2014-10-07, 07:46
The celeron NUCs are plenty fine as XBMC clients. I have 2 Celeron NUCs and 1 i3 NUC all running SSD 4GB RAM and windows 8.1 and using them as XBMC clients for PVR and movies/tv and they are completely adequate for purpose. For openElec im sure you could get away with 2GB of RAM. I run Windows 8.1 on mine and use 4GB of ram but I reckon on OpenElec you could go with less. I personally believe an SSD is always good for the ultimate in no moving parts and very fast bootup/file access, so I always like to run my OS on an SSD, however I havent used OpenElec and I do understand that people run it off USB etc (although it seems the USB isnt great for thumbnail caching and such). In simple terms, if you are happy to get the 32GB SSD's for the openelec clients then you may as well, knowing you have the fastest possible setup.
Now in regards to using a celeron NUC as a "server" PC for the backend... I am not sure. The celeron MAY be a bit too lean but ultimately it probably depends on what tuners you have and how many simultaneous recordings and live streams you envisage having. My current setup is a VM with 2 cores (of an ivy bridge i5) and 4GB RAM running Windows 8.1, WMC and ServerWMC. I have 2x USB twin HD tuners, so 4 tuners all up. The recording drive is an iSCSI drive on my 4 bay NAS, whilst the VM's OS disk is on an SSD. This setup is fine even with 3 or 4 tuners active at once. Prior to this I had a physical machine with a Pentium G620 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD for OS and the iSCSI NAS drive for recordings, running windows 8, but this setup only had 1 USB twin tuner... it was OK with 2 simultaneous streams. Both old and new setup were using GB LAN which is much preferable to wireless.
So yeah for a serverWMC backend running windows 7 or 8, 4GB ram is fine. An SSD is always preferable for OS work since its just so much faster and better for reboots etc too however in your case if you are also looking for local recorded TV storage you probably should go for the 1TB disk. I havent used a mechanical HDD for an OS disk in a while now, and never will again. Im not sure if you can outfit a celeron NUC with a mSATA SSD for the boot drive and a 2.5" mechical HDD for the recordings? In my case I was able to use a local SSD for OS, and offload the recorded TV drive to my NAS over iSCSI (note that WMC cant use a network drive for recordings so it needs to "appear" like a local drive, which iSCSI takes care of).
I cant really say what the minimum CPU spec is to run our ServerWMC backend, since I havent tried it on less than the above 2 systems. A pentium G620 is hardly a dazzling processor, but im not sure where a Celeron 2820 sits in comparison.
You could always start with getting 2 celeron NUCs first, build one as the server and 1 as an openElec client and see how you go. If the backend performance isnt up to scratch, convert that one into a 2nd openelec client and build a new backend on something a bit more powerful. If it's all good, grab a 3rd celeron and build your 2nd openelec client...
Now in regards to using a celeron NUC as a "server" PC for the backend... I am not sure. The celeron MAY be a bit too lean but ultimately it probably depends on what tuners you have and how many simultaneous recordings and live streams you envisage having. My current setup is a VM with 2 cores (of an ivy bridge i5) and 4GB RAM running Windows 8.1, WMC and ServerWMC. I have 2x USB twin HD tuners, so 4 tuners all up. The recording drive is an iSCSI drive on my 4 bay NAS, whilst the VM's OS disk is on an SSD. This setup is fine even with 3 or 4 tuners active at once. Prior to this I had a physical machine with a Pentium G620 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD for OS and the iSCSI NAS drive for recordings, running windows 8, but this setup only had 1 USB twin tuner... it was OK with 2 simultaneous streams. Both old and new setup were using GB LAN which is much preferable to wireless.
So yeah for a serverWMC backend running windows 7 or 8, 4GB ram is fine. An SSD is always preferable for OS work since its just so much faster and better for reboots etc too however in your case if you are also looking for local recorded TV storage you probably should go for the 1TB disk. I havent used a mechanical HDD for an OS disk in a while now, and never will again. Im not sure if you can outfit a celeron NUC with a mSATA SSD for the boot drive and a 2.5" mechical HDD for the recordings? In my case I was able to use a local SSD for OS, and offload the recorded TV drive to my NAS over iSCSI (note that WMC cant use a network drive for recordings so it needs to "appear" like a local drive, which iSCSI takes care of).
I cant really say what the minimum CPU spec is to run our ServerWMC backend, since I havent tried it on less than the above 2 systems. A pentium G620 is hardly a dazzling processor, but im not sure where a Celeron 2820 sits in comparison.
You could always start with getting 2 celeron NUCs first, build one as the server and 1 as an openElec client and see how you go. If the backend performance isnt up to scratch, convert that one into a 2nd openelec client and build a new backend on something a bit more powerful. If it's all good, grab a 3rd celeron and build your 2nd openelec client...
