Looking for a perfect HTPC + NAS hardware

    I'm looking for a perfect LE-based solution to replace my current Amlogic S922X system in the long term. I'm using pretty much most of the ELEC system features including media player (4K HDR), NAS (shared USB external drive) and retro console emulation. With the new ultra efficient x86 CPUs and the performance demand of the hopefully soon coming emulation features (like 3D emulators and shaders) I'm thinking about switching to x86 platform.

    I was looking at Ryzen based systems like Beelink SER6 with Ryzen 6800H (6800U would be even better) as it should be very powerful yet very low power when idle and also it has hardware AV1 decoder. But I would like to extend the current solution by adding an optical drive (could be slim) and by adding the second disk in a RAID 1 array (to back up the NAS data). Also, I would like to have all-in-one system which means to switch from 1 external disk to 2 internal disks.

    So the questions are:

    1. What is the current state of support for Ryzen 6xxx APUs?

    2. Is there either a mini PC with 2 HDD slots (either 2.5" or 3.5") and an optical drive slot (either slim or full)?

    3. Or is there a mini ITX board with the mobile Ryzen 6xxx APU?

    EDIT: I'm aware of the missing RAID support in LE, but it can be added in custom build.

    EDIT2: Or is it better to stick with Intel?

    Edited 4 times, last by KOPRajs (April 14, 2023 at 9:43 PM).

    I will use this post to summarize the interesting hardware found so far.

    A new information for me is that the desktop CPUs (both Intel and AMD) seem to have inferior integrated graphics compared to the same CPUs for laptops. As I would like to use the 3D emulators and the shaders in the future, I'm going to need a system with a laptop CPU / APU.

    This is interesting motherboard (if only it would have the Iris XE graphics):

    MSI PRO-HM570TI-B-I526

    Are there any similar boards with newer mobile CPUs (1135G7 or 1240P)?

    Quote from smp

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805041043563.html (i5-1135G7)

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805040993987.html (i5-1135G7, dual LAN)

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805040832385.html (Celeron 6305)

    I have a mini PC with Celeron 6305. It supports hardware AV1 decoding and the GPU is powerful enough to do a Lanczos3/Spline36 1080p-to-4K upscaling.

    Thanks for the tip! :thumbup:

    This one looks even better:

    ERYING Mini-ITX Motherboard i5-12500H

    There is plenty of intersting cases:

    LC POWER LC-1530mi

    Chieftec BU-12B-300

    Fractal Design Core 500

    Fanless cases:

    Streacom ST-FC8 - for slot-in optical drive

    Or even special HTPC cases:

    LUXA2 - LM100

    My final choice of HW (WIP)

    Streacom ST-FC8 Alpha (black)

    Hitachi-LG GS40N DVD drive

    ERYING Mini-ITX Motherboard i5-12500H

    M.2 NGFF Key-M to Dual SATA 3.0 Expansion Card

    RGEEK DC-ATX 150W Power Supply Module (Pico PSU)

    Edited 22 times, last by KOPRajs (April 18, 2023 at 1:56 PM).

    There is old online store in UK that got loads of mini itx hardware and search form. Search form answers all your hardware questions. Store sells mini-itx stuff. You can guess its address :)

    mini PCs tend to not include optical drives to save space as you can attach optical drive via USB. Asus got mini pc option with two M2s and one SSD. Again saving space as 2 SSDs take more space. One of those Asus kits comes with Ryzen 6000H.

    AMD 6000H + 2 x SSD + internal Optical will probably reduce your options to zero as I can find only boards with 2 SATA ports and they come with AM5 sockets.

    Edited 7 times, last by tokul (April 14, 2023 at 6:12 AM).

    Quote from KOPRajs

    Or is it better to stick with Intel?

    I've seen several threads with Ryzen problems (use the search function). So my answer is yes.

    Newest AMD stuff might work well, but we don't have enough feedback to suggest something.

    Guinea pigs are always welcome here. :)

    Keep looking, there is no such thing as a "perfect" whatever when it comes to media devices, well, at least not more than like a month or six at the most.

    Quote from KOPRajs

    I did. There is not much information about current state of the support fot the current Ryzen APUs line-up.

    Most users just grab their answers, and leave. You probably have to investigate for Ryzen on Linux kernel development. If it's in the kernel, LE will have it sooner or later. If you search for perfection, that's the way to go.

    Quote from KOPRajs

    Are there any similar boards with newer mobile CPUs (1135G7 or 1240P)?

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805041043563.html (i5-1135G7)

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805040993987.html (i5-1135G7, dual LAN)

    https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805040832385.html (Celeron 6305)

    I have a mini PC with Celeron 6305. It supports hardware AV1 decoding and the GPU is powerful enough to do a Lanczos3/Spline36 1080p-to-4K upscaling.

    Edited once, last by smp (April 15, 2023 at 4:50 AM).

    Hi KOPRajs,

    I just did the test of some 12gen W11 licenced mini-PC under 199€, 15-25W tdp, with full hw decode including AV1,

    while lowest entry level chip :

    Ace Magician AD03 Mini PC, 12th Intel Alder Lake-N95

    Beelink MINI-S12 Mini PC, 12th Intel Alder Lake-N95

    NiPoGi GK3 Plus Mini PC, 12TH Intel Alder Lake N95

    Booting ubuntu & LE on 4K-HDR10-DV tv, only Beelink does the job.

