Fortysomething Geek

After getting my INTEL NUC, I decided to install openelec (a Linux distro that just runs XBMC).

I chose openelec because I was building this for a 70 year old in-law with no experience with computers whatsoever. I built an E-350 AMD Foxconn build almost six months ago for my computer illiterate 80 year old dad. He has been using it ever since with no problems. He is 80 and has zero, absolutely zero experiences with any computers whatsoever. Hence, openelec with a remote control is a no brainer. Moreover, there are a few video add-ons that make openelec into an IPTV (IP based TV) that gets foreign tv programming. I am currently paying a few dollars a month to comcast for these channels and a separate satellite for free terrestrial foreign TV will cost me around 500ドル. This build pretty much make sense for my use case.

It was basically a 10 minute install. I downloaded the INTEL x64 build, popped in 4GB of RAM I had lying around, plugged in HDMI, plugged in keyboard and booted into the installer. Voila, 10 minutes later, I had a build. Once installed, I no longer need a keyboard to function as I will only be using a remote control with it.

Here is a picture to give you an idea of how small this thing is compared to a third generation AppleTV. The wire below is the USB infrared sensor for the remote. As for USB storage, you only need 1GB for the entire OS. Hence, any old USB stick lying around would work.

The key ingredient to a successful openelec appliance is the remote. If you use a wireless keyboard, a 60-80 year old won't figure it out. However with a decent remote control, you can teach them to navigate. For my dad and his old friends, it works.

I got a few of these Windows Media Center MCE usb remotes from amazon.com. They go for around 8ドル-13.

With a remote, you no longer have a "computer" for those lay folks. Rather, it now becomes an "appliance."

Installation is rather straightforward. Plug in ethernet, HDMI, micro USB, USB for remote and power.

One thing that I forgot to mention earlier, INTEL does not supply the AC mickey mouse three head cable. They provide the power supply but no 3ドル cable which is strangely odd. I happen to have a few spare ones lying around.

Once you boot into openelec, the installation is pretty straightforward and the whole install took less than 3 minutes even with an old slow USB stick. I didn't want to add any cost to this (e.g. install an MSATA SSD) and booting into USB is still very quick. The whole OS boots in less than 30 seconds. I spent more time plugging in the cables and looking for a spare keyboard for the install.

I have to say, it has been working very good even for a "Celeron" 847 1.1 GHZ build. I haven't encountered any heating issues. So far, it is doing it's job very well. I can play 1080p HD content through the network and locally. I've even thrown a few 10GB MKVs and it was able to play with no sweat. My earlier Foxconn AMD E-350 build often struggled with larger MKV files whereas this one didn't. I'm sure the higher clocked i3 models would do better but for my needs, this processor set-up works admirably. There has been a few times where a few of the 3rd party "add-ons" I've been using have locked up the machine but a hard reset usually solved the problem.

The great thing about this is power consumption:

1.2W when the machine is off.

IDLE is roughly 14W and playing video (720P and 1080P) is any where from 14 to 18 Watts.

So there you have it. The INTEL NUC is a pretty good XBMC box. I'm sure you can probably do a few cool things with this box. It is basically just a computer and everyone I know have been incredibly surprised. They ask, "is that another media player, streamer or Android set-top box?" I reply, "nope, just another computer." And when I tell them these are easily hackintoshable, their eyes light up. I probably won't go there with this but I think I'm going to get another one just to mess around with for myself.

Link: openelec INTEL build.

http://openelec.tv/get-openelec/viewcategory/5-intel-builds

Posted by fortysomethinggeek at 10:40 PM 1 comment:

Labels: HDTV, HTPC, Intel, mini PC, NUC, OpenELEC, SFF, Small form factor, smallpc, XBMC

Here we have an INTEL NUC (Next Unit of Computing). This is a super duper small micro pc or SFF (Small Form Factor) gadget. This doesn't even use a standard at all like pico or micro-itx. Rather, it is INTEL's jab at making the smallest footprint PC in a barebone package.

This is what you get. A 4X4 motherboard with a mini-PCIe slot (for Wifi), mSATA for storage, Ethernet, two HDMI, and three USB. Some models come with Thunderbolt that replaces the Ethernet.

I got the cheap Celeron 847 which is good enough for my use: HTPC 1080p IPTV video playback. Here are my quick impressions. I'm going to install OpenELEC or something like that on this device in the next few days.

