We have a tiny, Haswell-powered PC from Intel—what should we do with it?

There's a lot of potential inside this dinky box.

Read the whole story

 

[motytrah]

HTPC is the target I would look at. At least that's what I did with mine. The problem with most of the HTPCs in the $99-199 range is they lack support for a number of formats. For instance 10-bit encoded video is pretty common in the Anime Fan-Sub community and it's just not something baked into any of the SoC out there used in media devices. You need an i3 or better to do a soft decode.

For a story look at using pre-packaged XBMC distros like openelec. For bonus points you could go hand rolled and try out Netflix via Linux Desktop. You should have enough power to do a variety of MAME emulators too.

 

[motytrah]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":1rqi1k8i]

OmniWrench[/url]":1rqi1k8i]I've been sort of curious how the thermals/performance would be in a fanless NUC enclosure (something like this http://www.logicsupply.eu/news/fanless_nuc/) but I'm not sure how practical it would be to go about getting one (not even sure if they're available for the new ones yet). I guess that would really turn into a "fanless enclosure review" rather than a NUC review...

For whatever reason as much as a tiny PC appeals to me (and it does) a totally silent tiny PC appeals to me even more. :-D

You'll pay for the privilege (extended-range components aren't cheap); but apparently they sell a fanless, sealed, NUC validated at 50 degrees C, ambient, while under load. If you can take it, it can.

I've never quite seen the reason for it. I have the i3 NUC and it's pretty darn quiet. Certainly quieter than a PS3 or XB360. The only appeal of fan-less for me would be no moving parts.