB memory and 64GB SSD should be minimum.

Not sure if you seen this, but:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18535551
Granted it is only a SATA II SSD, but that capacity for that price really can't complain.

I think the "thinITX" build I specced above with the Akasa case isn't much bigger than the NUC case (according to the reviews of the Euler case it's just barely bigger than the ITX board itself). Is the NUC passively cooled as well? It doesn't explicitly say but it mentions fan-control... I'm sort of drawn to the Akasa and its passive cooling for total silence

Definitely noted about the Crucial drive

Very good price, and also see my answer below for another reason I'm not bothered too much how good the drive is...

teppic said:
For running Linux, 2GB is fine. But 30GB isn't going to store many films.

The films are at 384x256 so should be okay....

I jest, I don't really need any onboard storage because all of my media is on a separate server, so I intend to have this machine mount NFS shares to get its content. Also someday in the distant future I also want the server machine to have a couple of TV tuner cards in it and allow this device to connect to one of those streams (or schedule recording on the other) - haven't looked into the details of this yet but its a long way off as I don't have a suitable ariel/dish connection to the server at the moment

teppic · 20 Aug 2013 at 14:41

Well if you can get double the storage for the same cost, it makes sense

A full Linux distribution will be able to run 2D games with Steam, but if you switch to normal ITX, you could get an APU that will let you run games like Half Life and TF2 as well.

Also - the cheap Intel chips can't cope with high quality HD video (e.g. Bluray).

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 15:09

teppic said:
Well if you can get double the storage for the same cost, it makes sense A full Linux distribution will be able to run 2D games with Steam, but if you switch to normal ITX, you could get an APU that will let you run games like Half Life and TF2 as well.

... I'm listening :cool:

... I guess that Akasa case won't work with a normal ITX board? Know of anything similar that does? Maybe this?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-001-IM&groupid=2362&catid=2279

Problem is what makes the thinITX setup quite attractive is the cost... presumably a full-size ITX won't have the DC powered option, so I'd then need to also budget for buying a pico-PSU... If anyone wants to try and spec such a system as close to £200 as possible I'm all ears

teppic said:
Also - the cheap Intel chips can't cope with high quality HD video (e.g. Bluray).

Really?

Even the RPi seems to cope okay with fairly high quality stuff so long as it's on a decent wired connection to the server. Surely the Intel celerons should be able to cope? (I guess an APU would eat it up though)

teppic · 20 Aug 2013 at 15:13

There are reports all over that the celerons don't handle 1080p Bluray video very well - they play it, but it's not always smooth. There's also an issue that it can't match the exact frame rate of the video. The APUs wouldn't have an issue, even the cheapest ones.

There aren't any FM2 thin ITX boards, but there are a couple of regular ITX ones. I think you'll struggle on a budget, yeah, especially for a nice small ITX case.

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 15:40

Mmm, a quick go yields this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Lian Li PC-Q09FB Mini-ITX HTPC Chassis - Black (150W Flex PSU) £79.99
1 x ASRock FM2A75M-ITX AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x AMD A4-5300 3.40GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD5300OKHJBOX) £37.99
1 x Crucial V4 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £35.99
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £35.98
1 x Akasa Low Profile AMD AK-CC1101EP02 CPU Cooler - 80 mm £9.98
Total : £284.82 (includes shipping : £10.75).

A bit more expensive, and I had to forget about passive cooling... Also saw the Streacom cases which use a Nano PSU, but the combined cost of a case and PSU was pretty much half of even the above budget... How do you think this system would do? :rolleyes:

teppic · 20 Aug 2013 at 16:39

It'd do very well and play back all video effortlessly. If you want it for light gaming I'd be inclined to go even more over budget and get the A6-5400K. The GPU is improved in it for £10 extra.

I wouldn't get 2x2GB 1333MHz RAM though.

Far better: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-203-CS

uncle_rufus · 20 Aug 2013 at 18:03

teppic said:
It'd do very well and play back all video effortlessly. If you want it for light gaming I'd be inclined to go even more over budget and get the A6-5400K. The GPU is improved in it for £10 extra.

I wouldn't get 2x2GB 1333MHz RAM though.

