If you have an extra monitor around getting a Nuc with webcam and Wireless keyboard would work. My wife wanted something to stream her exercise videos on. Since my board is in the same room, I jumped on the excuse. I rarely play WDA, as that doesn't work as well as live competition for me. I instead use it to record just about everything I throw with OBS. I ended up adding a cheap external 1tb drive so I didn't have to keep deleting the videos.
I have no idea, you didn't ask for 4k. I searched for "celeron hd graphics 4k" and found e.g. this box with Celeron N3050, searched for "Celeron N3050" and found that it is from 2015. Maybe it doesn't work that well with Linux, but you can search for that on your own, if this box is something that you might even like. Maybe it is too small (no room for 10 harddisks), maybe it doesn't have something else that you need. Maybe you already have a great HTPC but it can't play 4k, and now a GPU might help, and you don't want to replace the whole mainboard.
Thanks, I missed that.
I'm actually leaning toward getting a mini-PC, like this:
That particular one may be a bit of overkill, though, so maybe something cheaper.
My point still stands, you won't be able to build a PC for 200
There's the intel NUCs but you won't be able to get one under 200 either
There's this one but you'll need to add RAM and storage which would take it over 200, plus the CPU in it is worse than in my chromebook
Currently using a Braswell NUC with 8gb of RAM that gets up to 11w during peak usage, Plex and building VMs. I really like the power usage but I plan on buying two more to make a Docker cluster someday.
I had an old desktop that was about 100w idle so the power cost is less but I do miss the raw computing power of an i7. I only notice it when when I'm doing dev work and trying to stream 1080p on Plex.
You could use something like this. I have one myself and I love the broader options of what i can do and how I can customize things to my own experience. You could even sell your HTPC and just get this thing, you might even come out with some money on top.
Just purchased an Apex but I used a seneye for about two years. To get around the whole extra addons for Monitoring I purchased a Small Mini PC and connected the Seneye to that and installed Windows on it and the software runs on that box. You can use another PC to remote into that box to manage it. The only draw back is if a power outage happen you would need to verify the PC started back up and the software started back up. This can be done automatically with some settings.
The slides are kinda expensive 120 a year and there is no forgiveness on when they expire. If you forget to change it the day that it expires than your without PH Monitoring. They also need about 72 hours of soaking. So you have to be ready on Day 27 to soak a new slide. I also wouldn't rely on the NH3 monitoring, it uses a formula to calculate NH3 by Monitoring Levels of NH4, over a year it has never registered correct NH3 even though I knew I had some NH3 in the tank which showed on a standard test.
When the slide expires it will still alert you on temperature but the PH Level just freezes along with NH3 or NH4, hence why you wont get any alerts.
I'd go for a basic one like this, throw in a 120GB SSD, Windows 10, and a 8GB stick of RAM and be done with it.
The closest thing to this would be some sort of NUC, like this. However, you would probably be better off just buying an old laptop, and installing linux on that.
My wife's Dell laptop is 6 years old and slow and bad. She wants a desktop now and since all she does is watch YouTube and write in Microsoft Word, I was thinking of just getting this NUC along with the "Frequently Bought Together" RAM and SSD.
I know the answer is almost certainly "very much so", but is this build (with Windows 10) going to be acceptable for Word, light Excel and web video? thanks in advance
+1 for this. If you have an old laptop laying around you can simply use windows power options to prevent the laptop from sleeping/hibernating when the lid closes and use TeamViewer to control it.
In my environment when we need to deploy something to manage slideshows for display TV's we use low power intel NUCs like this. Because we have users that aren't "tech literate" (don't want to learn how to transfer files) we simply have them use Google Slides and full screen the slide show on Chrome.
If form factor is important to you, you might look in to the Intel NUC. They make VESA mounts for them so that you can mount it to the back of your TV, if it isn't already mounted to the wall. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1461160500&sr=1-4&keywords=intel+nuc
Seems a tad overkill with the i3 version. I know I own this one and it plays everything I have thrown at it: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1461068077&sr=1-1&keywords=nuc
I would personally go with an Intel NUC over a Raspberry Pi 3. Pi's are great and all for little things but when its media, i found them horribly slow. I got this for a front end http://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M with 4gb ram, and a 120gb ssd and it has been great. Also has built in IR that works great with Ubuntu. Most of my Media is being sent over to the system by NFS without issues.
