Cubox vs Rasp Pi Vs Rasp Pi 2

[Pitchucold]

Finally my 8 year old Core2Duo PC's Motherboard died. I need to definitely move for an alternative solution now. Based on what you guys have said, I intend to go for ITX HTPC.

1. Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-iTX Cabinets (RC-130-KKN1) - 3750
2. Gigabyte E350n - 4600
3. 2 GB RAM : 1385

I intend to go ahead with Rasp Pi 2 as well and test it out. In case you have better recommendation for a case, please do let me know as well. I planned to go for this case to fit in a graphics card if needed.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

 

[sam9s]

E350n will definitely give you better performance, but with more cost obviously than rpi .....E350n is a decent HTPC solution. I built one for my friend and is pretty satisfied .....

 

[Pitchucold]

Guys,

It looks like e350 comes in multiple variants.
1. Win 8 & USB 2.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s
2. Win 7 & USB 3.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s

I am planning to run win 8 on this box. Should I go option 1? Why is not Win 8 is having USB 3.0? If i go ahead with Win 8 on Win7 board, would there be a problem ?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

 

[manniraj]

Guys,

It looks like e350 comes in multiple variants.
1. Win 8 & USB 2.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s
2. Win 7 & USB 3.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s

I am planning to run win 8 on this box. Should I go option 1? Why is not Win 8 is having USB 3.0? If i go ahead with Win 8 on Win7 board, would there be a problem ?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

I do not think OS like Win7 and 8 has a dependency on the E350 motherboard. I think they have 2 versions of E350 one with USB3.0 port and the other one without. I am sure that the version with Win7 & USB3.0 you can still go ahead and install Win8 if you choose to and I would say it will not make a difference as ultimately you will be using another software like XBMC or MPC-HC or PotPlayer for playback.

 

[sam9s]

Guys,

It looks like e350 comes in multiple variants.
1. Win 8 & USB 2.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s
2. Win 7 & USB 3.0 : Has Sata transfer at 3 Gb/s

I am planning to run win 8 on this box. Should I go option 1? Why is not Win 8 is having USB 3.0? If i go ahead with Win 8 on Win7 board, would there be a problem ?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

OS has nothing to do with the hardware, you can go with USB 3 and install win 8 on it as well

 

[gobble]

I used a e350n for a music pc for a while. Not worth it - sound was muddy with a high noise floor due to EMI/RF. For 1K more I imported the cubox-i4 and it was such an upgrade!! Absolutely low noise floor and blacker backgrounds.

G

 

[Pitchucold]

Hi Gobble,

Did you happen to use SPDIF headers on E350n and connect to Amp via Coaxial? I intend to take the plunge in a day or two.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

 

[haisaikat]

I used a e350n for a music pc for a while. Not worth it - sound was muddy with a high noise floor due to EMI/RF. For 1K more I imported the cubox-i4 and it was such an upgrade!! Absolutely low noise floor and blacker backgrounds.

G

The distortion you mentioned may be most likely due to the CPU fan. try fanless solutions instead.

 

[sam9s]

e350n is more suited as an HTPC I would not recommend it as a music pc at all .... RaspPi with a decent DAC is one of the best combi as far as Music Setup goes

 

[sivakuru]

Slightly off-topic but I am asking this question here because I am having a similar
question and the experts seem to be here.

I am using my 10 year old pentium PC for OpenElec. Though I have a dedicated
graphic card (dont remember exactly which one), I have had freezing issues due
to VDPAU and VAAPI harware acceleration and had to disable both. I guess I am
using full software decoding. The problem I see is that the framerates are not
smooth for most videos. These videos are hardly of size 2GB or so. I see a stuttering
during the playback.

Anyways, I want to ditch the current setup (the other reason being of the power
it consumes - about 300 watts) and go for a simpler, new gen HTPC route.

I want to have Windows 7 (or 8) installed on it, as I want to use it with Kodi,
(may be MadVR etc), use it as a download rig, rdio application for music, some
browsing etc.

Recently I saw some thread/posts about Intel NUC. I have also seen Zotac CA320p,
BI320. Which one will be my best bet?. I may have some one coming from the US
in the next couple of months, so I can have them hand carry it for me from the US.

I will not be using it for 3D and not for games.

My budget for this setup would be around the 15k mark.

Thank you.

 

[sam9s]

I would suggest Gigabyte Brix here ..... NUC is a tad low on specs but yes does a very decent job when it comes to just running OpenELEC

 

[sivakuru]

Thanks Sam. Which one among those BRIX models would you recommend?.
Any idea of their cost?. Like I stated earlier, I will need to install Win 7 (or 8),
Kodi (may be with MadVR etc but not a requirement), rdio music app, download rig,
some browsing. No 3D, No games.

 

[musicbee]

Slightly off-topic but I am asking this question here because I am having a similar
question and the experts seem to be here.

