Assassin's Intel NUC Review - Page 3

It's funny, you would think posting in internet forums would have taught me my lesson by now: there is no substitution for pure speculation even in the face of hands-on experience and testing. This is a lesson I seem to need to learn over and over again. Maybe this time it's finally gotten through my thick skull: trying things and sharing those experience with the community is clearly a waste of my time.

I haven't looked at your threads, but I believe your feedback related to a mini-ITX board and a Sandy Bridge CPU, IIRC. Let us know how things go with the NUC version of the Celeron and we're all over it. Based on what I did read in your post, it appears that the GPU is the Intel 2000. Personally, I'd rather go with the 4000 GPU. I will, however, take a gander at the threads you referenced when time permits. Any type of hands-on feedback is always appreciated.

Honestly, I feel bad about my outburst and I apologize. No need to take out my frustrations on anyone. I appreciate your response.

LOL. Not a problem. We all do it from time to time. I was just trying to relate my previous experience with the Dell Zino, which was probably one of the first commercially available SFF PCs. When they first came out lots of people jumped on them and got the barebones system to keep the costs low. Unfortunately, the performance of the basic dual-core CPU and GPU was less than exemplory when it came to playback of certain video formats.

To be honest, I totally missed that you had tested the same CPU that is in the lower-priced NUC. I only saw that it was a Celeron and didn't compare the actual model numbers. I just took a quick look at your review and it's quite thorough (nice job, BTW). It did indicate that there were issues using XBMC, which would be the dealbreaker for me since I use XBMC for all of my mkv rips of Blu-Ray movies. If I get a NUC it will be used as a satellite PC and possibly replace my Zino HD. Based on the aforementioned XBMC issues, I'd have to go with the higher model NUC. I've used Atom PCs and other low-end setups and I feel it isn't really worth the minimal savings you get with the cheaper PCs.

The F2 bug is well documented in the Intel community forums. It relates to an issue with some hdmi monitors and being able to enter the bios setup with F2 (don't think delete works).
My nuc didnt have the problem with an Asus 23" monitor but does with a HDMI TV.

And as for why I went with W7 32 bit, I reallocated an educational discount of W7 that didn't offer the 64 bit at the time.
It runs great with 4 gig of ram (was free from Newegg with the purchase of the nuc) and I'm using allmost of it with the video memory set to max 512meg.

Also, That wireless card is also bluetooth and I dont have a wired connection near that TV. I get a very solid wifi N connection even though it's very far away from the router. (big house)

Cheers!
Edited by Kajel - 3/6/13 at 7:14am

Totally reasonable and also appreciated.

It seems (I haven't tested this) that people are having success with Windows 8 + XBMC12 on the Celeron 847 so there's hope. I don't know what on Win8 makes the difference. There's also the option of using an external player. It's specifically the internal XBMC player that has issues. Even Silverlight can play HD with just the CPU on the Celeron 847, so it's too bad for the XBMC internal player. It works terrific with OpenELEC so it's a nice option for that with a better CPU that an Atom (though I am a big fan of OpenELEC + Atom D2500 + GT610 thin mini-ITX).

All-in-all it's good to have all these options and then readers can choose based on their budget, needs, etc. I too would pick the i3 version if I could afford it. I finally have my hands on a i3-3217U thin mini-ITX motherboard so I am looking forward to putting it through its paces -- it's basically the same price as a H77 + i3-3225 desktop setup but with on-board DC power supply and thin mini-ITX so we'll see if it compares HTPC-wise. But, I too am very happy with the C-847 for OpenELEC in the kids' playroom (even the E-350 was good for that).

How do either of these models handle de-interlacing? Do they have a high quality mode similar to AMD vector adaptive? Still so many shows broadcast in 1080i, this is important to me. I currently have a setup with an AMD 5450 that does vector adaptive and it looks great.

This doesn't sound great.

I haven't really messed with any de-interlacing settings on mine, maybe Assassin or others can answer. As for the following quote you posted...
What's the source? The only thermal issue I'm familiar with is when tested with the internal WiFi/Bluetooth card that sits right below the SSD generating heat and causing the SSD to get too hot and therefore causing bluescreen or thermal shutdown. However, THIS only occurred when transferring significantly large amounts of data at once (20GB range if I remember correctly). So yeah, copying or watching HD rips to and from your server or NAS over wireless would not be recommended, but I'm pretty sure most people in the HTPC community go for wired ethernet connection whenever possible. On a side note, if WiFi was a must, when tested using a usb wireless adapter there were no thermal issues.

I tried to find/search for posts about this but....

