I recently had the opportunity to get my hands on the Intel NUC i5 D54250WYK. I’ve run it through it’s paces as a home theatre pc, keep reading for my review and thoughts. 
When looking for a HTPC, you want something that is small, quiet and powerful. Right now it’s very tough to find something better than the NUC i5 D54250WYK when you want to check all those boxes. And boy does this little powerhouse ever check those boxes.
This is a review of the unit itself, but I’m also reviewing it as a HTPC. Sure other blogs will do benchmarks and all that and put it through it’s paces as a desktop PC (which it would be amazing for) but I wanted to tailor my experience towards using this as a HTPC. This means I used this as my “main media player” or “main xbmc” box for a week. Using it every day for a week really gets you acquainted with it.
[alert-note]Check out my video overview of the Intel NUC i5 D54250WYK here[/alert-note]
Form factor
Alright so the main draw to the NUC is the form factor. Damn this thing is tiny. Don’t let that fool you though. The NUC i5 D54250WYK is crammed with a soldered on 4th generation Intel Core i5-4250U processor. Yes, this is a mobile processor you see in high end laptops but really it’s no slouch. Also wedged in the case are two SO-DIMM slots that you can max out with 16GB of DDR3L ram. Internally you also have 2 mini pci express expansion slots, one for an mSATA and the other for a wifi module for example. There was also a USB header and SATA header. My review unit had a 128GB mSATA SSD.
The chassis is 4.59¨ x 4.41¨ x 1.36¨. Honestly it’s so tiny it’s incredible.
What about noise? The fan is extremely quiet when on, if and when it comes on. It only came on maybe a hand full of times while using it. It was only audible when I put my eat up to the unit. From 8 or feet away it really was silent while in use.
Included is a VESA mounting bracket to allow you to slap it up behind something and tuck it away. I had mine perched nicely beside my TV (to show it off..) but you could really tuck this away anywhere and as long as it has sufficient air flow you’ll be golden.
The front USB port really came in handy. I use a Rosewill remote and it comes with a little USB dongle receiver and it worked nicely sticking out the front. There are more USB ports around back that are useful for things like the Pulse Eight HDMI USB-CEC Adapter, or any other peripherals.
HTPC Usage
So I am a huge fan of OpenELEC, which is just an OS based around XBMC/KODI and I use it on all of my HTPCs. I loaded it up with the latest stable version and was up and running within about 10-15 minutes. If you would like to see a how-to, I filmed the steps I took.
After loading up OpenELEC and updating the plugins I took to importing my library. I was AMAZED at how quick this thing was at loading the library. It’s 2-3x faster than the Amlogic S802 M8 Android PC. I plugged in the directories and went away chugging through the hundreds of movies and thousands of TV episodes. This was my first real taste of how my week would be. Everything is so damn quick with this box. I can’t stress that enough. Every theme I loaded into XBMC was buttery smooth with no delay at all when loading fan art or posters.
I played every movie format and codec I have, everything was flawless. I knew if my Celeron NUC was able to play them this thing wouldn’t blink an eye.
Another use case was live TV. I have a live TV plugin setup and it worked flawlessly. There were some sluggishness issues on the Amlogic M8 but there were no issues here on the NUC.
Summary
Overall I am very pleased with this device. Would I personally buy this for an OpenELEC HTPC? No, this is overkill. Honestly this is way more than you need. What would I use this for? I would turn this into a home server. Load up Plex, MySQL server, everything else I can think of, and attach a USB 3 hdd enclosure, something like the Mediasonic H82-SU3S2 ProBox 8 Bay External Hard Drive Enclosure to store all my media. This thing has way to much power to use as a HTPC. Then again if money is no object, buy this, it will work amazingly.
Gallery
-
- Amlogic M8 left vs Intel NUC Kit D54250WYK right
-
- Amlogic M8 left vs Intel NUC Kit D54250WYK right
-
- Rear
-
- Intel NUC Kit D54250WYK on top, Celeron NUC underneath
-
- Intel NUC Kit D54250WYK on top, Celeron NUC to the left
Intel NUC i5 D54250WYK Haswell Review
-
Form factor
-
Speed
-
Noise
-
Ports
-
Upgradability
Summary
Pros:
– Small form factor
– Very fast processor
– Very quiet
Cons
– Not many options to upgrade
– Rear ports included mini hdmi which I found annoying, I needed to buy an adapter
User Review
( votes)IPVanish, which is the only true Tier-1 VPN service in the world. IPVanish allows you to surf the net anonymously as well as access geo-blocked content in Kodi. You'll be able to watch anything unrestricted. They have clients for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. OpenVPN is an option as well. Remember to use your IPVanish VPN with Kodi!
Hi, thanks for this review of the Intel NUC used as a HTPC. It’s good work and interesting to read about how you configured this device for your needs.
Thus, quick question. I see that you have the intel wireless/bluetooth card in your NUC. Does Openelec recognize this? If so have you tried playing 1080p video over wireless and not ethernet? What’s the quality? I’d like to have htpc with as little cables as possible.
Thanks,
I had been using a full-size Win7 PC to store our media as well as act as the streaming server. I’d like to switch to a NUC for lower-power consumption as well as have it attached directly to the TV and wireless router. I’m wondering if this could run Win7 (I’m running MediaBrowser which we really like. It also has a Roku client), transcode as needed and act as the media server for wireless devices on the network? We don’t game, but would also like to web surfing on the TV. Is it overkill? If so can you recommend a different, more appropriate unit?
I run an i3 in my home theater and an i5 in the bedroom (weirdly enough, we do a lot more bedroom TV watching), both running Windows 8.1 for now (upgrading to Win10 soon). Yes, this is a bit overpowered, but I can tell a difference between the i5 performance and the i3. And there’s nothing like knowing even if Kodi grows and slows down over time, I’m covered with overkill on the hardware side of things.
I can’t recommend the NUCs highly enough. They are excellent.
Thanks for your input Brian! The NUCs really are the perfect little powerhouses for this use case.