[Busenheimer]

I'm trying to find a small, quiet box for our living room, which is a secondary viewing area. This will be velcro'd to the back of our TV and out of sight.

What I need it to do.

1) Live TV via cmyth plugin/MythTV from a remote Mythbuntu box

2) Non-3D mkv blu ray rips streamed from a NAS

3) Aeon NOX skin with lots of widgets and fanart

4) Will be using the Pusle - Eight CEC adaptor and remote so sleep functions should work

5) OS will be Openelec, not interested in anything else.

I currently am using a 2011 Mac mini ( mobile i5, 4GB of RAM, only 2GB seen by Openelec, and a 5400 RPM HDD) running Openelec Generic, but it's getting moved to the bed room. It handles all 4 requirements without breaking a sweat. The fan is just annoyingly loud sometimes.

I've narrowed it down to two machines. I'm a fan of Intel integrated HD graphics so please no suggestions for Fusion builds.

Option 1 -

Zotac Zbox ID61 barebones
- Celeron 867 @ 1.3 Ghz, Passmark score of 1307
- HDMI 1.3?
- Gig Ethernet
- $197 (free shipping) + $50 (Electra Extreme 30GB SSD) + $20 Ram = $267

My main concern is fan noise. I've read that a BIOS update improves this, but there is still fan noise.

Option 2 -

Intel NUC - Celeron
- Celeron 847 @ 1.1 Ghz, Passmark score of 1058
- HDMI 1.4a
- Gig Ethernet
- $175 + $50 (32GB mSata SSD) + $20 Ram = $245

This would be a totally silent machine, but I wonder what the extra 0.2 Ghz of the 867 would do.

Would I have a pretty smooth experience with either of these processors, an SSD and 2-4 GB of RAM given how I want to use it?

[Drumitar]

I'm also eyeing the celeron nuc with open elec... Anyone using that setup currently ?

[Busenheimer]

Just curious if you considered the Zotac, and if you did why you ruled it out