What is the best price/performance "out of the box" nettop or Micro PC for 1080p available?

Richdog · 13 Sep 2012 at 13:04

I'm having real trouble with researching an "out of the box" nettop or MicroPC that has a CPU stronger than the AMD E-series of CPU's, that is available in Europe, that can play all 1080p (and future material) without a sweat.

The reason I want an "out of the box" PC is simply because I am done and finished with self-builds... I have no time and patience for it at all any more and just want something that i can plug in and play.

I have found a company called Giada that sells this kind of nettop and MiniPC with i3 series processors and above, but they don't really seem to be avaibale anywhere inside Europe http://www.giadapc.com/products/minipc/

There's a few on Ebay.com for around 320USD with an i3um processor but im not really a fan of getting one shipped so far, and those are older models.

I just want a slim and trim media nettop or MiniPC that will play ANY high bitrate 1080p media I throw at without need for hit and miss GPU acceleration for the next couple of years, no more, no less. Price around £400 of preferable less.

So, any advice please?

Mei · 13 Sep 2012 at 13:59

there is a zbox with a i3 2330M in it duno if that counts as a selfbuild
and i know its not exactly what you are asking but id just go laptop with hdmi out i think

Richdog · 13 Sep 2012 at 14:16

Mei said:
there is a zbox with a i3 2330M in it duno if that counts as a selfbuild
and i know its not exactly what you are asking but id just go laptop with hdmi out i think

well, a self-build is something that you have to assemble form scratch... so no the Zbox isn't a self-build in my eyes! Thanks for the info, will check these out provided they do them in the EU (EDIT - they do, at £265 for barebones (add RAM and HD, which i can jsut about manage

).

Any other advice appreciated guys!

Ant84 · 21 Sep 2012 at 12:29

Used Mac Mini?

Richdog · 21 Sep 2012 at 17:23

Ant84 said:
Used Mac Mini?

Thanks for the suggestion mate but I don't use Apple products, so nein.

Im hoping Zotac release a new edition of the Zbox based on the new Intel processors, that would be perfect.

graham35 · 27 Sep 2012 at 12:49

Richdog
Email addresses from their website
For inquiry about the following regions, you can also email to :
France: [email protected]
Spain: [email protected]
Portugal: [email protected]
UK: [email protected]

Not sure where you are, but I know where I can by these here in Spain

http://www.dynos.es/informatica/ordenadores-y-servidores/mini-ordenadores/ (mods may remove the link, but dynos. es)

Countcussy · 28 Sep 2012 at 09:18

Asrock CoreHT ticks most of the boxes. They do a full range of ready built "Mini PC`s"

Might be difficult to find for under £400 though. I have been looking for something similar myself.

Would the Dell Inspiron 660s be too big?

Richdog · 28 Sep 2012 at 15:37

Countcussy said:
Asrock CoreHT ticks most of the boxes. They do a full range of ready built "Mini PC`s"

Might be difficult to find for under £400 though. I have been looking for something similar myself.

Yes they look amazing, but the price is a little crazy. :eek:

The cheapest I can find over here that would do the job is:

ZOTAC ZBOX Nano AD12, AMD E2-1800 for £170 (not sure this would be a good choice as I read it struggles with some MKV files)

ZOTAC ZBOX ID82 Plus with i3 2330M for £310.

Would the Dell Inspiron 660s be too big?

Doesn't look so bad but sitll bigger than i'd like sadly.

Richdog · 30 Sep 2012 at 13:13

Anyone else know any other systems? I find it hard to believe that the Zotac Zbox ID82 is the only nettop PC with a Core i3 CPU for a reasonable price... it's around 6 months old now!

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 30 Sep 2012 at 19:10

The Arctic MC101 can be had for around £450 and as an AMD A10-4600M. It does run hot,but is meant to be quiet and has a decent IGP.

enigma27 · 30 Sep 2012 at 23:27

Acer Revo series?

I have an old 3610 model that plays MKV and 1080p just fine.. uses 1.6ghz cpu and Nvidia Ion chipset. The model i got has 4gb memory and 500 gb Hard drive.. think I paid 170 for it.

Richdog · 2 Oct 2012 at 08:12

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The Arctic MC101 can be had for around £450 and as an AMD A10-4600M. It does run hot,but is meant to be quiet and has a decent IGP.

