How we built a tiny home theater PC with Intel’s NUC - welcomebusequithe

Full-featured PCs are getting little day-after-day, and Intel's young "Next Social unit of Computing," operating room NUC, is hitherto another model of the of all time-shrinkage PC.

At 4.6 by 4.4 by 1.5 inches—about the size of a very midget box of chocolates—the NUC contains a Core i3 processor and two SODIMM memory slots, and can be upgraded with both a Wi-Fi card and mSATA SSD internally. I was most intrigued by Intel's DC3217BY exemplary, which includes an HDMI as a telecasting connector and a Thunderbolt port for storage.

Hmmm. HDMI. And a Thunderbolt port. The feature set made me think this particular NUC would be an ideal platform for construction a compact media streaming package—surgery even a full-fledged home theatre Microcomputer.

Home theater PCs are often massive beasts, shipped in cases the very size of it as husky A/V receivers. Those are great if you require massive amounts of storage, operating room want to material body in a high-stepped-conclusion 3D card for PC gambling from your couch. But to Pine Tree State the diminutive NUC seemed like an ideal political program for streaming video from the Internet or local host computer storage. And if you wanted to, I thought, you could colligate a rugged drive thereto Thunderbolt port, enabling the NUC to act as a light-duty DVR.

The NUC is available from sites such as Amazon for about $360, stripped down (atomic number 102 networking, SSD surgery storage). Here's how I built mine into one of the smallest home dramatics PCs you will ever find.

Under the hood

Intel's NUC is conscionable a little bigger than a tiny corner of chocolates. It's even wrapped in Valentine's red!

The NUC with Thunderbolt ships in a tiny, bright red case. Inside the lilliputian box is the motherboard, which features a Gist i3-3217u. The 3217u is a low-voltage, motile CPU clocking at 1.8GHz. The CORE i3 CPUs don't living Turbo Encourage, then that 1.8GHz is also the maximum clock speed. But the dual core 3217u does subscribe advantage of Hyper-Threading, so it can persist four threads simultaneously. Still, the 3217u has a nominal TDP (thermal power rating) of just 17w, so it's very low power. The system ships with a small, 65W exponent brick, similar to what you might find included with an Ultrabook.

The NUC includes a 65W world power adapter, merely no local power electric cord, so you'll need to supply one.

Although the clock speed and performance is lower than most background CPUs, unrivalled vantage of using a mobile CPU, in addition to bring dow power, is that complete Intel mobile CPUs implement the full Intel HD 4000 GPU. That's not true with nearly of the let down end Ivy Nosepiece background processors, which use the cut-down HD 2500 GPU. That translates to better gross graphics performance. Of flow, TV decoding and encoding is handled by the highly capable fixed affair video city block inside the GPU, which Intel dubs "QuickSync", so television shouldn't be a problem.

Building an NUC PC

Of course, a PC needs RAM, storage, and some way to link to the Internet. So I built a system using a 180GB mSATA SSD, Wi-Fi card, and 8GB of DDR3 memory.

The NUC itself has four ports on the rear: two USB 2.0 ports, ace HDMI video output, and the Thunderbolt connective. You'll as wel find the ability connection and a Kensington-compatible lock connector on the back. A third USB 2.0 left is on the in advance. There are no analog audio connectors, so all audio output of necessity to be routed through the HDMI porthole.

Most of the ports are connected the rear, shown here. The anterior has one USB 2.0 port.

Quaternity small screws stacked into the India rubber feet attach the case to the base. After removing them, you lift the base off, which gives you access to the internals of the NUC. What you see are all the exploiter-upgradable bits—SODIMM slots, full size miniskirt-PCI Express slot with support for mSATA SSDs. Underneath that slot is a small miniskirt-PCI Extract slot, which posterior accommodate an Intel WiFi card. You'll find small screws near the cardinal PCI Express slots. These wait down the mSATA and Wisconsin-Fi cards, so you'll want to remove them before installing those card game.

What you see after removing the bottom of the inning plate.

The SSD used is an Intel 520 series, 180GB mSATA SSD. IT's based on MLC (structure cell) technology and supports SATA 6gbps speeds. Note that you can use up any mSATA posting that uses filled width mini PCI-Express, but you should avoid those half-breadth cards. Intel also supplied us with a Centrino Front-N 6235 Wi-Fi bill, which also supports Bluetooth. A with the NUC itself, these cards are quite modest.

180GB of storage and Wireless local area network + Bluetooth in the palm tree of your hand.

You install the Wi-Fi card first, since the SSD leave cover the Wi-Fi card afterwards it's installed. Carefully align the card, so the snick aligns with the tab on the one-armed bandit. The antenna wire is prerouted, so each you need do is connect the extremely slim connectors to the similarly bantam connectors on the Wi-Fi card. You may want to manipulation gnomish needle nose pliers for this task. The card will stick at an slant away from the motherboard; a small screw will lock it descending, parallel to the motherboard.

The antenna connectors for the Intel WiFi card are diminutive.

Once the Wisconsin-Fi calling card is in, it's time to slide by in the SSD. As with the Wi-Fi card, you need to align the nick with the tab. You'll lack to insert the mSATA card at an angle. The card will continue at an angle to the motherboard, Eastern Samoa the Wi-Fi card did. Intel built in a taller post with screw threads, so another small sleep with goes into order, and the SSD is now firmly held down.

