Recommended small form HTPC? (1 Viewer)

[glenb83]

Hi All,

I'm currently running an AMD A10-5800K, Radeon7660D tower, Leadtek 2000DS Plus with 60GB SSD and 8GB RAM for MediaPortal (with all media streaming from a NAS over Gb lan), but my main PC died so rather than getting a new PC I was thinking about using the current HTPC and rebuilding the MediaPortal with a small form factor PC.

So far I've been considering these 3 options, and want to know what would work best for performance and value for money. I'm also open to suggestions of systems other than those mentioned. I would use a Winfast DTV Gold USB TV Tuner for Live TV. Majority of content is h.264 rips, some 720P and occasional 1080P.

Intel NUC (approx $570) - Intel i3-3217U, HD4000, 8GB RAM, Crucial 64GB mSata SSD
Gigabyte Brix XM11 (approx $700) - Intel i5-3337U, HD4000, 8GB RAM, Crucial 64GB mSata SSD
Gigabyte Brix XM12 (approx $580) - Inteli3-3227U, HD4000, 8GB RAM, Crucial 64GB mSata SSD

Any thoughts?

 

[kiwijunglist]

I think AMD onboard graphics are better for HTPCs than intel. The AMD based Kabini brix, might be good, but it is not out yet.

If you want to go slightly larger you could build a miniITX HTPC. It will be cheaper, faster and offer better value for money. The XBMC forums are full of sample builds. I'd recommend going with AMD onboard, and getting a miniITX motherboard that can take 2x sticks of DDR3 ram (Onboard GPUs run better with dual channel 1600 or faster memory).

All of the SFF PCs you listed above would be more than capable. I think the gigabyte one is faster and includes wifi, so for $10 more it is probably better value (I might be wrong though, you can probably check yourself)

 

[Branda24]

I think AMD onboard graphics are better for HTPCs than intel. The AMD based Kabini brix, might be good, but it is not out yet.

If you want to go slightly larger you could build a miniITX HTPC. It will be cheaper, faster and offer better value for money. The XBMC forums are full of sample builds. I'd recommend going with AMD onboard, and getting a miniITX motherboard that can take 2x sticks of DDR3 ram (Onboard GPUs run better with dual channel 1600 or faster memory).

All of the SFF PCs you listed above would be more than capable. I think the gigabyte one is faster and includes wifi, so for $10 more it is probably better value (I might be wrong though, you can probably check yourself)

Yes, absolutelly agree, AMD onboard graphics is better

 

[TommySharp]

The zotac zbox nano ID64 is what I went with. Quite a nice little box...