HTPC
Intel's Tiger Lake-based NUCs have been shipping for well over a year now. Supply chain challenges have been impacting availability of different models in different regions, but that has not prevented Intel's partners from delivering complementary products. Akasa, a well-known manufacturer of thermal solutions for computing systems targeting varied markets, has been maintaining a lineup of passively-cooled cases for Intel's NUCs since 2013. We had reviewed the Akasa Turing chassis for the Bean Canyon NUC a couple of years back, and had come away pleasantly surprised. Today's review presents results from our comprehensive evaluation of the Tiger Canyon NUC (NUC11TNKi5). It also describes the process for installing the kit's board (NUC11TNBi5) in the Akasa Newton TN chassis before analyzing its thermal performance characteristics. Read...
SilverStone Sugo SG05: The Mini-ITX Standard Bearer
We've been looking at a few mini-ITX enclosures as of late, an interest sparked largely by the surprise success of the Bitfenix Prodigy and the general industry tend towards...
70 by Dustin Sklavos on 8/19/2012Zotac GeForce GT 640 DDR3 Review: Glacial Gaming & Heavenly HTPC
Two weeks ago NVIDIA formally launched the retail GeForce GT 640, catching up to their OEM and laptop offerings with their first GK107 based video card for the retail...
60 by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on 6/20/2012AMD Llano HTPC Builders Guide
Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) are becoming more and more popular due to a number of reasons. The desire of consumers to watch and enjoy their media, be it Blu-rays/DVDs...
76 by Ganesh T S on 6/5/2012ASRock Revamps HTPC Lineup with VisionX, Vision HT and MINI Series
ASRock's mini-ITX form factor HTPCs have been held in high esteem by us, but their second generation refresh left a lot to be desired in terms of being revolutionary...
11 by Ganesh T S on 6/2/2012Replacing my HTPC with a mini ITX System
Free time is hard to come by these days. Since the beginning of the year I've hit Vegas, Barcelona, Santa Clara, New York, Santa Clara (again), Austin, Seattle, Chicago...
56 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/24/2012Streacom Updates Passive HTPC Chassis Lineup with FC9 and FC10
The advent of CPUs with low TDPs (but having enough power to handle HTPC duties) has resulted in passive HTPCs becoming more and more popular. Streacom (started in 2010...
15 by Ganesh T S on 5/23/2012ASRock's High-End Vision 3D 252B HTPC Review
In late 2010, we reviewed the ASRock Vision 3D, and declared it to be the best pre-built SFF (small form factor) HTPC we had reviewed. ASRock duly updated the...
60 by Ganesh T S on 5/7/2012SilverStone Grandia GD07 Review: Centering and Serving Your Media
The last time we reviewed one of SilverStone's Grandia enclosures, it was the GD04, and it was a review that launched the first major revamp of how we test...
37 by Dustin Sklavos on 4/29/2012Intel's Ivy Bridge: An HTPC Perspective
Towards the end of June 2011, we saw AMD trying to create a HTPC friendly solution in the Llano series. By pairing a GPU with the CPU in the...
70 by Ganesh T S on 4/23/2012Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus: Redefining the Small Form Factor PC
Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs are becoming quite popular as processors become more and more power efficient. Over the last few years, we have had a slew of budget...
44 by Ganesh T S on 4/11/2012Pulse-Eight Motorola NYXboard Hybrid Remote Review
Pulse-Eight is one of the companies tracing its roots to XBMC, and it is no wonder they have a host of interesting products in the HTPC space. We have...
23 by Ganesh T S on 4/5/2012ASRock CoreHT Server Edition Review
Late last year, we took a look at the ASRock CoreHT 252B, a Sandy Bridge-based midrange HTPC. We liked the CoreHT quite a bit, noting that the small form...
44 by Vivek Gowri on 2/16/2012AMD Radeon HD 7750 & Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition Review: Evading The Price/Performance Curve
With the launch of Tahiti behind them, AMD is now firing on all cylinders to get the rest of their Southern Islands lineup out the door. Typically we’d see...
155 by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on 2/15/2012CyberLink PowerDVD 12: Complementing Your Mobile Lifestyle
Software Blu-ray / DVD players are bundled with almost all OEM PCs and a necessity for consumers who want to enjoy their commercial optical media in the most legal...
42 by Ganesh T S on 1/31/2012Syabas Launches Popcorn Hour C-300
Syabas launched the second generation version of their BDA licensed unit, the Popcorn Hour C-300 today. The previous version was based on Sigma's SMP 8643, and the C-300 is based...
6 by Ganesh T S on 12/6/2011Zotac Introduces Passively Cooled GTS 450 Zone Edition
Passively cooled high performance GPUs are quite popular with the HTPC community. NVIDIA GPUs are preferred by many HTPC users because of good software support (LAV CUVID, for example...
25 by Ganesh T S on 11/23/2011ASRock CoreHT 252B Review
Approximately a year back, we reviewed the ASRock Core 100 HTPC which was a pioneer of sorts in the small form factor (SFF) HTPC space. Till that point, the...
56 by Ganesh T S on 9/2/2011Roku 2 Brings Casual Gaming to TVs
Roku, founded in 2002, is one of the pioneers in the media streamer market. OTT (over-the-top) content from premium service providers like Netflix and Hulu has become more popular...
16 by Ganesh T S on 7/19/2011AMD A8-3850 : An HTPC Perspective
Today is all about Lynx, the desktop version of the Llano platform from AMD. Anand is reviewing the A8-3850 from a generic PC perspective, and Ian is covering its...
107 by Ganesh T S on 6/30/2011