[mythtvnz] Intel DC3217IYE Desktop Computer - I3

[Mark George]

> Since my main backend has started giving me electric shocks via the
> USB subsystem I am shopping for a new system.
> 
> I am looking at an Intel DC3217IYE as per subject line
> (http://www.cellotech.co.nz/products/category/AAWFHRIE%20home/WKSINT2138459).
> 
> Has anybody any experience with these machines?
> 
> I would probably add a network drive and put 8GB memory in.
> 
> cheers
> Worik


I have the Thunderbolt version of that.  I've been meaning to write a review and post it to the list but have been waiting to try out a few more things first.

A quick summary of my experience so far:

 - These things have cooling issues - they just made them too small, and only have a CPU cooler.  Given the cramped space if you combine the SSD with a WiFi card the SSD overheats and drops offline whenever you are making heavy use of both which is not ideal.  A recent BIOS update cranks the CPU fan up a bit to try to deal with the heat, and so far I haven't had any further problems.  It will be interesting to see what will happen on a hot day.

 - VAAPI is still immature.  It has one functional deinterlacer (linear blend), and struggles with smooth playback, dropping frames regularly.  I switched to using CPU decoding rather than hardware because it results in smoother playback but it is still not perfect.  A lot of work has been going into the Intel graphics drivers in recent kernels so hopefully these problems will be fixed soon.

 - It mostly worked out of the box with Ubuntu 13.04.  Just had to add the intel-va driver (can't remember the exact package name off the top of my head) to get VAAPI decoding working.  I also had to switch to using the "performance" CPU governor and set the low limit to equal the maximum to get smooth playback with CPU decoding.

 - They are a bit overpriced given the problems I have mentioned - I would wait for the Core i5 version which should be arriving soon, or even the Haswell version if I was buying again.

Initially I turned off hyper-threading thinking it might improve the performance having two dedicated cores.  I have since been told that the performance hit of HT is no longer significant on modern CPUs so it is possible the playback may be a little smoother with hyper-threading turned on and increasing the number of decoding cores.  I have not yet had a chance to test this.

Cheers,
Mark