[Airchtit]

So these look very interestig for upgrading my old HTPC running Win 7. The big question is which of the below low-cost alternatives would be best in terms of 1080p/4K playback.

CI320 (Celeron N2930)
CA320 (AMD A6-1450)

Currently I've got an old Intel Core2 Duo E7200 CPU and a Radeon HD 6450 card. CPU performance wise both alternatives seem to be on par, but I'm thinking the AMD one would be better in terms of accelerated video playback. With my current setup I can playback 1080p mkv's & 4K video recorded on my Note 3 fine (albeit displayed on a 1024x786 TV) from withing XBMC. I'm hoping to be able to do the same with one of the above alternatives.
Does anyone know which one of these should be able to best deal with this task?

If it's just to render video, up to 4K, I would say both versions are powerful enough and I think people here like the AMD better but I would wait for a second, more enlightened opinion if I were you.

[solamnic]

http://www.01net.com/fiche-produit/prise...ano-ci540/

First mini review of zbox ci 540 (its in french btw)...

quote from the review (in google - english):

"And to top it off, the machine being passive (fanless), it makes absolutely no noise. Totally discreet, it can be forgotten in a TV, or even on a desk. The processor hardly exceeds 80 ° C, the upper surface of the Zbox is not too hot, there lays a hand without getting burned. It consumes only 9 W idle and 31 W load, which makes the mini PC Intel Core i5 greenest we've tested! Attention our model was also equipped with a plastic film to remove a large pad thermal supposed to facilitate the dissipation of heat (see our last image above). No effect on the stability of the machine during our tests. It may be an isolated oversight, however we recommend to check this out before launching. Unfortunately, verify its presence imposes a removal which removes the guarantee Zotac ..."

[.:B:.]

So these look very interestig for upgrading my old HTPC running Win 7. The big question is which of the below low-cost alternatives would be best in terms of 1080p/4K playback.

CI320 (Celeron N2930)
CA320 (AMD A6-1450)

Currently I've got an old Intel Core2 Duo E7200 CPU and a Radeon HD 6450 card. CPU performance wise both alternatives seem to be on par, but I'm thinking the AMD one would be better in terms of accelerated video playback. With my current setup I can playback 1080p mkv's & 4K video recorded on my Note 3 fine (albeit displayed on a 1024x786 TV) from withing XBMC. I'm hoping to be able to do the same with one of the above alternatives.
Does anyone know which one of these should be able to best deal with this task?

If it's just to render video, up to 4K, I would say both versions are powerful enough and I think people here like the AMD better but I would wait for a second, more enlightened opinion if I were you.

Are you positive about the A6-1450 being able to play 4K? I wouldn't be that sure... It's a 1 GHz CPU, a quad, sure, but if it would be h.265 (the 4K codec of choice) or h.264 with higher resolutions than 1080p, it would be decoded by the CPU, not by the GPU afaik. H.265 being even more resource intensive than h.264, I'm not sure if such a CPU could handle that.

[crossrock]

thinking of getting the zotac for a server using using 2 5TB USB drives. dont want to mess with the desktop SATA drives anymore since the speeds in USB are higher now.thoughts?

[solamnic]

thinking of getting the zotac for a server using using 2 5TB USB drives. dont want to mess with the desktop SATA drives anymore since the speeds in USB are higher now.thoughts?

my recommendation would be to build a cheap pc and have those drives internally..

i dont feel comfortable with the temps in external drives plus i think you will experience lower speeds in usb while sharing - copying files to / from server...

[crossrock]

thanks. do i really need to? too lazy to build and maintain, lol. how about a fan under /over it? I do keep the server in thr basement so that also helps a bit.

[.:B:.]

While being faster in theory that won't help you much if a) your disks are still tied to S-ATA internally and b) you'll be using a shared bus like USB 3.

