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Armoury Mini PC for home theater

631 Views 6 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  Robilar, 
Robilar
I had a dedicated media PC (complete with multiple hard drives) for my home media center collection of movies.

Downsized as a result of moving and bought a PCI-3.0 hard drive caddy for my 4 mechanical drives. Currently I hook it up to my laptop and and TV and run movies off the caddy drive. Works fine but ties up my laptop.

I was looking at the Armoury Mini PC's (i3 CPU 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD and intel graphics) and given their small footprint would work in my TV setup. Are they powerful enough to run movies off my external drive without any loss of quality?

It would be a lot simpler to have one of these permanently plugged into the external storage bay and my TV.

Thanks
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#2 ·
This one has two Ethernet ports (2.5 and 1) a d room for two SATA drives. It's on my wish list for a plex server and probably a NAS as well.

www.amazon.com

Amazon.com: MINISFORUM DeskMini UM450 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Windows 11 Pro Micro Computer, DDR4 32GB RAM+512GB SSD, 2xHDMI/1xUSB-C [email protected] Output, 2.5Gbps Lan, USB 3.2, Bluetooth, AMD Radeon Graphics Small PC : Electronics

Amazon.com: MINISFORUM DeskMini UM450 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 5 4500U Windows 11 Pro Micro Computer, DDR4 32GB RAM+512GB SSD, 2xHDMI/1xUSB-C [email protected] Output, 2.5Gbps Lan, USB 3.2, Bluetooth, AMD Radeon Graphics Small PC : Electronics
www.amazon.com
 
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Robilar

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Discussion Starter · #3 ·
Thanks for the link. I don't actually need a unit with space for internal drives as I have a 4 bay USB caddy with all my drives. I just need something robust enough to run video content on the drives via USB.

It does look like it has decent specs though and cheaper than the one I was looking at. All I will really be running is VLC player fed through the USB port to the caddy.
 
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Robilar said:
Thanks for the link. I don't actually need a unit with space for internal drives as I have a 4 bay USB caddy with all my drives. I just need something robust enough to run video content on the drives via USB.

It does look like it has decent specs though and cheaper than the one I was looking at. All I will really be running is VLC player fed through the USB port to the caddy.
Click to expand...
It has very good specs and will be way over powered for what you need. I don't need the internal drives either but it's a very nice expansion option give most mini PCs only have one SATA :)
 
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Robilar

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Discussion Starter · #5 ·
Crap, can't actually order that one, its only Amazon US. Will have to find something similar on Canadian site

What do you think of this one?

www.amazon.ca

Beelink SEI8 Mini PC,Intel 8th Gen i5-8279U(UP to 4.1GHz) 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD Iris Plus Graphics 655,Dual 4K HDMI Mini Desktop Computer : Amazon.ca: Electronics

Beelink SEI8 Mini PC,Intel 8th Gen i5-8279U(UP to 4.1GHz) 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD Iris Plus Graphics 655,Dual 4K HDMI Mini Desktop Computer : Amazon.ca: Electronics
www.amazon.ca

Intel CPU, Iris Pro graphics. roughly the same price
 
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#6 ·
Robilar said:
Crap, can't actually order that one, its only Amazon US. Will have to find something similar on Canadian site

What do you think of this one?

www.amazon.ca

Beelink SEI8 Mini PC,Intel 8th Gen i5-8279U(UP to 4.1GHz) 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD Iris Plus Graphics 655,Dual 4K HDMI Mini Desktop Computer : Amazon.ca: Electronics

Beelink SEI8 Mini PC,Intel 8th Gen i5-8279U(UP to 4.1GHz) 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD Iris Plus Graphics 655,Dual 4K HDMI Mini Desktop Computer : Amazon.ca: Electronics
www.amazon.ca

Intel CPU, Iris Pro graphics. roughly the same price
Click to expand...
Its an older CPU but still plenty for what you need!
 
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Robilar

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Discussion Starter · #7 ·
Thanks again for the advice. Picked up this unit, set it up. Works great. Running a 33 GB movie off the external drive to my 4k Sony TV and Bose 900 sound bar.

 
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