Far better: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-203-CS

Cheers, makes sense... This has given me a lot to think about

Another good alternative would be if I fancied upgrading the RAM in my main PC I could use the existing RAM in this machine (though I'm already at 2x8Gb in the main PC so I'd have to go 2x16Gb :eek:

- can never have too much RAM of course)

I also saw this case which seems pretty nice (for a case with a PSU):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-160-SV&groupid=2362&catid=2282

teppic · 20 Aug 2013 at 18:34

I wouldn't put your 2x8GB into this

For gaming though you will want dual channel memory, so 1x2GB wouldn't be ideal.

Once the Steam box is out it's likely a lot of small APU based systems will appear that are capable of light gaming and media playback.

uncle_rufus · 23 Aug 2013 at 09:09

Still researching this... there's a lot to think about, but there are a particular few "big decisions" that have to come first...

I'm still hung up on whether to go the "simpler" route of putting together a system with a very small footprint, specifically targeted at filling the role the Pi has at the moment... Or whether I should go for something more capable that can run a bunch of emulators and maybe even some Steam games with slightly lowered graphics...

System A: Simple media player
Cheap FM2 mini-ITX motherboard
Cheap AMD APU + RAM
Smallest SSD possible
Smallest case possible (+ Pico PSU)
Bluetooth Remote
Blu-ray/DVD drive?
Install some XBMC-centric distro (OpenELEC or something)

I'm unsure what issues there might be with the above, especially regarding Linux support for the Bluetooth remote, the optical drive, and actually AMD Graphics and Linux don't exactly have the best reputation either....

System B: More capable flexible system
Cheap-ish Intel mini-ITX motherboard
Intel i3 (or Celeron) + RAM etc
Case with SFX PSU or similar
Discrete GPU (as capable as budget allows)
SSD, Blu-ray/DVD drive, bluetooth remote, XB360 controllers
... os?

For this system the harder question is what to install on it... I don't really want to have to budget in another Win7 license, but then again I'm not sure of the state of support and availability for certain things, in particular:

- Obviously Windows supports more games out of the box
- Gamepad support in Linux (I've no idea, never tried)
- Emulators (Linux vs. Windows)

Could I stick an XBMC based distro on it, install Steam alongside and get it to launch in Big-picture mode from within XBMC, get the blu-ray/dvd playback working, install any emulators and stuff and have them launch from within XBMC as well... Anyone got any advice here?

teppic · 23 Aug 2013 at 09:21

As regards Linux:

The AMD drivers are fine for video playback. I've used AMD hardware with XBMC for ages, it has hardware decoding for Bluray video.

I'm not sure there are any options for playing Bluray discs, other than to rip them first with MakeMKV or some such. No issues with DVDs.

Limited choice for native gaming. All the Valve titles are coming or already available. Otherwise right now it's mostly indie games. You can run tons of Windows titles via Wine, but it's not always 100%. Dosbox works totally fine, for a bit of old style gaming.

oceaness · 23 Aug 2013 at 09:44

I think I'm in the process of setting up what you want eventually.

I've just built a version of your "System B". A powerful all round machine for desktop, gaming and HTPC duties. Personally if you want to play games I think Windows is the way to go. Windows 8 is only £80 normally and £74 this week only.

I've repurposed my old PC into a NAS box with a dual TV tuner card in it running Linux (Lubuntu because I'm not quite comfortable enough with a command line only option yet and Lubuntu requires pretty meagre resources.)

I've not quite finished it yet but it's a nice setup. I think the "System B" option will require a considerably higher budget however.

I'd love to build a passively cooled ITX system as well to run as a dedicated HTPC, but I figure I can use the all rounder for now and then that's an option in the future.

uncle_rufus · 23 Aug 2013 at 11:09

teppic said:
As regards Linux:

The AMD drivers are fine for video playback. I've used AMD hardware with XBMC for ages, it has hardware decoding for Bluray video.

I'm not sure there are any options for playing Bluray discs, other than to rip them first with MakeMKV or some such. No issues with DVDs.

