or will it stream straight 1080p to my tv without the following?
http://www.shoppingexpress.com.au/buy/gigabyte-celeron-n2807…
the cpu on the n54l ain't the greatest so i was thinking of using something like above to be the 1080p transcoder
HP Microserver N54L & little PC box to run my 1080p to TV?
frysie on 25/08/2014 - 14:19
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I had a few htpc attempts - various media players, raspberry pi, old pcs and wasn't quite satisfied with them because they were just that little bit underpowered to be annoying.
I've had a n54l with 8gb ram, gforce 210 video card at 1080p with xbmc for over a year which was a recommended ram/video card package from shoppingexpress.com.au at the time.
I installed xbmc on a ssd in its dvd bay and added hard drives. My n54l run a lot of software as well as xbmc i.e. its doing backups, webserver, virtualbox and its been great. I've never had any trouble with any video playback or slowdowns.
I've got an N40L which I put an HD video card in and it's fine as an XBMC box as well as being my NAS, downloader, webserver and a few other bits and pieces. Of course it's the video card doing the video playback - if you try to use it as a Plex server where the CPU is doing the transcoding then it struggles (some stuff still works but don't rely on it).
You could set it up like I have right now. I have an ethernet port going from my wall to a gigabyte switch, and the switch connected to my tv, pc and N54L.
The N54L is running as a NAS and it streams to the tv just fine, the tv is a smart tv though.The N54L has no problem transcoding 1080p on the fly. Using FreeNAS with Plex works perfectly when streaming to a Chromecast or any other device.
And the Celeron N2807 in that Gigabyte box is even worse. Note sure how accurate PassMark is, but
Yes it's pretty bad.