Here is how small it is. It is in the middle of a 2.5" portable hard drive, a Rolex wristwatch and mouse. That is how small it is! Tiny!

The sole USB port in the front.

Posted by fortysomethinggeek at 9:45 AM 4 comments:

Labels: barebone, fanless, Intel, micropc, minipc, NUC, SFF, Small form factor, smallpc, ultrasmall

Now, I've thought, those Matrox and Belkin Thunderbolt hubs are indeed very pricey. Very pricey. But I started to look at USB 3.0 alternatives. I looked at many of the different USB 3.0 DisplayLink hubs that have integrated DVI and Gigabit. And those are pricey as well.

These USB 3.0 DisplayLink hub usually carries a DisplayLink DL-3000 controller. They are specced to go as high as 2560x1600 but all the ones I've seen on sale usually only supports 1080p or 2048x1152. DisplayLink, despite how convenient it is, is still laggy for me. I recently got a USB 3.0 DisplayLink HDMI adapter and it was slow (even in Windows). They would suck CPU cycles as much as 40%.


Thunderbolt uses my GPU's capabilities to drive external monitors by routing it via Displayport. You won't be suffering CPU hogging spikes as you try to display hi-res video. With Thunderbolt, chaining monitors is simply up to your GPU's capabilities.

So forgot about chaining video with USB 3.0. It is gonna be slow. Still, I need multiple (extra NICs) and storage. I could use a USB 3.0 hub like this one pictured below. But as you can see with just two extra USB 3.0 cables, it is starting to look cluttered. USB 3.0 hubs are cheap and I'll give you that. I can probably hide it in the back and use some sort of tidy cable management.

So this boils back to the idea of a single cable. In reality, I would still have to connect a video cable to my Macbook. I would also probably still need to plug in an ethernet because most USB 3.0 gigabit solutions are not reliable or that great. So even with a USB 3.0 hub, my Macbook will still look like this.

Now lets talk about storage. A good majority of my blog posts revolve around storage. USB 3.0 by a longshot is a cheaper solution for a good majority of the population. And that is the major compelling advantage. It is simply cheaper and I buy USB 3.0 devices for that very reason alone.

USB has two type of Mass Storage implementation. B-O-T (Bulk only Transport) and UAS (USB Attach SCSI Protocal). If you don't know what it is, google it or read it on my blog archives. Very few devices support UAS (also UASP). 99% of the USB 3.0 devices you buy in the store will be B-O-T. You will only get UAS/UASP if you actively look for it. Your device (PC/Laptop) also needs to support it. If you are not running a 2012 and newer MacBook, you most likely don't have it.

UASP enables SCSI like storage transport. It will behave more like a real storage interface than something added with middleman layer that has plagued USB for over 10 years. FW800 smoked USB 2.0 because it was generally more efficient. UAS fixes this. I've seen in some cases, certain UAS devices outperforming certain Thunderbolt devices but that is the exception and not the norm.

In a nutshell, this is how BOT and UASP works. 99% of your USB drives (aka BOT) will wait for a command from your PC. It then replies back in a series of sequence. UASP sends command and receives responses in parallel. Notice in the graphic below, a single transfer takes up a considerable amount of time vis-a-vis in comparison to UASP.

In short form, BOT hard drives wait for a set of instruction from the host computer. Once it gets those instruction, it has to process and reply back to the host. This happens every 64K. So there is a bottleneck right there as USB devices have to wait and queue. With UASP, newer versions of USB acts more like SCSI. Hence,the improved performance.

Now, Thunderbolt doesn't have to deal with this. It acts like a native AHCI SATA device. There is basically no translation layer. Thunderbolt behaves like PCIe devices connected to your mobile laptop.

Generally speaking, you won't notice a difference when using regular rotating platter hard drives via Thunderbolt. The HDDs will be the bottleneck and not the connection.

Even with HDD, in most cases, Thunderbolt performs still perform better in a mix-load. Booting OS and transferring small, medium size files. Thunderbolt will act and perform as an internal drive or an eSATA drive. For example, the same 4TB Seagate Hitachi Backup Plus drive will take 1 minute 45 seconds to boot Mountain Lion using USB 3.0. Using Thunderbolt, it takes 40 seconds. Running a full OS and taking it through its paces, you definitely notice how USB will lag here and there. Thunderbolt, it feels like an internal drive. In addition, copying small, random 4K files will be exponentially faster with Thunderbolt. However, copying large files like DVD rips, both USB 3 and Thunderbolt perform the same.

