What's the point of a NUC when I can build a SFF instead?

[kaktus]

I've been really trying hard to justify the point of spending ~ £600 for a i5 nuc instead of just building a small pc with better cooling and a dedicated gpu instead for the same price.

The plan is only to use it for browsing, netflix/amazon, xbmc media streaming from a NAS. I just can't see the point of buying a NUC to do this, as I can probably build something much better and will last much longer than a NUC, might even be enough for casual gaming too when the nephews come round.

So am i missing something? whats the point of the NUC???

 

[kaktus]

the point is you dont have to build it.
but anyway, you're probably looking at the wrong NUC if all you want it for is to browse and play some media - you dont need a £600 i5 NUC for that.

well I'm pretty confused about this you could say.

I assumed the logical setup is :

1 NAS with a bunch of storage drives is a sort of 'well of storage' and just basically contains raw stored files (movies, music whatever)

1 powerful HTPC 'pulls' files off the NAS, like you would pull files from a USB attached to a router say, and the htpc then processes, and disseminates those media files for consumption.

Right now, its looking more like there's no need for an HTPC at all and just getting a very powerful NAS to store and distribute content. OR get a very powerful HTPC to distribute content and a bunch of USB drives attached to it to store the content.

I don't see the point of both together

 

[kaktus]

Why do you need a powerful HTPC? Even the Celeron based NUCs will handle everything on your wish list save for the gaming. A NAS is only useful if you have more than one PC to share files to otherwise a USB drive and NUC will do just fine for you.

There's a lot of conflicting information out there. From what I understand you need a cpu with at least 2000 cpumark to run an effective server capable of transcoding.

I believe the reason for a NAS is act as a central repository for not only the NUC but also the other pc's in the house and the TV's/media players which would use NAS to access stored content.

I'm terribly confused about the whole set up, for me it seems like a nas only makes sense if you want to access your content outside your home (i.e. Through a Web interface, and which case you need a powerful NAS to transcode). Otherwise, a powerful htpc and a dumb file server NAS is the way to go for home setups. Do you agree.with that?

 

[kaktus]

I'm with you now. What I have is a powerful server with a few drives in it which I use for media storage. As its quite powerful it easily handles any transcoding duties if needed. I run Plex Server on it which greatly eases the distribution of media through the house and also over the net.
In my lounge I have a small PC which, when turned on, runs Plex Home Theater which provides an easy to use interface through which to access the media on the server. Hopefully this wee description of what I have may help you.

I think you've got it the wrong way round - you need a powerful server, not a powerful HTPC. It's the server that handles all the hard graft whilst your small, low power HTPC/ phone/ tablet/ smart TV happily skips along playing the transcoded media from the server.

I'm not sure this really answered my question or maybe it did...

Let me put it another way:

2-4 TV's and potentially 2-4 devices 'pulling' media, which could be movies, songs, pictures or otherwise, from a central storage device.

Are you saying that it makes more sense to have a very powerful central storage device (NAS) that also does the processing of the file, be it movies or otherwise, before streaming it to a receiving device like a low powered htpc, mobile phone or whatever?

Put it this way, what would be the disadvantage of having:
*a non-powerful NAS for the sole purpose of being a dumb file storage device with say 3 or 4 large HDD's attached to it
* a powerful htpc to use as a home theatre and pc system in one including browsing, downloading, playing movies and other content and reading all the information from the HDD's attached to the NAS?

I'm trying to understand why the NAS has to be the server here and not the HTPC?

 

[kaktus]

a NUC is just a new platform size, designed and made by Intel, much like ATX, miniITX etc

how did this add anything whatsoever to the discussion? No-one asked what a NUC is. The original question was what the point of it was and how it relates to the application its intended for...