With (e)S-ATA, your connection is 'guaranteed' - you'd be able to use the full speed. With USB, the more devices you connect, the more devices have to share the bandwidth. I agree with solamnic, it's more interesting (and more power efficient) to go with internal drives.

[Suljo]

CPU @ 80 degrees? Isn't that, um... Very hot?

[DocG]

CPU @ 80 degrees? Isn't that, um... Very hot?

It is quite hot, but there's still about 20 degrees headroom. What I'd like to know is what type of usage this "hardly exceeds 80 degrees" refers to. If that is normal operation, what would the unit do when properly stressed?

[bogolisk]

thinking of getting the zotac for a server using using 2 5TB USB drives. dont want to mess with the desktop SATA drives anymore since the speeds in USB are higher now.thoughts?

it ... depends... some jbod enclosure use pretty shitty usb3 implementations and give you like 1/3 or 1/2 speed vs esata (on the same enclosure/disks). Single disk enclosures are usually fine though but... you're still limited by sata speed and have to pay a overhead of translating sata to usb protocol.

[kyungrak]

CPU @ 80 degrees? Isn't that, um... Very hot?

It is quite hot, but there's still about 20 degrees headroom. What I'd like to know is what type of usage this "hardly exceeds 80 degrees" refers to. If that is normal operation, what would the unit do when properly stressed?

Little review on fanlesstech.com:

"Our joy was short-lived. The first review of ZOTAC's fanless ZBOX reveals a weird thermal pad (what's the point of a mesh case then?). And it's covered with plastic. The 01net team had to disassemble the entire PC to peel it off, voiding the warranty!

Source: 01net (French)

Update: 80°C are unacceptable. This is clearly a design flaw, and a deal-breaker for us."

[berut]

Copied from another forum. Seems like it's really poorly made:

I ordered the i3 model last time. Arrived this week. It's built okay, with sturdy plastic, but doesn't feel particularly premium, at least not for a $300 piece of hardware. Booted up fine with a standard 2.5" SATA SSD and 1.35v ram, drivers came on a read-only usb flash drive. No trouble installing Windows 8 and the drivers. Is quite peppy -- no complaints with performance. Not regretting passing on the i5.

And what you care about -- how does the passive cooling perform? Well, sadly, fairly abysmally. In hot, humid Atlanta, in a room about 80*F ambient, any stress test will swiftly launch temps over 100*C. I did not use the included monitor mount -- was placed free of obstructions on a flat table. Playing a hardware-accelerated 1080p youtube video has temps hovering around 90*C. Idle temps are in the high 50s (*C). Adequate for my needs, but still disappointing. I'm surprised they're selling it with such poor thermal performance. Maybe I'm suffering as an early adopter.

[DocG]

Copied from another forum. Seems like it's really poorly made:

I ordered the i3 model last time. Arrived this week. It's built okay, with sturdy plastic, but doesn't feel particularly premium, at least not for a $300 piece of hardware. Booted up fine with a standard 2.5" SATA SSD and 1.35v ram, drivers came on a read-only usb flash drive. No trouble installing Windows 8 and the drivers. Is quite peppy -- no complaints with performance. Not regretting passing on the i5.

And what you care about -- how does the passive cooling perform? Well, sadly, fairly abysmally. In hot, humid Atlanta, in a room about 80*F ambient, any stress test will swiftly launch temps over 100*C. I did not use the included monitor mount -- was placed free of obstructions on a flat table. Playing a hardware-accelerated 1080p youtube video has temps hovering around 90*C. Idle temps are in the high 50s (*C). Adequate for my needs, but still disappointing. I'm surprised they're selling it with such poor thermal performance. Maybe I'm suffering as an early adopter.

It's a shame, I was considering one of these units. Not anymore.

[solamnic]

Hm... Really disappointing temps...
did you send an email to zotac about it? i would like to hear what they would say about it...

[solamnic]

For now it seems that better passive cooling solution of a Haswell NUC would be

Akasa Newton H or Akasa Newton X
http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=p...-NUC09-A1B