The SSD sits on top of the Badger State-Fi card.

The NUC uses SODIMM slots, like those ill-used in many laptops. Given that the arrangement would be using Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, I wanted as much memory bandwidth as I could find, which meant finding reliable DDR3-1600 SODIMM modules. Barbary pirate's Payback 8GB kit fit the bill. You insert the first (lower faculty) at an angle (fashioning sure the alignment is correct.) Then you press down towards the motherboard until the SODIMM snaps into place. Then you repeat the work on with the second memory module.

Memory, Wi-Fi, and memory all installed.

Attach the bottom plate with the four screws you removed in the first place. Presto, you now have a working PC the size of a few packs of playing card game.

Some other hardware considerations

If you neediness extra repositing, you'll need to hunt down Thunderbolt equipped foreign hard drives. There are a number of these on the market, ranging from massive, costly multiterabyte RAID arrays to small portable drives. In keeping with the flyspeck nature of the NUC, I experimented with Seagate's Bombshell portable drive, aka the "GoFlex for Mac with Bombshell." Scorn the Mac name, this drive works fine with PCs outfitted with Thunderbolt ports. The downside: it's fairly pricy for a 1TB mobile drive, at roughly $250. It's passenger vehicl powered, however, so zero need for another power brick.

The NUC next to the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt drive.

The GoFlex actually has cardinal parts: the ride itself, which is docked to a diminished, USB 3.0 faculty. Gulf the USB 3.0 module and dock the drive to a somewhat big Thunderbolt interface module. This is where I discovered another downside: the unit doesn't include a cable, and Thunderbolt cables, which are smart cables with bantam microcomputers, cost $40 and up. Still, the whole occasion mates rattling well with the NUC. Mind that this little portable drive tail handle one or two streams well, merely get into't try to stream eight HD channels with audio, or you'll probably atomic number 4 disappointed. You'll need a lifesize drive, or even RAID array for that—but then, you won't be using an NUC either.

Of class, if you plan on victimization the NUC primarily for streaming, then you don't need external storage. Mind that you'll want a reliable Wi-Fi connection with a fresh signal. If you don't let that, you may deman to bounce for a USB-to-Ethernet dongle, which is beautiful inexpensive these days. All this presupposes that you have a serious network infrastructure wherever you adjudicate to install the NUC.

If you want to moderate the system remotely, a variety of radio set keyboard and computer mouse combinations exist, including Bluetooth hardware and compact keyboards with built-in trackpads. I used a Logitech Wireless Combo MK520, mostly because I had one around. It uses a tiny USB receiver with enough reach to reach across my 16 by 16 foot media room.

If you want HDTV in, you'll need some kind of piano tuner. You tail use any of a kind of USB HDTV tuners, just I already have a SiliconDust HD HomeRun Dual, which is a very caller gimmick with two over-the-tune HDTV tuners that will pipe HDTV signals to PCs finished an Ethernet network. Progressively, however, I'm relying happening flowing over the Net for much of my media consumption.

OS

I installed Windows 8 In favor of, then obtained a key from Microsoft to install Windows 8 Media Center. Media Center is available at no price presently for all Windows 8 users, though owners of Windows 8 accepted will eventually have to pony up some money to latch on.

Windows Media Center looks a little dated past modern standards.

In Truth, I shouldn't have bothered. It's the very same Windows Media Central as was built into Windows 7, and seems a little dated. Information technology whole works well, even with HD HomeRun. But support for streaming solutions seemed to have fallen by the wayside. Alternatives that work well for local streaming admit the venerable (and free) VLC, and the streaming solutions assembled into Windows 8, in the form of the Video and Music apps. They're adequate, if you'atomic number 75 willing to pay for content. You can also employ other streaming services, such as Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus and, of course, Netflix. Both Hulu Plus and Netflix take their own native Windows 8 apps.

Let's fire it up!

I affiliated the NUC (along with the Seagate Winchester drive) to my Onkyo Lone-Star State-NR 809 A/V receiver, to the HDMI input conveniently tagged "PC." The receiver takes care of every last the audio processing, but routes TV to a 60-inch LG plasma HDTV. Windows 8 and the Intel GPU drivers noticed the Onkyo equally a graphics device, and everything came up roses. I didn't even have to wrestle with overscan, which derriere be a problem with aged HDTV displays or graphics cards.

Of course, you can just use Windows 7, but IT looks like Windows 8 volition be a same nice OS for home theatre PCs. HD video playback and multichannel audio frequency playback looked and sounded great. Standard definition TV was just a touch soft look, only unimpeachable.

One emergence that may concern some users is noise. The NUC contains a tiny, laptop-style cooling fan. Even out when lengthways at its max, which seems to be about 2,000RPM, the box can get warm (but non red-hot) to the touch. CPU temperatures seemed to hover around 60 degrees C, which is warmer than my six-core desktop PC. The devotee is noticeable, mostly due to its high frequency. It's non loud, merely might pain in the ass some people. However, once you light any self-satisfied with significant audio volume, you won't hear the fan.

Overall, the NUC proves to be a surprisingly capable little boxwood, if you're willing to work within its limitations. It's no processing ball of fire, only Intel QuickSync TV works pretty well, and audio was clean. The relatively high CPU temperature and rooter whine might be an issue, but only time testament enjoin. At its comparatively scurvy price, I'm looking for forward to experimenting with it in other scenarios.