[Yokozuna]

I am looking at buying a D54250WYKH i5 NUC

Need some help with selection of the following:

1. Which OS ? - Pros & Cons - Openelec vs XBMCbuntu?

2. Which brand of mSATA Solid-State Drive offers the best performance characteristics and and recommended size?

3. Which brand of RAM offers the best performance characteristics and recommended size?

Thanks in advance.

[xbs08]

1. OE if you only need Kodi (XBMC)

2. I guees any mSata/USB 3.0 will do well. Size depends from user to user but 32GB should be enough.

3. At least 2GB but sometimes it's easier and cheaper to get 4GB. Any known brand will be fast enough.

[Yokozuna]

Thank you for your reply.

I was looking at the Mach Xtreme 60G mSATA SSD Drive PN MXSSD3MMVF-60G

Cache 128MB
Max. Read Performance Up to 555MB/s*
Max. Write Performance Up to 450MB/s*
IOPS up to 50,000
Seek Time <0.1ms
Low Power Consumption DC 3.3V / Stand-by: 0.3W Active: 1.3W
MTBF up to 2,500,000 hours <== Mean Time Between Failure is quite good to the rest as is more than double most of its rival competition.

The downside is its write performance is slightly slower than its rivals.

Is the XBMC/Kodi application more on the read side than the write? or should I select a msata SSD which offers higher write speed also?

[xbs08]

AFAIK 4K Random Reads mostly and Writes when updating libraries.

Don't think you can tell the difference with SSD's that have "close" R/W speeds.

[voip-ninja]

I am looking at buying a D54250WYKH i5 NUC

Need some help with selection of the following:

1. Which OS ? - Pros & Cons - Openelec vs XBMCbuntu?

2. Which brand of mSATA Solid-State Drive offers the best performance characteristics and and recommended size?

3. Which brand of RAM offers the best performance characteristics and recommended size?

Thanks in advance.

What are you doing with it that you feel you need i5? You'd be better off saving your money and putting that towards whatever NUC version comes out in a year or two that supports native H.265 playback.

I don't get too hung up about brand/performance on SSD. They are all solid performers. Get the smallest size possible because if you run OE or a small Linux install it is only going to need a few GB of storage space anyway.

With RAM, same story. You don't need much. 2GB is more than enough for OE which only uses a little over 1GB anyway. As far as brand, you go with one of the major ones like Crucial, Kingston, etc, and you won't have any problems.

You seem to be approaching the NUC build like you are building a gaming PC. You are building an appliance. If a component fails (SSD, RAM, etc) you are going to spend about 5 minutes replacing it and re-installing OpenElec.

[Yokozuna]

Thanks 'voip-ninja' for your reply.

I have now got to a point where I am done with buying buying hardware e.g. Apple ATV2 and other hardware devices at the lower end in attempt to save money as it has ended up in disappointment for various reasons. I also purchased a Pivos DS Media Play device and became frustrated with the overly complex model versioning they use to determine which firmware I needed to install and poorly designed website in which to navigate.

I thought that I would 'bite-the-bullet' this time and now purchase a higher end product based on favourable end user's feedback from this website which will make it somewhat future-proof and give me a few years before I need to consider refreshing the device.

I already have a quality Qnap NAS with WD Red drives. Works an absolute treat ! The reds are more robust and have a better MTBF as compared with the greens as reported by the vendor. I have certainly had no issues to-date and completely happy with the money spent. Hence, why I tend to consider these things when purchasing components at the higher-end.

Look, I was little unsure whether to go the i3 or i5 route. You have suggested, wait until native H.265 playback functionality is incorporated, but if I wait, I will never upgrade ! There will always be some new capability or technology which users suggest you should wait for. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your suggestions and value the feedback.

As there is now so many different hardware choices available to users than in the past, it is somewhat more difficult knowing which way to go.

[two515ty]

Building upon what voip-ninja said, I think the idea is that the i5 NUC is overkill for a HTPC. The 2820 NUC is adequate for most people's needs, and the i3 is usually recommend if you frequently play media that the 2820 can't handle. The i5 won't offer much performance benefit for most HTPC applications, but costs a lot more than the 2820 and i3 models. Unless you're going to be running other programs that require more power, I'd say the i5 NUC isn't the best investment for an HTPC.

