End unit for bedroom, video card?

So being in IT i come across old gear all the time. I have an old WDLive for the bedroom but it is old, one of the first and sluggish even with B-rad mods and the nextflix on it takes forever to load!!

I got my hands on an old Dell Optiplex 755:

- Intel Core2Duo E8400
- 4G DDR2
- 250G HD
- IGP (only VGA out)


Right now I have my main computer I share files over the network direct (living room I have another SFF with an i5 and Kodi Linux) or using Universal Media Server.

I stream mostly 720 TV shows and 1080 movies to it from the main computer.

I wanted to put this Dell 755 in the bedroom to replace my WDLive box (key a wireless k/b combo all in one). I was going to do Kodi linux on it as well, but i do want NetFlix and it is a hack job and a half to get it on kodi so i may just use Windows and netflix over browser. (any other suggestions?)

This system is SFF, so i wanted to ask, what would be an ideal vid card to install into this system that would not be over kill for the CPU, and maybe take some offload to the GPU for video?

An E8400 can play 1080 fine i recall but my TV is HDMI and the IGP has only a single VGA port out .

Thoughts?

Just buy a new FireTV or Roku or something. Buying a card for that thing is a waste of money IMO.

Install plex on your main computer, buy a roku for the bedroom.

Roku play from media servers now fine? My friend had a Roku 2 i think and he could never get it to play from network shares or PS3 Media server,

Also can it grab file info, images and such? or just list files..

valve1138 said:

Just buy a new FireTV or Roku or something. Buying a card for that thing is a waste of money IMO.

Click to expand...

I have one of the original Amazon boxes but it wont play from local media servers unless modded, maybe time to root that thing!

You need Plex on your media server.

Roku has a Plex app, and whatever the Roku won't play natively, Plex will transcode on the fly.

Yeah. Plex.

That thing would be so power inefficient, hot and noisy (especially for a bedroom) - like the others say get a streaming STB/stick device.

I think if you can live with the noise of the pc, you should be able to get by with basically any gpu that can output HDMI for your tv. Maybe a gtx 950 or rx 460 or even lower if you find a deal these have been as low as $80. Probably with that machine you are limited to something that runs off the pcie bus unless you add a power supply. With that 80 though you could get something much more user friendly like mentioned above. Also of note you can run Plex from the desktop as a Windows app or even in a browser, and the pc will give you an actual pc worth of stuff to do. You could even get one of those cheap Chinese Win 10 tablets with an atom cherry trail and hdmi out for the price, and use that as your driver if you are wanting windows.

If you really want a PC than there's the Intel compute sticks. Plenty for streaming provided provided you're playing from a source that can take advantage of the acceleration. (the recent ones can even manage HEVC acceleration apparently)

I use an Xbox 360 in the bedroom for netflix / WMC live tv. Works great but takes up room on the dresser.