My general advice is USB 3.0 for standard, cheap HDD external drives. But for RAIDS, high-performance, or SSDs, I recommend Thunderbolt by a large margin.

First of all, a majority of USB 3.0-SATA controllers are still only SATA I/II supporting only 3.0 Gbp/s. Dropping a high performing SSD in to a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure may only give you 200 MB/sec. You will need to research carefully, test various USB 3.0 enclosures to see what perform the best. Then you need to see if those enclosures, devices, and docks support UASP. There are too many variables at play here. Then there is the issue of incompatibility between (host) controller to chipset (device). An example of this is some JMicron chipsets on many of the 200ドル eSATA/USB 3.0 external multi-bay RAID boxes. What does this incompatibility mean? Intermittent dropped connections and sleep issues that is evident in numerous negative 1 star customer reviews on Amazon or NewEgg.

Thunderbolt, in most cases are seen as SCSI and AHCI SATA devices. They respond to SMART diagnostics and generally act and perform like normal internal hard drives.


You even get SMART access.



And compare to USB 3.0




In terms of RAID, Thunderbolt wins by a large margin. There is simply no shipping USB 3.0 RAIDs that can perform on the level of a Pegasus R4/R6 or LaCie 5big.

USB 3.0 has a theoretical 5.0 Gbp/s limit. In other words, 640MB/sec. Then you have to factor in overhead. The highest you will get in the real world is closer to 500 MB/sec. And this is with a UASP device and a single SSD. Trust me, I've tried to hit the limit on several occasions. I've even gone as far as striped SSDs in RAID 0. Two striped SSDs in USB 3.0 was no match for two striped 7200 rpm drives in RAID 0 using Thunderbolt. Trying and experimenting different USB 3.0 has been costly for me. I'll say it now, most external RAID enclosures supporting USB 3.0 is pretty much bleh. They're unreliable and do not perform as well. I'd rather stick to eSATA.

Thunderbolt has twice the bandwidth and I've seen over 1 Gig/per second using Thunderbolt. So, there will be no high performing USB 3.0 RAID boxes ever that will match the likes a Promise RAID. With Thunderbolt, you can get SAS adapters to connect to large enterprise 20-24 bay RAID enclosures. Overall, working with Thunderbolt is a pleasure. It works great in theory and in the real world. USB 3.0 will never see these type of benchmarks.



However, I need to end my lengthy article.

USB 3.0 wins in mass adoption and price. There is no denying it. I'll recommend it for most use cases. If you need a large 4 TB drive to store your iTunes music or backup your movie files, go with USB 3.0.

However, if you want reliable, optimal performance with potential, there is no denying Thunderbolt is superior. For example, I would never boot and run a full OS full time with USB 3.0. Sure, I may run a test distro, live disk USB install, or something like ESXi/FreeNAS with USB. But for any major desktop OS, I would prefer Thunderbolt. Likewise, if my backups consisted of synching source code (lots of small 4K files), I would never use USB. Another example would be Lightroom. Thumbnail generation is much, much faster using Thunderbolt than any USB 3.0 device.


Superior technology doesn't necessarily win. Just look at the Betamax vs VHS example. There is also no denying that Thunderbolt is expensive.

Posted by fortysomethinggeek at 10:03 AM 1 comment:

Labels: Apple, Firewire, Intel, macbook, technology, Thunderbolt, UAS, UASP, USB 3.0

In most single threaded benchmarks, even the i5s will be faster than the AMD 8-cores. However, when you start running heavily multi-threaded applications, the AMDs are pretty darn good. Running Linux and multiple VMs, they perform very, very well.

Below is a typical workload of running 6 medium size virtual machines (ranging from 2-4GB of usage). I consume on average 20-26GB of RAM out of my 32GB. I can assign separate cores per VM.

And in general, the VMs run quite well. AMDs make great Linux Dev builds. With a good AM3+ mobo, 32GB of RAM, you can build a nice box for well under 400ドル.

Posted by fortysomethinggeek at 9:20 AM No comments:

Labels: 8-core, AMD, FX, FX-8320, Intel, Vishera