2013-02-25, 21:11
I've seen a few posts on whether Lenovo’s new Q190 with a Celeron 887 cpu will make a good HTPC with XBMC, so thought I’d share my feedback as I purchased one from Amazon UK last week.
I confirm the lowest spec Q190 running XBMC Frodo on Windows 8 plays anything I throw at it, including 1080P 3D films (tested on my 47 inch Active LG 3D TV with 3D glasses) and outputs Bitstream for HD audio (my Yamaha Amp reports DTS-MA or Dolby True-HD etc).
At £249 ($348 in Amazon US) fully loaded for what Lenovo call the world’s smallest PC, I see this as currently the best value full HTPC. (With it paperback book size and 500mb drive, it’s also perfect to fill with kids Movies to take on holiday etc).
Only downslide is slightly louder than expected fan noise that appears to run at full speed all the time, even though XBMC never raises CPU utilisation above 10% (though can only really hear it during the quietest dialogue parts of a film). I can’t find a BIOS setting or get any Fan control software to reduce the fan speed. Does anyone have any other ideas how I can reduce fan noise?
I’m Considering rebuilding it with OpenELEC 3.0 (when it is finally released) so as to reduce boot up time. (As Q190 has Intel 2000 graphics it will support HD audio unlike HTPC’s running AMD cpu’s with on board graphics). Does anyone think this is worth it as currently Win8 boots in about 15 seconds?
I confirm the lowest spec Q190 running XBMC Frodo on Windows 8 plays anything I throw at it, including 1080P 3D films (tested on my 47 inch Active LG 3D TV with 3D glasses) and outputs Bitstream for HD audio (my Yamaha Amp reports DTS-MA or Dolby True-HD etc).
At £249 ($348 in Amazon US) fully loaded for what Lenovo call the world’s smallest PC, I see this as currently the best value full HTPC. (With it paperback book size and 500mb drive, it’s also perfect to fill with kids Movies to take on holiday etc).
Only downslide is slightly louder than expected fan noise that appears to run at full speed all the time, even though XBMC never raises CPU utilisation above 10% (though can only really hear it during the quietest dialogue parts of a film). I can’t find a BIOS setting or get any Fan control software to reduce the fan speed. Does anyone have any other ideas how I can reduce fan noise?
I’m Considering rebuilding it with OpenELEC 3.0 (when it is finally released) so as to reduce boot up time. (As Q190 has Intel 2000 graphics it will support HD audio unlike HTPC’s running AMD cpu’s with on board graphics). Does anyone think this is worth it as currently Win8 boots in about 15 seconds?