Is it possible to have 7MC save Recorded TV to a NAS? Only thing that I could find was something about iSCSI protocol.

There's also a method which requires creating a symlink.

Edited by amarshonarbangla - 3/8/13 at 8:31am

anyone know if the i3 version will bitsream dts-ma audio with xbmcbuntu? openelec? thanks

According to this thread in the XBMC forums both the i3 and C-847 version will bitstream in OpenELEC: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=140534

thank you. looks like you're right, will bitstream with most setups as long as you have the latest software. at least, according to that thread.

I'm having this annoying problem with my nuc. While watching a movie the picture would freeze and found out that my network utilization would drop to 0%. I ran an online speed test and my download speed was all over the place while all my other computers were fine at a stable 20mbps. So now I know its not the media server and something to do with the nuc. After trying a bunch of things I set the link speed to 100mbps and its working fine. If I set it back to 1.0gbps the problem returns... Anyone know what the problem could be?

Have you tried the HDMI port farthest from the LAN port? I have heard there are some over heating issues that cause it to slow down.

Had the same problem, worked when set at 100 mbs, had problems at 1.0 Gbs. After some research I adjusted the bios setting for network throttling - everything works great now. See here:

Change your Network Throttle speed (LINK)
To configure the throttling rate, change the value of the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry under the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\
Name : NetworkThrottlingIndex
Value type : DWORD
Value data : From integer 1 through integer 70 (Decimal) (Decimal)

By default, the value for the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry is set to 10. When the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry does not exist, the behavior resembles the default behavior.
Network throttling can be completely turned off by setting the value to FFFFFFFF (hexadecimal). You must restart the computer after you make a change to the value of the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry.

I turned mine off.

Thanks, I'll try both of your suggestions.

Using the HDMI port furthest from the ethernet port worked. I also did the registry edit just in case. Another weird problem is that I see a black frame flash while watching a movie. It goes by so fast I don't know if I blinked or its the NUC lol. I watched a movie last night and noticed that it happened once. I checked if there was any dropped/delayed frames at the end of the movie but both were at 0. Anyone notice something like that? It couldn't have been the movie because I seen it happen with other movies but its so rare and random. I wonder if it has something to do with Madvr, I would have to do more testing to find out.

 

Noticed this in the graphic drivers release notes, wonder if it has anything to do with my black frame problem...

 

Known Issues:

• Improper behavior observed when some monitors are plugged during a video playback session.
   

Edited by Mrkazador - 3/10/13 at 12:42pm

Has anyone tried the new Bios 39? It suppose to correct the 'F2 to enter bios' bug by using a text based bios. I hope to have time to try it myself later this week.

Yes this fixed the issue. Was able to enter bios and set the fan speed to 50% and that really helped. Still can bearly hear the fan. This bios 39 also fixed the Gigabit lan speed issue.

 

Not for me, I can't use the HDMI port closest to the Ethernet port.

BTW, what temps are you guys seeing with the NUC?

I'm hoping it tracks 20-25F over ambient.

Im trying to set my i3-NUC up with a OCZ Nocti 60gb SSD. Ive read people had issues with the 30gb-model but the 60gb is even on Intels compat. list. The problem is the NUC wont find it, Ive tried the SSD in an HP Laptop and it worked fine there. Upgraded the firmware on the SSD but the NUC still wont find the SSD, upgraded to the latest BIOS, no difference. Can the msata-slot really be broken? Seems unlikely.

Are you seeing the drive in the BIOS? I'm not familiar with the NUC BIOS, but I'd make sure it's showing up there first. If it is then it's probably not configured properly in the boot sequence.
Edited by captain_video - 3/16/13 at 5:06pm

No, wont show in BIOS so its not recognized at all by the NUC.

Sounds like you might need to RMA the NUC back to the vendor you purchased it from for either a refund or replacement. Call their tech support and explain the issue and chances are they'll give you an RMA to send it back. Your only other option I can think of is to try a different drive in the slot and see if that works.

I have the i3 NUC installed with xbmc over windows7 and Openelec
The machine is fast. No issues. But I am a tad disappointed by the video image quality. Something is just missing
Somehow, when I watch the same image on a PS3, it just pops a little more
I wonder if the better GPU could be the reason

Does a discrete GPU offer "better image quality" over an integrated GPU like the HD4000?
I was under the impression that discrete GPUs are warranted for gaming, etc

Intel Graphics has a setting called 'Adaptive Contrast' that will give the onboard graphics a bit more 'pop'. However, it is not compatible with the codec(s) that Windows Media Center uses. It's in the Intel control panel: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1446099/brightness-fluctuations-on-mkvs/0_40#post_22720693