Hey! Saw you on SA too. You can run the Plex Media Player embedded client on a NUC. The NUC doesn't need to be both the server and the client, so option 2 is a wash.
You can get a bottom-tier NUC that's capable of decoding 4K content, so 1080p blu-rays shouldn't be a problem. Throw in 8GB of RAM, your old SSD, and boot the embedded client and you're done. The NUC will direct play everything off of your NAS/Plex Media Server.
Depends on the CPU--if you don't mind a celeron, you can get this one. That plus 4GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD should cost around $250, if you don't mind DIY. (Pre-assembled tho--I'm surprised the Meerkat is as low as $450...)
Are you wedded to an ARM board? I/O performance tends to be the bane of ARM chipsets. If you want both good I/O performance and solid graphics you're sorta searching for a unicorn.
If your budget allows for it, a NUC would fit your requirements and be bored while doing so. Even the cheapest one on Amazon has 4 USB3 ports and supports a 4K display.
NUCs require you to bring your own RAM and storage, so you'd be looking at ~$200 or so total (buying cheap RAM and a cheap SSD). There's an SD slot as well, so if you don't need strong I/O performance from the boot drive you could cut corners there and boot off a micro SD card.
Would an Intel Celeron NUC be a good idea?
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B00XPVRR5M/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_apa_i_vx9yFbSTN746G
Didn't get mine from Amazon but found one here: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M
Mine is NUC5CPYH. Don't necessarily buy it at Amazon, I only include this link for information, not to flog Amazon's products.
Why not get a NUC. It's not that expensive and it might fit your needs better.
You can get an Intel NUC but you'll need to add storage and RAM
I have this one. video still isn't great, but it's going to be my OwnCloud/Emby server.
so you're saying something like this plus installing windows?
Quick Q, can this Mini-PC emulate games up to Gamecube and PS2 games? Intel NUC NUC5CPYH, 4K Support via HDMI, Intel HD Graphics, SATA3 for 2.5-Inch HDD/SSD BOXNUC5CPYH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XPVRR5M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_PX7RybFA523Z5
Why not something like an intel Nuc?
Chances are your dad won't be downloading, so I don't see him needing more than a 250gig SSD (should be the same price as both the HDD's you've given him)
$120 Intel NUC NUC5CPYH
$39 8 gig ram
$80 250gig SSD
$85 win 10
$324 for a good web browsing pc.
There is a small amount of setup involved. It is within the realm of my tolerance for such things, but barely. You need a NUC, a stick of memory, a high quality usb thumb drive, plexpass and any other crappy thumb drive or external disk. You may need a usb keyboard for one time setup stuff.
NUC, there is a newer better faster generation out now but this is the one I bought: http://smile.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M
RAM, do not go crazy here. It does one thing. This matches the above NUC: http://smile.amazon.com/Kingston-Technology-1600MHz-PC3-12800-KVR16LS11/dp/B00CQ35GYE
FLIRC: http://smile.amazon.com/FLIRC-FL-09028-Universal-Receiver-Components/dp/B00BB0ETW8
OS disk: http://smile.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-Low-Profile-SDCZ43-032G-G46-Version/dp/B00LLER2CS/
Put it all together, program your FLIRC on your desktop computer (laptop, whatever), copy embedded plex onto your crappy usb stick, boot from it, install onto your fancy usb stick, and off you go. Configure Plex for software decoding. It's in the video options somewhere.
The newer generation may have better CEC support. The one linked above does not have it.
This is neither free nor entirely uncomplicated, however it does avoid transcoding which is exchanging electricity for convenience. I have 1 client and 1 server. (Though now I use my TiVo BOLT which I highly recommend. The NUC is now extra.)
It doesnt, but you could spend a little more for a NUC
You can buy an Intel NUC with 4GB of memory and a 500GB HDD for 300$.
It's very slow. Spend some extra money? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XPVRR5M/