[Meatball]

I'm about done with Windows Media Center and with the new Haswell Based Intel NUC's about to be released, I think it's a good time to jump over to XBMC. I plan to use this as a simple dedicated settop box running XBMC with NextPVR (which will run on another box and just stream to the NUC).

Has anyone looked into the two new units and have any thoughts on them for XBMC? The i5--4250U (Dual Core-HyperThreaded/1.3 Ghz w/2.6 Ghz Turbo/HD5000 Graphics) version is going to run about $363 while the i3-4010U (Dual Core-HyperThreaded/1.3 Ghz/HD4200 Graphics) is going to run around $283.

Think it's worth the $80 extra for the turbo CPU speeds and better graphics? Assuming I plan to run Windows 7 with XBMC, is there any reason to run more than 4 GB of RAM in these? Would a 30 GB mSATA drive fit the bill, or would I need something larger?

[MrCrispy]

Both those cpu's are plenty fast enough to do anything a HTPC needs. Although some say there are issues with Haswell and XBMC Windows build, see this thread - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=175024.

The faster i5 will use pretty much the same amount of power as the i3, but it allows you to play more games if you so wish. 4GB RAM is plenty. 30GB drive is enough for Windows+XBMC as well and of course for OpenElec.