Hi All,
I have not seen a thread about Minix Z64W here so here it comes. Link to a review: MINIX NEO Z64 Review: An Excellent Quadcore Windows Mini PC - Home Theatre Life
Minix Z64W is essentially a fanless miniPC with a legit Windows 8.1 Bing, powered by Atom CPU, with 2 USB and 1 HDMI outs, and power supply of 5V. It is very cheap for what it can do. It is not the first and certainly not the last Windows based miniPC but it seems to be better made than competition. It is relatively responsive which helps to use it as a home theater device. I installed Jriver20 on it and stream all my music files from HP ProLiant server sitting in other room. No issues even with Hi-res files or HD videos (as long as there are no other devices actively using wifi from the same router). You can always attach a USB drive, LAN cable or microSD card to avoid speed limitations of wifi.
You obviously want to know how it sounds. Well, to me it sounds great. At this price level the quality is superb. I used a car battery with el cheapo regulator as my PSU and I connected Minix to my DAC with a really short USB cable. I connect a TV via HDMI to access Home Theater view of Jriver (absolutely love it) and use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. It stays super cool, no heat issues at all. So far the only problem I encountered was upgrade to Win10. It simply did not want to finish it. Maybe it is due to only 32GB hard drive with about 16GB free. I have not tried clean install though.
So...apart from encouraging you to snap a bargain of the year I also want to ask for upgrade suggestions. I'm sure PSU can be improved. Battery seems like a great option but bear in mind the original PSU has an output rating of 3A which is more than most common USB battery packs. My cheap regulator actually outputs only 4.75V at max 1.5A and this seems to be fine for Minix to work and play music. Wifi is slower then though. I will test the power consumption at full load and report back here. I will also open the guts and take some photos of what's inside. I think it has real potential to be a giant killer. In my setup it successfully replaced Squeezebox.
Important!!! This is not a thread about mini PC running operating systems other than Windows. This thread is for people who want convenience and functionality without sacrificing on sound quality. If you want to convince people to boot using other OS, deal with shutdown sequence issues and run only very power light apps then start a new thread and don't pollute this one.
Cheers,
Marek
I have not seen a thread about Minix Z64W here so here it comes. Link to a review: MINIX NEO Z64 Review: An Excellent Quadcore Windows Mini PC - Home Theatre Life
Minix Z64W is essentially a fanless miniPC with a legit Windows 8.1 Bing, powered by Atom CPU, with 2 USB and 1 HDMI outs, and power supply of 5V. It is very cheap for what it can do. It is not the first and certainly not the last Windows based miniPC but it seems to be better made than competition. It is relatively responsive which helps to use it as a home theater device. I installed Jriver20 on it and stream all my music files from HP ProLiant server sitting in other room. No issues even with Hi-res files or HD videos (as long as there are no other devices actively using wifi from the same router). You can always attach a USB drive, LAN cable or microSD card to avoid speed limitations of wifi.
You obviously want to know how it sounds. Well, to me it sounds great. At this price level the quality is superb. I used a car battery with el cheapo regulator as my PSU and I connected Minix to my DAC with a really short USB cable. I connect a TV via HDMI to access Home Theater view of Jriver (absolutely love it) and use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. It stays super cool, no heat issues at all. So far the only problem I encountered was upgrade to Win10. It simply did not want to finish it. Maybe it is due to only 32GB hard drive with about 16GB free. I have not tried clean install though.
So...apart from encouraging you to snap a bargain of the year I also want to ask for upgrade suggestions. I'm sure PSU can be improved. Battery seems like a great option but bear in mind the original PSU has an output rating of 3A which is more than most common USB battery packs. My cheap regulator actually outputs only 4.75V at max 1.5A and this seems to be fine for Minix to work and play music. Wifi is slower then though. I will test the power consumption at full load and report back here. I will also open the guts and take some photos of what's inside. I think it has real potential to be a giant killer. In my setup it successfully replaced Squeezebox.
Important!!! This is not a thread about mini PC running operating systems other than Windows. This thread is for people who want convenience and functionality without sacrificing on sound quality. If you want to convince people to boot using other OS, deal with shutdown sequence issues and run only very power light apps then start a new thread and don't pollute this one.
Cheers,
Marek