$152 nuc on amazon - complete 4k uhd pc

[Jamie]

my brother came across this complete $150 pc on amazon USA. it has 12 gb ram, 512 gb ssd, rj45 1 gb lan port, alder lake n97 processor, wifi 5, intel uhd graphics. yes, it's not top of the line but it is an inexpensive way to run cmc, mymovies, browse the web, use office and some not so high powered apps. i am thinking of buying one for the living room, one for my bedroom so that i can start playing my 4k uhd movies.

here is a link to the manufacturer.

https://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-a ... 59c2623086

here is a youtube review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwPqn8LZxLI

please excuse the lowercase. i had a total replacement of my right shoulder and i have to type hunt and peck with my left arm.

[Pauven]

Careful, such a low end PC may not have the horsepower for HTPC duty.

While it may have 4K display support, that just means it can connect to a 4K display and output a desktop at that resolution. It does not guarantee that it will be able to play 4K movies - in fact I'd be surprised if it could.

If you really want to try it, maybe just buy one to test it out, but make sure you can return it first.

I hope your healing journey goes well.

[Jamie]

Yes, I am cautious and doing my research. Most of these are coming from China which makes me nervous. I've seen some news that they burn out within a few months. I may try one to see how it goes. I will buy from amazon which has free returns. I would use basic Jriver red October or powerdvd 22 and not madvr. This pc has better specs and I may try it. https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=434

[Jamie]

]Minimum requirements for powerdvd 22 is uhd 630 graphics. Jriver says that they need a graphics card. Alder lake n100 can run uhd 730 graphics so

I should be able to run powerdvd 22. I think I'll try the bee-link n100 mini pc.

[Pauven]

Is that UHD 630 a minimum requirement for DVDS, or Blu-rays, or 4K UHD?

[Jamie]

i gather that is for all disks including 4k uhd for powerdvd 22. for powerdvd 24 they listing are uhd 630 graphics for 4k video file playback. i would believe that 4k uhd discs would not require any more support than a video file. alder lake n100 cpus are 12 generation. even powerdvd 22 - 23 says that for 4k uhd playback that their minimum requirements is a 11 generation cpu for 4k uhd. I will need to watch some more youtube reviews but they say that they are playing low end 4k games at 60 hz. i will not know til i try and if it doesn't work i will return it. I will let you know.

[Pauven]

Fingers crossed, hope it goes well. Looking forward to the results.

Probably the biggest hurdle will be different codecs. The more advanced codecs, the ones that makes the smallest files, take more horsepower to decode and playback. So you may find the results vary with different sources, depending upon how they were encoded.