Looks alright, but cheapest I can find is £500+ and nowhere in the EU.

enigma27 said:
Acer Revo series?

I have an old 3610 model that plays MKV and 1080p just fine.. uses 1.6ghz cpu and Nvidia Ion chipset. The model i got has 4gb memory and 500 gb Hard drive.. think I paid 170 for it.

Acer Revo is too underpowered with that CPU and chipset, plenty of complaints about it on't web.

enigma27 · 2 Oct 2012 at 15:40

Richdog said:
Looks alright, but cheapest I can find is £500+ and nowhere in the EU.

Acer Revo is too underpowered with that CPU and chipset, plenty of complaints about it on't web.

Im surprised at that... I have had it as my media center PC for best part of two years have never had any trouble playing anything at it.. most of the films I play on it are 1080P blu ray rips and it plays these back flawless.

GeX · 2 Oct 2012 at 16:18

They'll playback anything that can be offloaded on the GPU with ease. Same as the E-350 based systems (I have a Zbox AD02) but they struggle when (for whatever reason) the GPU can't be used. This happens with Netflix, SkyGo, LoveFilm, basically anything involving Silverlight.

I intend to upgrade my HTPC to a system based on a chip like the i5 3475S. It has HD4000 and a TDP of 65w.

So you can either way of Zotac to update their line, or just build something in an M350 case.. have a read; http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18425335

Richdog · 2 Oct 2012 at 17:35

GeX said:
They'll playback anything that can be offloaded on the GPU with ease. Same as the E-350 based systems (I have a Zbox AD02) but they struggle when (for whatever reason) the GPU can't be used. This happens with Netflix, SkyGo, LoveFilm, basically anything involving Silverlight.

I intend to upgrade my HTPC to a system based on a chip like the i5 3475S. It has HD4000 and a TDP of 65w.

So you can either way of Zotac to update their line, or just build something in an M350 case.. have a read; http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18425335

Hmmmm actually I really, really like the look of this Thermaltake Element Q VL52021N2E http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001514

It's a bit chunkier, but I already have a 5.25" Blu-Ray drive I could use, and it takes a 3.5" HD too. Also the front I/O port is nice, whereas the M350 doesn't have an easily accessible one which I would find annoying. Price at £48 isn't bad either!

Looks like i may sself-build at Christmas if no new and more powerful nettops come out before then.

EDIT - This seems like a good spec:

Thermaltake Element Q VL52021N2E inc 220w PSU
Intel Core i3 2120T BOX, 2.5GHz, LGA 1155, 2C/4T, 35W TDP
ASRock H61M-ITX, Intel H61, LGA1155, Mini-ITX
Kingston ValueRAM, 2x4GB Kit, DDR3-1066, CL7
Corsair Force3 120GB

All that for £283! Power draw on that 2120T is also very small at 35w TDP, and according to Newegg reviews the thing has serious grunt.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 2 Oct 2012 at 18:52

Richdog said:
Looks alright, but cheapest I can find is £500+ and nowhere in the EU.

You need to look for the DPALI-MC101F-GBA01 model.

Richdog said:
Hmmmm actually I really, really like the look of this Thermaltake Element Q VL52021N2E http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001514

It's a bit chunkier, but I already have a 5.25" Blu-Ray drive I could use, and it takes a 3.5" HD too. Also the front I/O port is nice, whereas the M350 doesn't have an easily accessible one which I would find annoying. Price at £48 isn't bad either!

Looks like i may sself-build at Christmas if no new and more powerful nettops come out before then.

EDIT - This seems like a good spec:

Thermaltake Element Q VL52021N2E inc 220w PSU

Intel Core i3 2120T BOX, 2.5GHz, LGA 1155, 2C/4T, 35W TDP

ASRock H61M-ITX, Intel H61, LGA1155, Mini-ITX

Kingston ValueRAM, 2x4GB Kit, DDR3-1066, CL7

Corsair Force3 120GB

All that for £283! Power draw on that 2120T is also very small at 35w TDP, and according to Newegg reviews the thing has serious grunt.

