My Ultimate HTPC

    For a few years I've been on a quest to build a high performance HTPC (Home Theater PC) that was totally quiet and would support all major video codecs with hardware decoding. At long last I've achieved my goal. This HTPC is a combination of parts from an Intel NUC 8i7BEH, a fanless Akasa Plato X8 case, a FLIRC USB infrared receiver and a Nipeal external antenna kit from Amazon.

    This HPTC runs LibreElec, leveraging the Mezzmo Kodi addon I author with content being streamed from my Mezzmo server with 25K+ of media items. Performance and codec support are great, as well as stability. Almost all of my newer media is high bitrate H265 4K with HDR10. Dolby Vision isn't supported but I am not focused on that and feel it adds a layer of complexity. If LibreElec ever supports DV it will come along for the ride. It certainly isn't the cheapest HTPC available but I would contend one of the best performing with an internal SSD, running on Linux with an x86 processor makes all functions extremely snappy and the system overall very stable.

    The Akasa case is great, albeit a bit larger than I expected. It is a solid chunk of aluminum weighing over 1.5 kilograms. The cooling capacity of the case is better than I expected and better than the original NUC case with a fan. With the original NUC case setup the idle temperature was often around 100 F degrees and could hit over 130 F degrees which kicked in the fan noise. With the new Akasa case the idle temperature is around 83 F degrees and around 100 F degrees during high bitrate playback, even with MPEG2 files which I am not using HW decoding. Many times it remains under 90 degrees during playback. The external antennas perform far better than the stock NUC setup. I can see my neighbor's WiFi SSIDs from over 100 ft away with a moderate signal level.

    The overall assembly process was very easy and the Akasa case has room for a 2.5" SATA drive, in addition to the M.2 2280 slot on the NUC motherboard.





    Thanks,

    Jeff

    Quote from blueribb

    "a bit larger" 🤣


    Yeah, these cases go overboard on heat dissipation but they make up for it in looking cool. :) I don't like that the cases only work with a single model of NUC but this was a toy approach for me vs. a least expensive.


    Jeff