    NiPoGi is very closed bios ...

    Ace Magician don't have support for more than windows (on 4K-UHD-60hz, 23.04beta needs booting 'safe graphics', LE doesn't boot)

    So the only to get same time full options bios, all USB3.2 usb port, and NVME ssd is this MINI-S12 Beelink,

    see https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=433

    Got also latest W11toGo key to boot with HDR10 & AV1 4K-20Mbps decode, never higher than 55% GPU (ie fluently).

    Such MINI-S12 could go up to 16Gram ddr4-3200/1T-nvme/2T-sata-hd, with an entry price of 179€ delivered with 8G/128G config , I think that is the best in Q1 2023 and the smallest in form factor...

    The only bad thing is the old wifi5/BT4 chips soldered... but as server, you can Ethernet with a usb hub/eth and let eth port for your lan.

    smp :

    when I saw that i3-1115G4 was the only 11th-gen core CPU not accelerating AV1 decode (i sent back a HP x360 14c-cc chromebook because of that...), i used to have faith to monkey results. And despite a good CPU, they say AV1 decode NO https://www.cpu-monkey.com/fr/cpu-intel_celeron_6305.

    Note that with that class of CPU https://www.cpu-monkey.com/fr/benchmark-i…n_6305-bench_11,

    an 2k AV1 is well played by software, althrough at the limit, and at 4K is very chopy... (I use Elecard videos).

    So i ran to gen-12 chips and N95 as entry level...

    Edited once, last by fab233: typos (April 16, 2023 at 2:18 PM).

    Quote from smp

    That page is wrong.

    Yes, I've seen it showing AV1 decode "No" for several more CPUs which in fact can decode AV1 in hardware.

    I do have some experience with Beelink's mini PCs, however while they generally work nice, they are too small to accommodate 2x HDD and the optical drive, which I want.

    Since it seems that there is currently no Mini-ITX board with the mobile Ryzen 6xxx, I've decided to stay with Intel for this build.

    I've ordered the ERYING Mini-ITX board with the soldered Intel Core i5-12500H + M.2 to SATA adapter (I will need more than 2 SATA ports) + Pico PSU (everything from Aliexpress).

    Once it arrives, I'll double check compatibility with the fanless Streacom ST-FC8 case. If everything is ok, I'll try to build this compact and fanless beast HTPC with 1x M.2 NVMe, 2x 3.5" HDD and the slot-in DVD drive.

    I'll try to update with the results.

    Quote from tokul

    PCI-E SATA adapter

    I've ordered M.2 SATA controller. It is smaller and there are 3 M.2 slots on the motherboard compared to only 1 PCIe slot, so better to use the M.2 and keep the PCIe free IMHO.

    I've chosen this one with JMicron JMB582:

    S59866d06af05429f87d11b474cc5de61U.jpg

    I'll try to shorten it from 2280 to 2242 size as the motherboard should fit the shortened version.

    EDIT: I've updated the second post with the final choice of HW.

    Edited once, last by KOPRajs (April 18, 2023 at 2:02 PM).

    Ok for perhaps

    Quote from smp

    That page is wrong. All Tiger Lake CPUs (including Celeron 6305) can decode AV1 in hardware.

    IMG-20230416-165637.jpg

    IMG-20230416-165603.jpg

    IMG-20230416-165547.jpg

    OK, cpu-monkey sometimes can get inacurate info,

    but i got a i3-1115g4 chromebook (so a gen-11 tiger lake) and at a time ChromeOS release R110 did support AV1 , that i3 did'nt !

    It was able to sofw decode in 1080p, but was heavy stuttering the elecard demo once in 4k !

    Other ChromeOS forum people said AV1 decode was starting with i5, so entry level Celeron & pentium as that i3 were not supporting decode AV1 in hw, as mentionned in the intel itself announcement slides !

    In fact, it's that unluckly same problem with intel : for Gemini Lake, they did'nt finaly (after announcement) implement hdmi2.0 output to allow hdr10 in the drivers they wrote. Thx SMP to free up that GPUs ...

    It's likely what appens now : for windows; linux & chromeOS they have probably swapped AV1 decode function for their low entry core GPU as the i3-1115g4.

    Same problem potentially then with Jasper lake (as N6000), a gen-10 CPU with a sunny gen-11 GPU that shoud also decode AV1 in hw ...

    Also many cpus described by intel as 8 or 16 GB ram limited ... are not in fact ! obviously marketing ...

    Well, glad to have your 6305 decoding AV1 in hw, but I see your test video in Elecard, less than 8mbps that can be sw decoded,

    so try the other one at <18mbps> 4K (the 2 videos exist 2k & 4k) ...

    If the red Fiat near red traffic light makes a light stutter @ 2K , when @4k it's a cartoon frame group by frame group and it's the evidence !

    I also see that you used a kodi 15-04-2023 build,

    perphaps a full new LE to download so I could also test by myself ?

    Cheers