[nucmaster]

NUC5i3RYK experience so far:
Samsung 850 Evo M.2 120 GB SSD
2x4GB Kingston KVR16LS11/4
Win 8.1, Kodi 15.0 A2
NUC > HDMI > Marantz SR7008 > HDMI > Panasonic VT60 Plasma

Against

1. I installed the latest Intel Graphics Driver 15.36.18.4156 only to find I had display corruption over HDMI, but it disappeared when I rolled back to 15.36.14.4080. So it’s fixed, but I had to search to find the answer, which is not a good consumer experience.
2. USB wake from S4/5 not working. No matter what settings I check in BIOS or Windows 8.1, I can get no joy.
3. USB wake from sleep works from S3, but Kodi hangs on restarting – I just get a ‘WORKING’ circle of death in Kodi. I then have to minimise the Kodi window and shut it down, and restart Koodi from within the desktop. No solution yet.
4. Whenever Kodi starts after a system boot audio is muted. Can’t figure that one out yet. I don’t know whether the last issue is related to the HDMI audio sleep issue or not.
5. If you want to control Kodi (in Windows) from an ipad with the Official Kodi Remote by joethefox, you will need to install Bonjour. Don’t use Bonjour v1.0.6 – it doesn’t work – you have to download itunes and extract Bonjour v3.0.x from the executable with winrar or similar. That version works, when you turn on Zeroconfig in Kodi.

For

1. Great versatility, good picture and audio quality.
2. Copes with any codec.
3. Rock solid framerate sync (the downfall of anything Android).
4. HD audio passthru.
5. Can use outboard USB ASUS Xonar STU DAC in bit perfect mode with Windows drivers.
6. CPU fan very quiet and useful BIOS control options as well. CPU temps are not very high even with 0% fan, as long as no 4K or high efficiency codecs.

EDIT:
Re 2. above:
Settings in BIOS:

A). Wake on LAN from S4/S5 <Power On - Normal Boot>
USB S4/S5 Power <checked>
Wake on USB from S5 <checked>
- Can get USB keyboard wake from S4 (Hibernate), cannot get wake from S5 (Off).

B). Wake on LAN from S4/S5 <Stay Off>
USB S4/S5 Power <checked>
Wake on USB from S5 <checked>
- Cannot get any 'Wake on USB from S5' or wake from S4.

Why is there an interaction between the Wake from LAN settings and the USB action?

I had initially disabled Wake from LAN because the NUC keeps doing exactly that; every time another PC on the network looks at the network shares, the NUC wakes up and boots, which I don't want as this is a HTPC At the moment, I can't recomend this as a HTPC because of these wierd power switching issues.

Re 4. above: Seems to have rsolved itself.