the joys of an intel NUC

spannerzone

I got a celeron 1037u version which is essentially very similar to the i3 NUC, there's not a huge performance difference but the Atom/Bay Trail CPU NUC's such as the 2820/2830's are quite a lot slower in performance (and power consumption) so it's well worth comparing the CPU performance.....as many of these very low power consumption CPU's like the n2820 perform no better than a 6 year old core2duo CPU so worth checking before committing.

The good news is that they're still usually powerful enough for the typical home theatre tasks people will use them for and using just a few watts.

enfield_freddy

yup , the 2820 has now been updated to a 2830 unit , my old machine was a 6 yr old P4 e5700 ,


the 2830 uses faster memory and has a couple of features added back that were removed from the 2820 ,


I,ve just converted a 1.4g Avi file to mp4 , using handbrake it did it whilst I was browsing and copying files to my nas


The bios problems (no bios unless you have an expensive tv) should have been fixed by now (bios ver 46!) , the bios is dire , not like any PC.


they are an expensive "toy" for a media player , however I wanted the addons on XBMC.


for the average user , I would recommend to sum vision micro 4 , along with a usb hard drive or even a usb stick , that thing can play ANYTHING you point at it ,, even tried reading a win 7 image that was left on one of my drives ,
cost about £40 , however this intel thing costs over £220 (256 ssd , 4 g ddr3L ,,, note special memory)


after using this nuc for the day , I am quite happy with it as a home PC

fwor

enfield_freddy wrote: »

ddr3L ,,, note special memory

Ah yes, good point - nearly made a mistake there. That takes my rough cost up to £370 (1TB conventional HDD + 30GB SSD) which is getting a bit pricey - but it will all screw onto the back of the monitor, which is a really neat solution...

spannerzone

Yep a NUC type PC isn't a particularly cheap way to get a PC but it is a way to get an incredibly tiny and reasonably powerful PC the size of 2 cigarette packs under your TV.... some need an mSATA card type SSD drive and most need low power memory which isn't the sort of thing you usually have in your spares drawer

I don't personally think them mostly only having HDMI is a problem and TV's with HDMI sockets are the norm and have been for about 8 years or more and hardly what I'd call expensive.

enfield_freddy

umm regarding the HDMI only , its a fault on the intels that the unit wont kick in until the drivers are loaded , a common question on intel forums , the answer = use a vga monitor to set the bios.


my TV (about 3 yr old) supports 1080 , but will not display the bios.


I almost bought an asus one , with vga , but for £10 more the intel had a much larger CPU

spannerzone

enfield_freddy wrote: »

umm regarding the HDMI only , its a fault on the intels that the unit wont kick in until the drivers are loaded , a common question on intel forums , the answer = use a vga monitor to set the bios.


my TV (about 3 yr old) supports 1080 , but will not display the bios.


I almost bought an asus one , with vga , but for £10 more the intel had a much larger CPU

Oh I see, that's quite irritating!

enfield_freddy

spannerzone wrote: »

Oh I see, that's quite irritating!

very irritating , having to drive to CPC on Christmas eve at 4.30pm , and hurriedly buying an adaptor to get it to work on my pc monitor , the bios is bloody horrible and hard to set up ,


although only consuming 16w (under hard load ) reducing to about 8 w on tickover , she can stay on 24/7


when I went to scan , and was discussing them , the counter bloke explained that every PC in the building had been replaced by an intel NUC ,