19 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Best NUC Value. Ever.
By Jack H. on February 1, 2014
Many Positives:
- Haswell [based technology]!
- Twice the Ghz, twice the power savings (compared to last gen). Wow.
- XBMC works flawlessly, even with 1080p 15Mbps bitrates over the network. No stuttering, no buffering. Simply fantastic.
- No slowdowns at all while booting or using the system. Very eloquent solution, especially when hooked up to the back of a monitor. (I installed a hybrid drive by Toshiba).
- Wireless Card comes BUILT IN (unlike the previous generations of NUC). I does not, however, have a 5Ghz band.
- Power Cord no longer requires a "brick" in the middle, as it uses a "brick" plug instead (which also means you don't have to purchase the mickey mouse cable anymore -- also nice).
- Uses 7w of power (*I'll be back to confirm this upon measuring with my Kill-A-Watt measuring system).
- Has a headphone jack (Halelujah -- cause those USB to stereo adapters are expensive for the stupid chore they perform).
- Network is gigabit.
Cautions / "Cons":
- I also had an issue with HDMI audio output. Apparently if you install your OS in "Legacy Mode" instead of the new "UEFI", your HDMI audio gets hosed. Installing Windows 7 requires legacy mode, so your best shot is to install Windows 8[.1], or a Linux Distro with UEFI boot support.
- Even with UEFI mode on, I ended up having no audio through HDMI until I switched cables. Upon switching cables, it worked just fine (must have been the HDMI cable that came with my mounting bracket that was to blame).
- I was NOT able to PXE boot (If you don't know what this is, don't consider this a con) and install my OS of choice over the network using Serva. It would find my Serva server if I used Legacy boot, and then at the time it is supposed to bring up the menu of OS's... it reboots. UEFI didn't even get that far using IPV6 or IPV4.
Special Notes:
- Running XBMC with NO audio settings configured (aka, red 'x' in the taskbar), will force it to stutter at ~5fps until you get some audio hooked up.
- Runs Dolphin at half speed, so don't plan on playing any Gamecube or Wii games on here (test subject was SSBB). I didn't expect it to, but I figured I'd inform those interested.
If you have any questions, PLEASE ask in the comments. I'm pretty active when it comes to responding.