New Toy : Intel NUC DN2820FYKH

I gave up trying to solve the crackly usb-audio on my raspberry pi Model B, and bought an Intel NUC to run in its place.

This is the DN2820FYKH model, or rather the newer version with the same name that comes with an N2830 2.4Ghz Celeron CPU. I ordered it with 4GB RAM and an 80GB SSD, all for RM470 + RM300 + RM150 on lelong.com.my.

I love the form factor — it sure beats lugging a full sized PC case which is mostly empty these days anyway.

Installing the RAM and SSD was easy. Like my old Pi, this is connected to my TV over HDMI, my DACMagic over USB, a Wireless Logitech K400 keyboard and my home LAN via wired ethernet (although it features wifi). I installed Ubuntu 14.04LTS from a USB thumbdrive. Fired up Spotify and spent an hour or so listening to crackle free music.

Since most of my media was already on the LAN, I mounted my videos and music collection via NFS and set up banshee and xbmc. Surprisingly, the graphics were not as good as the Pi’s — a lot of overscan (which I corrected with my TV) and the image didn’t seem as sharp nor did it jump out as much the Pi. Some tweaking of the TV’s settings helped but not by much.

It has a built-in IR port so i will probably dig out an old remote and try to get that working over the next few days — the keyboard is nice but a bit cumbersome for xbmc. Also I need to get a USB-Serial adapter and get my faxmodem working again.