Need some input on fanless mediacenter pc

Marco2G · September 25, 2022

Hi everyone

I am in the process of getting annoyed with my current mediacenter PC which is a Pentium G3460 in an Akasa Euler case.

My issue: Playback to the 4k tv is not completely smooth. Worst with native 4k but also with most any other material. I already use the iGPU for playback.

So. What I would like to know is if I absolutely, positively will have to invest 500ish bucks for a new fanless pc or if any of you have a perfect product in mind that may come in cheaper.

Building in Euler cases usually involves the scrounging up of rather exotic mainboards and CPU choices are limited. I see that Zotac has fanless mini pcs but so far I only saw Celeron processors and I have no idea if they would truly be better at this task. I cannot find comparisons.

I suspect that my CPU being 50+Watts may not help matters ina case that is meant for dissipating 35W. I have tried a voltage offset of -0.01 but so far, I don't think that did much.

So I'm open to suggestions. I know some people run mediacenters off of Raspberry Pis so I wonder how that can work when my dual core Pentium with iGPU seems to struggle.

EDIT:

After studying the ARK page for this CPU some more, I notice that the iGPU isn't validated for 4k resolution at all. I gotta say, for that it runs rather nicely ;). I have looked at the i3-4370T, which should be compatible with the Asus H81T motherboard. That iGPU does list 4k resolution.

So I might just get me a new CPU and be done with it... unless someone has concerns with that plan?

Marco2G · September 29, 2022

So turns out it wasn't the CPU's fault.

After switching it, it still wasn't much better. So I got the bright idea to check whether my configurations were still in place and lo and behold, linux still loaded the correct driver, however Waterfox had forgotten its about:config settings during an upgrade which was, in the first place, why I suddenly had stutters.

I still have bad performance on 4k movies but my gut tells me that is on Jellyfin's server side.

thewelshbrummie · September 30, 2022

14 hours ago, Marco2G said:

I still have bad performance on 4k movies but my gut tells me that is on Jellyfin's server side.

I think you answered that in your original post:

On 9/25/2022 at 3:55 PM, Marco2G said:

After studying the ARK page for this CPU some more, I notice that the iGPU isn't validated for 4k resolution at all.

Kaby Lake is where the full 4K support was included, including for UHD Blu-Ray support and the necessary DRM, though that's obviously academic for a Linux build.

Some thoughts:

You're probably pushing the iGPU to the limit, especially one that is pre-Skylake. I have one of Intel's Compute Sticks with an m3 CPU that I'm using as a makeshift HTPC and 4K video playback isn't great - and no streaming service will provide a 4K stream.
That said - From my former job providing TV customer support, HDCP is irrelevant for local 4K video playback, as there's no HDCP handshake required on PC outputs to 4K TVs. But you can certainly get strange behaviour from that and performance issues probably won't be considered a fault of the TV.

It's more on the iGPU side that concerns me. Obviously if you're happy with it then great, but I wouldn't be confident that the iGPU has enough power to keep it from running smoothly in the long run without temps ramping up or having a very high utilisation. I haven't forgotten trying my cheap AMD netbook from 2011 with outputting Blu-Rays to my TV. It worked perfectly without any frame skipping but not with the fan ramping up to 100% and being crazy loud, to the point it just wasn't worth the tradeoff. Fanless is a great option but I wouldn't be surprised if the weak iGPU you have is running at a pretty high utilisation vs what a newer CPU could provide.