Reddit reviews Gigabyte GB-BXBT-2807 Barebones Mini PC w/ Intel Celeron N2807 (RAM and HDD Not Included)

I have a gigabyte mini PC. It's about nuc factor, but a litttle bit lower spec, and a lot cheaper. Much more capable than most sbc hobby computers (unless you're looking to attach sensors).

Below is the one I have, and they have some newer models it there. You can boot off of USB or install an SSD drive.


Gigabyte GB-BXBT-2807 Barebones Mini PC w/ Intel Celeron N2807 (RAM and HDD Not Included) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KR0QHXW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8EB9Bb3TV4AXR

MAYBE if you overclock it and give a fan for cooling, you might have better results but honestly, RPis, even 3B+, probably arent strong enough to transcode videos in acceptable qualities. If you want something in the form factor, you're better off looking into something like a NUC or something similar. You can even set up an old laptop or desktop computer. My first plex server was on a low powered Celeron and worked fine but an that arm processor just won't cut the mustard.

EDIT: As an side, that Pi is still useful for secondary services such as Sonarr, Radarr, Tautulli etc, just so the main PMS can focus on simply transcodes.

you can get quite a decent PC for 400 bucks

heck, for 200

Celeron N3050
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-NUC5CPYH-Graphics-2-5-Inch-BOXNUC5CPYH/dp/B00XPVRR5M/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449416033&sr=1-2&keywords=intel+nuc

Or a 99 buck celeron N2800 box
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel-Celeron-Barebones-GB-BXBT-2807/dp/B00KR0QHXW/ref=pd_sim_147_21?ie=UTF8&dpID=31ctwYg4y2L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=1XGX2H5SYN2WPQSVBDA0

heck, with 400 bucks you can make a decent pentium or i3 box.

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-i3-5010U-Compact-Barebone-GB-BXi3-5010/dp/B00UKXE5Z8/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449416465&sr=1-2&keywords=i3+barebones

Ok, here I go.

The PI works really well for small stuff. Stuff that doesn't put too much load on it. But for a library of 70000 songs, lossless at that, I would suggest building something bigger.

You won't have to build the biggest, baddest computer, but I would suggest getting a box.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD A4-6300 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor | $35.79 @ NCIX US
Motherboard | ECS A55F2-M4(1.0) Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard | $28.98 @ Newegg
Memory | Team Elite 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory | $20.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply | FSP Group 300W 80+ Certified Micro ATX Power Supply | $39.99 @ Mwave
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $125.75
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-14 08:15 EDT-0400 |

This probably would do. (You can go over to the folks at /r/buildapc they can help you more, I just made the cheapest build possible which would work.

Or you can get one of these: Intel NUC first one on amazon that I found

They might have a better form factor considering that you have a PI at the moment. I can guarantee you though that the PI won't have enough power to satisfy your needs.

At the moment, it is basically old Atom laptops or a second-hand Intel NUC or NUC-like PC (like the Gigabyte Brix).

In the UK, the Celeron 2807 Brix is pretty good for the money. Otherwise, it'd be better either going for USB drives or getting a factory-made NAS. Or, as you mention, the Orange Pi.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VBNSO8U

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006YG8X9Y

This should do the trick. You have to buy the RAM and HDD, but it should still be below 200, and can go as far as running Gamecube games poorly, so N64 shouldn't give you any problems. If you're going to do PSX, you'll probably wanna stick with like Mednafen so the games run smoothly. I don't use Retroarch, but I imagine there are tutorials for booting directly to that if you wanted to use this as a plug-n-play kind of device, and I know Kodi supports Launchbox and there are definitely ways to boot to Kodi.

If that one runs out of stock and you're impatient, you could also get this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KR0QHXW

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006YG8X9Y

Same story as the other one.

The bad news:

Wifi sucks for media distribution. While many routers will do 802.11 a/b/g/n speeds, they'll mostly only do one at a time. So if you have just one slow device in the house requiring a/b speeds, it's going to drag your real-world transfer speeds into the 150kbps range and even SD video will stutter.

Most "smart" TVs aren't. Many brand new smart panels/BD players have poor codec support and abysmal interfaces.

The good news:

All of this is fixable. As for moving files, you can find and disable the slow device that's dragging down your wireless network. In my case, it ended up being a wireless printer. Alternately, you can pull an ethernet cable from your server to the TV, or do ethernet over AC.

As for smartening up your TV, you have several options. The free one is to keep using the PC that's currently connected to it. It's not really putting any "strain" on the CPU, since unless it's an ancient machine, video playback is handled with no real effort by the GPU. If you want a standalone device, I've tried dozens of set-top players over the years and have found the WD TV units to be as close to perfect as anybody has gotten. Codec support is very good, the interface is acceptable, and they play nice with network shares.

However, if you're willing to spend a bit more, you can get a full-fledged windows PC that is even smaller and more capable. I currently use two gigabyte brix systems in my house. Toss in 4GB of RAM and a cheap SSD and you can have a complete system for about $200. Using a good media player like MPC-HC this will handle anything you throw at it.

This - http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel-Celeron-Barebones-GB-BXBT-2807/dp/B00KR0QHXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458159198&sr=8-1&keywords=brix+celeron

plus RAM. We have the benefit of being a computer business and having parts lying around.

Do you have any extra hardware lying around?

For a small low powered desktop machine I'd keep my eyes on the Gigabyte Brix for black friday deals. It'll take any 2.5" drive you've got lying around (or buy used from CL, harvest from an old laptop, whatever) and then all you need is a stick of laptop DDR3. As of right now it comes out to $94 on amazon with the rebate, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see something like this on black friday/cyber monday sales for ~$80.

It's a decent machine that uses a Bay Trail celeron. If home theater units are your thing, it does hardware video decoding well and would make a great streaming box. I have mine currently set up as a Steam in-home streaming unit, and it takes just about anything I throw at it.

Otherwise, I have to say that I honestly wouldn't recommend a chromebook/box or Raspberry Pi as a first-time linux machine. The Pi is great, don't get me wrong, but it's a bummer to run into the limitations of the ARM processor when you have a certain package you really want to install but it doesn't work with ARM. Chromebox is more expensive and more locked down than the Brix or Intel NUC, what with not having full BIOS access.

For that kind of use, almost any kind of low-powered home server would be suitable - just shop around based on price and power consumption. Even a fanless, Atom-based, NUC-sized unit would suffice.
e.g. This one: http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GB-BXBT-2807-Barebones-Celeron-Included/dp/B00KR0QHXW

Same goes for disk performance - any modern HDD will provide more than enough throughput for your needs. Put a small SSD in the machine for the OS to boot from and use for swap and temporary processing, 120gig would be more than enough and that size SSDs are dirt cheap now.
e.g. This one: http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-SSDNow-SV300S37A-120G/dp/B00A1ZTZOG

A simple external 3.5" USB connected drive would be fine for your actual files. You said 6TB would do so this would seem to be a decent choice: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Storage-STDT6000100/dp/B00R1P2WDK

You don't need a RAID array either, just get a second external drive of the same size as the first and sync to it on a regular basis to keep your main media archive backed up.

Just make sure to put a decent amount of RAM in there (4GB min, preferably 8GB) - http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Technology-1600MHz-PC3-12800-KVR16LS11/dp/B00CQ35HBQ - and you're set.

That's about $350 (based on Amazon prices) to get started with another $175 to get a backup solution (second 6TB drive) in place, which you could do at a later date.