Hmm, this makes me think I might as well not bother with the optical drive at all, since I can easily rip things on my main PC if I really want them and then add them to the XBMC library by sticking them onto my NAS anyway... Saves a little on cost and hassle (and to be honest I don't have a huge collection of discs in the first place)

teppic said:
Limited choice for native gaming. All the Valve titles are coming or already available. Otherwise right now it's mostly indie games. You can run tons of Windows titles via Wine, but it's not always 100%. Dosbox works totally fine, for a bit of old style gaming.

oceaness said:
I've just built a version of your "System B". A powerful all round machine for desktop, gaming and HTPC duties. Personally if you want to play games I think Windows is the way to go. Windows 8 is only £80 normally and £74 this week only.

I'm trying to decide if I could live with that... Like I said this isn't going to be my main games machine, for all FPS games and anything I want to play with Ultra graphical settings etc I'll still be using my main PC with a proper control scheme and much better hardware (though I'd likely trickle down any old parts when I upgrade to keep this system from becoming too dated)... I guess WINE/DosBox is an option too, presumably if there are any emulators which don't work or aren't available in Linux I could use these via WINE. Retro games seem like they would "feel" right on a TV with a controller, after all that's how they would have been played first time around

oceaness said:
I've repurposed my old PC into a NAS box with a dual TV tuner card in it running Linux (Lubuntu because I'm not quite comfortable enough with a command line only option yet and Lubuntu requires pretty meagre resources.)

Yes, this is exactly what I want to do eventually (well, not repurpose my PC, but) having a server machine acting as a NAS but also equipped with dual-tuners, running something like tvheadend - then I'd have my main HTPC which could cover all the lounge duties (maybe with some gaming) and stream/record live TV from the server. And it would then also be pretty easy to maybe try raspberry pi's for any other TVs in the house to pick up the stream from the server also.

Unfortunately until I own the house I live in it isn't really feasible to install the dish/aerial and cables which I would need to get the TV signal to the server

... someday though!

oceaness · 23 Aug 2013 at 11:36

uncle_rufus said:
I'm trying to decide if I could live with that... Like I said this isn't going to be my main games machine, for all FPS games and anything I want to play with Ultra graphical settings etc I'll still be using my main PC with a proper control scheme and much better hardware (though I'd likely trickle down any old parts when I upgrade to keep this system from becoming too dated)... I guess WINE/DosBox is an option too, presumably if there are any emulators which don't work or aren't available in Linux I could use these via WINE. Retro games seem like they would "feel" right on a TV with a controller, after all that's how they would have been played first time around

If you already have a gaming box I'd probably just build a cheap, silent as possible HTPC, and run OpenElec on it. That's what I'd like to do with a passively cooled build hidden somewhere out of sight eventually.

uncle_rufus said:
Yes, this is exactly what I want to do eventually (well, not repurpose my PC, but) having a server machine acting as a NAS but also equipped with dual-tuners, running something like tvheadend - then I'd have my main HTPC which could cover all the lounge duties (maybe with some gaming) and stream/record live TV from the server. And it would then also be pretty easy to maybe try raspberry pi's for any other TVs in the house to pick up the stream from the server also.

Unfortunately until I own the house I live in it isn't really feasible to install the dish/aerial and cables which I would need to get the TV signal to the server ... someday though!

My NAS/Tuner is running Tvheadend under Lubuntu with a Hauppauge Nova TD-500. And I use XBMC as a front end on my all rounder. It's also running Greyhole to pool my 4 x 2TB drives.

uncle_rufus · 23 Aug 2013 at 13:38

oceaness said:
If you already have a gaming box I'd probably just build a cheap, silent as possible HTPC, and run OpenElec on it. That's what I'd like to do with a passively cooled build hidden somewhere out of sight eventually.

That would certainly be the cheaper more straightforward option... It's a shame the NUC/thinITX option with a cheap Celeron processor won't cope with playback of everything (according to comments above - would you agree oceaness?)... Another potential problem I just thought of with having a main gaming PC and a second game-capable HTPC is what would I do about my Steam account? I'm pretty sure you can't log into steam in two locations at once, and I wouldn't want to be constantly juggling which machine is logged in

oceaness said:
My NAS/Tuner is running Tvheadend under Lubuntu with a Hauppauge Nova TD-500. And I use XBMC as a front end on my all rounder. It's also running Greyhole to pool my 4 x 2TB drives.

Sounds like you're living the dream to me