Small (Ultra small form factor) and powerful PC (dedicated graphic board)

[centrico]

The Core i5 is supposed to have some swishy new on-board graphics technology, with a fancy name that I've completly forgotten, so you might be surprised by how capable it is. Otherwise, the ATI Radeon HD 5450 looks pretty good:

ATI Radeon HD 5450 review | Graphics cards | Reviews | PC Pro

As the review points out, it's not a gaming graphics card (although it did run their basic performance tests just fine), but it should be very capable of handling video and so on, and is half-height, passivly cooled, and cheap, which is just what you want. I actually bought one to use for a small PC I was planning to build, but it wound up being used in a server when we reliased we'd bought a motherboard with no on-board graphics port - text-only console sessions certainly seemed to refresh quick enough, if that's any help :-) Obviously, double check on the manufacturers websites before you go and buy any kit.

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David Hicks

David, thanks a lot, I think I'm near the solution

[centrico]

We have just got some HP 8100 Elite i5 SFF brilliant little machines £480 if I recall

It is a too big machine. I'm looking for USFF.

[Arthur]

I've seen some threads regarding Ultra small form factor PC but not discovered which ones are really small and powerful

The Zotac HD-ND22 (~£163) perhaps? It's a barebones PC (just add RAM, HDD & OS) and can be easily mounted on the back of a monitor/LCD with the included VESA mount. It has an Intel Celeron SU2300 dual core CULV processor (making it a lot faster than any Atom-based PC) and nVidia ION graphics - which means it can handle 1080p videos with ease thanks to the GPU.

Reviews
TechReport: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19507/1
SPCR: http://www.silentpcreview.com/zotac-zbox
Linux User: http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/z...d-nd22-review/

I'm using it for interactive signage, at full HD, with multimedia applications that use images, audio, video and animations.

I'm not sure if it is relevant, but only videos encoded in MPEG-2, H.264 or VC-1 formats will be accelerated by the Radeon HD 5450. Everything else will be processed by the CPU.

From my experience inbuilt graphics is not sufficient.

That latest IGPs from AMD, nVidia & Intel are a lot better than they used to be. AMDs 890GX chipset includes a Radeon HD 4290 and the latest "Clarkdale" processors from Intel are good too (particularly the Core i5-661). Playing a 1080p H.264 video clip on the latter uses very little processor power (around 10%).

The Intel CPUs have generally a couple of per cent lower CPU usage than the Nvidia on average, but there's not a huge difference at all, and between the two Intel CPUs they are very similar. Remember the Core i5-661 has a higher clock than the Core i3-530, meaning there's more processing power available so this means the overall average will be lower. All the systems produced a very smooth 1080p h.264 playback, though.

...

Conclusion
Intel's newest integrated graphics chip has an advanced feature-set especially if you're interested in high quality video playback. Its power consumption should be lower when playing back Blu-ray content, given the extra performance its latest products offer, however it's a only couple of watts away from its rivals, which when you factor in that big HDTV and surround sound amp is arguably not significant.

If you're serious about your movie watching you'll be more pleased that the HD-audio passthrough now works, you can get your picture-in-picture and deep colour resolutions, and when you're not using it, the idle power use of the Core i5-661 and Core i3-530 is very low. (Source)

[centrico]

The Zotac HD-ND22 (~£163) perhaps? It's a barebones PC (just add RAM, HDD & OS) and can be easily mounted on the back of a monitor/LCD with the included VESA mount. It has an Intel Celeron SU2300 dual core CULV processor (making it a lot faster than any Atom-based PC) and nVidia ION graphics - which means it can handle 1080p videos with ease thanks to the GPU.

Reviews
TechReport: Zotac's Zbox HD-ND22 barebones mini PC - The Tech Report - Page 1
SPCR: Zotac ZBOX HD-ND22: A CULV Nettop at last! | silentpcreview.com
Linux User: Zotac Zbox HD-ND22 review | Linux User

It seems really interesting. Probably I have to test it with my applications.

I'm not sure if it is relevant, but only videos encoded in MPEG-2, H.264 or VC-1 formats will be accelerated by the Radeon HD 5450. Everything else will be processed by the CPU.


That latest IGPs from AMD, nVidia & Intel are a lot better than they used to be. AMDs 890GX chipset includes a Radeon HD 4290 and the latest "Clarkdale" processors from Intel are good too (particularly the Core i5-661). Playing a 1080p H.264 video clip on the latter uses very little processor power (around 10%).

Thanks for your suggestions