[Yokozuna]

This is all great advice and I appreciate the feedback you guys have provided. You have influenced my decision to now downgrade from my original plan and go the i3 NUC route, and in doing so, you are saving me money !

Many thanks for your inputs.

[xbs08]

Make sure you get a nice remote (compatible) to go with the NUC build-in IR sensor.

EDIT: Just saw that you have a Harmony

[Yokozuna]

Now I am going the i3 route, I will have some left over money to spend on a good remote !

I tell you, that Harmony has given me some grief working with my Pioneer amp. I plan to purchase a different option for use with the i3.
Do you have something in mind you would recommend ? It is great to have so much choice these days.

[black_eagle]

Depending on what OS you are going to be running, you can program your pioneer amp remote to work XBMC. That's what I did. Press DVR on the amp remote and the plasma changes to HDMI4, audio changes to s/pdif 2 and the remotes navigation, play pause etc buttons work XBMC.

If you're going to be using OpenELEC, there is an addon you can download to map your remote buttons inside of XBMC, so you don't need to do any programming or editing of files - the addon does it all for you.

[Plany]

Hi,

My nuc config is D54250WYB as Board-Only with the fan-less case from tranquilpc without any wireless cards and fans it will only consume 12-watt at playback or gaming

IMHO fan-less cases are an MUST HAVE for Media-Center-Systems.

setup:
32GB sSataSSD
2GB RAM
no wifi / Bluetooth card

My Storage is an Synology NAS with gigabit Connection. (Mounted as NFS)
OS is Openelec. I use it as Movie Player / Music Player / Retro Console (GBA, NES, SNES, N64)

and PS3 Controller over an asus BT dongle for gaming + my old Apple Remote for navigation.

here a video for video, gaming and msuic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL-tPpepOvM all over my NAS

for only MediaCenter tasks, you don't need Ubuntu or Windows as OS its overhead

I Love the i5 haswell .. it has so much power for gaming ... but yeah only for media playback the i3 is far enough

[voip-ninja]

Well, since you are going the i3 route (that's what I had been recommending, and just put your savings towards your next upgrade) this is what I just put together-

1. Intel D34010WYK i3 NUC
2. MyDigital SSD 32GB Bullet Proof 4 SSD
3. Crucial 2GB RAM CT25664BF160B

And that's it. I installed Open Elec onto it, it boots cold into the XBMC desktop (running Aeon Nox 4) in about 5 seconds flat. I am using mine with my Harmony One and it works very well, the IR is very responsive and the speed for scrolling, etc, is quite good.

I had to tweak a few things in my Open Elec setup .. you will need to modify a couple of startup files to get the IR to work at boot time and I also had to modify the default video settings to get better black->white performance without clipping on my plasma.

All in all though pretty minimal stuff. Playback on the NUC is excellent, I finally have a device that plays back 23.976 NTSC frame-rate videos with no hiccups or micro-stutters.

[voip-ninja]

Well, since you are going the i3 route (that's what I had been recommending, and just put your savings towards your next upgrade) this is what I just put together-

1. Intel D34010WYK i3 NUC
2. MyDigital SSD 32GB Bullet Proof 4 SSD
3. Crucial 2GB RAM CT25664BF160B

And that's it. I installed Open Elec onto it, it boots cold into the XBMC desktop (running Aeon Nox 4) in about 5 seconds flat. I am using mine with my Harmony One and it works very well, the IR is very responsive and the speed for scrolling, etc, is quite good.

I had to tweak a few things in my Open Elec setup .. you will need to modify a couple of startup files to get the IR to work at boot time and I also had to modify the default video settings to get better black->white performance without clipping on my plasma.

All in all though pretty minimal stuff. Playback on the NUC is excellent, I finally have a device that plays back 23.976 NTSC frame-rate videos with no hiccups or micro-stutters.

[Yokozuna]

Love your work !

I will take that advice and go with your recommendation.
Will purchase all next week.

voip-ninja. I may get back to you during the build if I strike any issues if you don't mind.