Building a HTPC

Discussion in 'Technology' started by ali_f, Oct 5, 2014.

  1. #41 cmdrmonkey, Nov 23, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2016
    Wouldn't recommend anything lower than an i3 or APU. There's a difference between entry level hardware and garbage. Celerons fall in the garbage category.

    Honestly, I probably wouldn't recommend anything other than a NUC, Brix, or Mac Mini at this point. Physical media is pretty much dead. Onboard graphics are perfectly adequate now for HD and even 4K video. Intel ULV i3 and i5 chips are powerful and run cool and quiet. No reason to have a big, clunky, loud full size or even mircoATX or mini-ITX PC hooked up to your TV unless you need an optical drive and/or discrete graphics card.
     
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  2. I don't follow.... so is a i3 NUC is good enough for VLC 4k playback but not Netflix?
     
  3. #44 cmdrmonkey, Nov 23, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2016
    I had some 4K porn videos and it played those fine through VLC and Kodi/XBMC. No idea about netflix. Cancelled my subscription to netflix ages ago.

    But if you read what bfun posted, you could have a GTX 1080, and it technically doesn't support 4K netflix.

     
  4. Netflix 4k playback on desktops are in a very different league than anything since they had to make the movie studios happy (piracy concerns). It requires you to have kaby lake and you have to run it in microsoft edge browser. If Netflix had their way, you could play 4k video just fine on any of the last few gens of cpu's.

    If you want an idea, Nvidia's shield console which also double's as android tv does netflix 4k perfectly fine and uses outdated 1.5 year old mobile hardware.
     
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  5. Some 4K TVs can't play 4K Netflix because they don't have the right decoder chip.
     
  6. You'll also have to upgrade to a 4K compatible shower-curtains.
     
  7. #48 cmdrmonkey, Nov 24, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2016
  8. For the first time in years I have worked on a couple of AMD systems recently and they really do produce a hell of a lot of heat. Both of them were laptops but the heat coming out of the fan compared to my core i3 was immense and it wasn't nearly as quick as my 6 year old Sandy Bridge. Even when I installed the SSD this A8-7410 didn't feel as quick as my old Core i3 system with an SSD. The intel is snappy, the AMD felt like things still took a while to load.

    Until Zen comes out I personally wouldn't use AMD because of power usage and heat issues.
     
  9. Yeah those old AMD laptops were garbage. The new Bristol Ridge ones have just started selling here and are much more interesting. Newegg has an Acer with the A12-9700P on sale right now for $500. The CPU is pretty similar to mobile i5s and the built-in crossfire can play modern games at medium settings. This review isn't in English but you can see the guy playing FarCry 4 and Battlefield 4.

     
  10. That's another thing about AMD, I find it hard to work out how the naming structure works!
     
  11. Yeah it's complicated as all hell but Intel's over simplifying naming scheme that has gone on for too long only hides the complication. An i7 can have 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 cores. i5s don't have hyper threading except when they do have hyper threading. Pentium was a flagship brand with hyper threading and now it's a bargain brand without hyper threading that's slower than an i3 unless it's a newer Pentium vs an older i3 and then it can be faster than an i3.