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2013-01-30, 22:33
(This post was last modified: 2013-02-05, 03:58 by D1zzl3.)
Glad I found this thread right before the Windows 8 upgrade prices skyrocket on Friday! Just some quick questions for all you that use Win8 w/ XBMC:
- How much HDD space does the OS, plus XBMC use? Any articles you've found useful on trimming down the fat?
I'm only using a 32GB SSD on my (Foxconn NT-A3700) HTPC for now. Would like to have an idea on how much space I would have left for some ROMs, maybe Steam and a game or two... All media will be streamed from my NAS device.
Edit: I took the jump, so I answered these questions already. I forgot how much 64-bit Windows OSes use up these days. Just Win8, all the latest updates and drivers alone left me with less than half the drive left at about 12GB. I found out you can get a couple gigs back if you disable Hibernation, but then I found out Win8 uses that to provide us with super quick startup times, which is quite nice for an HTPC.
- Glad to hear about the boot times, but have you noticed any sluggishness in XBMC doing certain functions or with certains skins like 'Aeon Nox'?
I'm currently running XBMCbuntu and the HTPC can handle it with ease, but having random backgrounds enabled on 'Movies' and 'Music' seems to eat up a lot of CPU cycles/resources. The box handles it fine, but the fan is much more louder after I enabled that. And also, the main reason I'm considering a switch to Windows 8 is because of the driver support for keyboards, gamepads, GPUs, and more emulator options. I gave it a shot with Ubuntu and just for media streaming it's great, but I feel like this box could do more.
Update: Quite impressed with the Brazos CPU. It handles XBMC and heavy skins with ease. Not to mention 1080P videos with high bitrates and SBS 3D... Just need to make sure Windows 8 is not using up unnecessary resources now.
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Yeah you can save a lot of space by doing that. It's also worth mentioning that if you want to boot right into XBMC only use it, OpenElec is an excellent choice. It installs in like a minute and boots in seconds.
Server: Synology Diskstation 1511+ with 8x WD Red NAS 3TB drives, DSM 5.2
Main HTPC: Home Built i3, 8GB RAM, Corsair 128GB SSD, nVidia 630GTX, Harmony Home Control, Pioneer VSX-53, Panasonic VT30 65" 3D TV, Windows 10, Isengard
Bedroom HTPC: Zotac-ID 41 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Rii micro keyboard remote, Samsung HW-E550, Sony 32" Google TV, OpenElec 6.0 beta 4
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CaBrA
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I changed from Win 7 ti Win 8 in my old dual core system and I must say that Windows 8 works best in my computer. Less HDD slow activities, fast start screen. I recommend it