Haswell or Skylake

Captain Moody · June 14, 2016 at 10:58 AM

Hi all,

I'm a long time Kodi user (currently openelec on an older Acer Revo) looking to build a new small form factor HTPC.

I really like the look of the slim barebone cases from Shuttle but cannot decide between the Haswell based LGA1150 model and the Skylake based LGA1151 model.
Important factors are:

Complete Librelec compatability.
HDMI 1080p @ 60hz, 50hz and smooth 23.976 playback.
HDMI HD audio support with passthrough for Dolby Digital/DTS standard and HD
Not looking to upgrade to 4k anytime soon but a certain amount of future proofing would be good.
All my media is stored on a seperate server so will only need a small SSD for the OS

Will probably start with a mid priced i3 unless it's worth upgrading to an i5 already.

What would be my best option?

LGA1150 Shuttle - Shuttle XH81V Supports LGA1150 Slim-PC Barebone - No OS System - Ebuyer
LGA1151 Shuttle - 745613-shuttle-xh110v-intel-h110-chipset-supports-lga1151-skylake-slim-barebone-no-xh110v

Thanks in advance

**DaVu** · June 14, 2016 at 11:50 AM Official Post

In my opinion there's no real benefit for using Skylake. I'm still at Haswell with an Celeron 1820T CPU on an ASRock Board, and all things you mentioned are working fine.

If you want to be future proof wait for Kaby Lake.

So you even don't need an i3 for that. A Celeron does the job as well as an i3.

Captain Moody · June 14, 2016 at 12:15 PM

Thanks for your help, I was starting to think Haswell was the way to go.

I wasn't sure what differences there were in the integrated graphics between celeron, pentium and i3/5/7

**Nailig** · June 14, 2016 at 3:19 PM

You could try even something smaller.
An Asrock Beebox for example. A very small box with plenty power for LibreElec. I use the one with a Celeron N3150. Works absolutely great!
You do not need an i3 or i5 if you are only using it as a media player.

Captain Moody · June 14, 2016 at 5:03 PM

That's a neat little box but part of the upgrade idea was to get a small form factor box that I could fit an optical drive in.
I ended up going with the 1150 Shuttle case with a Pentium G3450. Going for a Core processor seems like overkill.

**Nailig** · June 15, 2016 at 8:00 AM

Quote from Captain Moody

That's a neat little box but part of the upgrade idea was to get a small form factor box that I could fit an optical drive in.
I ended up going with the 1150 Shuttle case with a Pentium G3450. Going for a Core processor seems like overkill.

Ah, an optical drive was not in your first post. In that case this is a good choice.

**nuc-le** · June 28, 2016 at 4:18 AM

I have NUC I3 haswell since it got released, very nice for htpc!