The IGP in the current IB and especially the Trinity CPUs is better for video decoding.

pumaz · 11 Oct 2012 at 21:20

How about this:

HP ProLiant N40L - £109 (after rebate)
Decent Video Card - £30
8GB Memory - £30

Think this represents the best bang for buck media system and will run circles round Revo's and the likes

Richdog · 12 Oct 2012 at 09:58

pumaz said:
How about this:

HP ProLiant N40L - £109 (after rebate)
Decent Video Card - £30
8GB Memory - £30

Think this represents the best bang for buck media system and will run circles round Revo's and the likes

Hmm, interesting thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Just read the following review though which raises some concerns:

The HP Microserver has been well reviewed on many sites, including Silent PC Review. Unfortunately it doesn't live up to the hype, as many other people have discovered (check the SPCR and AVForums forums).

The fans are loud. HP claim 22dB, but my basic meter rated the Microserver at 48dB from 1m. I swapped the 120mm fan for a quieter one which reduced it down to an acceptable level, but even so the PSU fan is far too loud to use as a media centre. Definitely the sort of thing you need to keep out of the living room and bedroom.

The PSU is also far less efficient than the review models. SPCR measured an idle power consumption of 25W with two hard drives. As shipping the Microserver comes with one 250GB HDD and idles at 52W. More than twice what the review samples used. This is a common trick - send review sites units with special high efficiency components but ship much cheaper parts to consumers. I confirmed that the PSU is at fault by trying a more efficient one which did manage to reach 27W at idle.

Other than these two serious issues the server is a very nice bit of kit. The CPU seems reasonably powerful, a bit quicker than my older Atom D510 despite that CPU having hyperthreading. Plenty of room for HDDs (you can actually have 6 if you use the 3.5" bay and the external SATA) and fairly easy to work on. Seems solidly built. The unusual torx screw heads are a bit annoying and the multi-SATA cable is difficult to remove (necessary to slide the mobo out for RAM upgrades and the like). The GPU is powerful enough to do transcoding on the fly for DLNA. Some people have commented that the lack of a HDMI port makes it less useful as a media centre, but it is far too loud for that anyway.

The on-board network chip is a Broadcom NetXtream. It isn't particularly good, strange for a machine basically built to serve files over a network. I can pull 60MB/sec over it, although CPU load is a bit high. There is no jumbo frame support, which isn't as bad as it sounds because interrupt moderation makes it less important these days, but still... This is a budget chip. PCI-Express NICs are pretty cheap, but will of course add to the power consumption.

The BIOS is really basic. There is no fan speed control. Very little in the way of configurability for SATA operation, boot order and the like. The minimum shared memory for graphics is 32MB. The BIOS won't boot with slow fans. SPCR says the cut-off is around 500 RPM, but I couldn't go any lower than about 900 RPM.

Overall I'd say it's a good product, if you are willing to accept the noise and either pay the higher electricity bills or shell out for a PicoPSU. As ever HP managed to take a good idea and almost ruin it.

drakioned · 12 Oct 2012 at 10:18

I have a XH61V barebones with a i5-3470S in it. There's no real build per se, it took like 5-10 minutes to fit everything.

Both the XH61V and the i5-3470S can be had for under £150, and the only other parts you would need are RAM (SODIMM if you opt for the XH61V or regular DIMM if you opt for the XH61 non-V) and 2.5" HDD. I think the i5 is probably overkill for your application, but you will have a better idea of what you want for price/performance. You can probably get the set up for under £400, less if you opt for an i3 or a Pentium/Celeron.

Incidentally, the machine is tiny, like. 3 litres in size!

Richdog · 12 Oct 2012 at 10:42

drakioned said:
I have a XH61V barebones with a i5-3470S in it. There's no real build per se, it took like 5-10 minutes to fit everything.

Both the XH61V and the i5-3470S can be had for under £150, and the only other parts you would need are RAM (SODIMM if you opt for the XH61V or regular DIMM if you opt for the XH61 non-V) and 2.5" HDD. I think the i5 is probably overkill for your application, but you will have a better idea of what you want for price/performance. You can probably get the set up for under £400, less if you opt for an i3 or a Pentium/Celeron.

Incidentally, the machine is tiny, like. 3 litres in size!

That's nice, but i've just seen this and am in love... http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsSpec?productId=1477

Shuttle SH67H3

Holy mamma what a beauty, and perfectly featured with space for a 5.25" Blu-Ray drive and 3.5" Card Reader... bloody expensive though at £210! :eek:

EDIT . Ok, £185 here. Not so bad when it comes with motherboard and good PSU I guess. Chipset on the mobo is a little old though and needs a BIOS update for Ivy Bridge. Hm.