I am using my 10 year old pentium PC for OpenElec. Though I have a dedicated
graphic card (dont remember exactly which one), I have had freezing issues due
to VDPAU and VAAPI harware acceleration and had to disable both. I guess I am
using full software decoding. The problem I see is that the framerates are not
smooth for most videos. These videos are hardly of size 2GB or so. I see a stuttering
during the playback.

Anyways, I want to ditch the current setup (the other reason being of the power
it consumes - about 300 watts) and go for a simpler, new gen HTPC route.

I want to have Windows 7 (or 8) installed on it, as I want to use it with Kodi,
(may be MadVR etc), use it as a download rig, rdio application for music, some
browsing etc.

Recently I saw some thread/posts about Intel NUC. I have also seen Zotac CA320p,
BI320. Which one will be my best bet?. I may have some one coming from the US
in the next couple of months, so I can have them hand carry it for me from the US.

I will not be using it for 3D and not for games.

My budget for this setup would be around the 15k mark.

Thank you.

If you plan to use madVR (or others like SVP) then a dedicated GPU is a must... at least a high end Intel CPU with onboard GPU, I'd think Intel HD graphics 6000, but more a NVIDIA GTX series card.

If you can add one to your existing PC then that's the best route to go, but do check as being old it might not support PCIE 2/3.0.

If its only playing FHD and even 4K without upscaling, madVR, SVP, etc. then pretty much any modern CPU will do it. I've used Zotac ZBOX and its great on that front. Ditto for any of the Android TV boxes, but they don't work very well as multi purpose PCs for downloading content.

Considering you want a multi purpose PC I'd look at upgrading the existing one first, if not then Zotac gets a recommendation.

 

[gobble]

Hi Gobble,

Did you happen to use SPDIF headers on E350n and connect to Amp via Coaxial? I intend to take the plunge in a day or two.

Regards,
Prasanna KV

No I did not.

The distortion you mentioned may be most likely due to the CPU fan. try fanless solutions instead.

FYI My cpu fan was disconnected physically at assembly. I had one chassis fan in the front thats it.

G

 

[sivakuru]

My current PC does not have PCIE slots. So, upgrading current PC is not an option.
Besides I would like to use the new HTPC as a download rig also (the current PC
consumes about 300 watts or more, I think).

MadVR is not an absolute must (and only nice to have).

I just want something that can
boot into Windows 7 (or 8) fast (I think can be taken care by SSD),
run Kodi without any hiccups, stuttering, frame rate issues,
pass audio/video to AVR via HDMI,
run rdio music app (to use with an external DAC via USB or co-axial)
run uTorrent or equivalent for downloads,
browse and play some youtube videos,
consume very less power.

 

[sam9s]

I missed the budget part, if 15K is your budget then stick to NUC model. Brix will land up much expensive. I would suggest THIS, ofcourse you have to add RAM and HDD to it.

This would easily run KODI will pass through via HDMI, run your music app, would easily do torrent and would not consume more than 30W at load .... maybe even less.

 

[sivakuru]

Just out of curiosity, how much would the Brix end up to?.

Also on the NUC, I was looking at the following item:
Amazon.in: Buy INTEL NUC - NEXT GENERATION MINI PC - FULLY LOADED (BLACK-SILVER) Online at Low Prices in India | Intel Reviews & Ratings

This is how I kind of fixed my budget to around 15k.

 

[sam9s]

^^ thats the same model that I mentioned via ebay link (albeit without HDD and RAM) ...... pretty decent machine ,,,... you can go with amazon if you are comfortable with amazon, though I feel the price is a wee bit on the expensive side. BRIX will touch 25K mark

 

[mgdelhi]

I missed the budget part, if 15K is your budget then stick to NUC model. Brix will land up much expensive. I would suggest THIS, ofcourse you have to add RAM and HDD to it.

This would easily run KODI will pass through via HDMI, run your music app, would easily do torrent and would not consume more than 30W at load .... maybe even less.

Thanks for the link Sam. Do you oknow if it supports DTS-HD-MA and Dolby True-HD passthrough? E350N does that smoothly.

Edit: Got the answer.

This NUC does NOT support DTS-HD in a Windows environment. The Intel specs clearly list DTS-HD as a supported audio format but Intel is refusing to release the correct driver stating that the NUC does not support DTS-HD. DTS-HD does work with OpenELEC installed. So the hardware does support it but there is no proper driver for Windows.

 

[rkoti]

I have an old (2005) dell laptop running Windows vista. It takes around 4 minutes to boot and another 3 minutes for it to be ready to settle down to do something useful. A real killjoy if you are in the mood to listen to some music.
I went through the entire thought process of building a rasberry pi or an Intel NUC based HTPC. However in the end I settled down to something very very simple. I installed puppy linux on a USB drive and use it to boot my old laptop. Ready to start playing music in 30 seconds flat.
I use audacious to play my music stored on an external storage drive.