[Dougie Fresh]

Hey guys, I have a question! What does one do when not one single F key nor DEL key gets you into the BIOS during Boot. USB keyboard and held 'em all down during boot and Nada. No Bios. Boots into Openelec. Pulling my hair out at this stage.

Disconnect the boot media.

[calibos]

Tried that already. All keys tried and for every one I just get a line telling me to insert valid boot media and press any key or words to that effect.

---

Going to Borrow a wired USB keyboard from my brother today and try that.

[bogey]

del to bios
F11 to boot menu

[skywalker6]

Try another keyboard for bios.
I had the same problem and with an old keyboard it works

cu sky

[solamnic]

Since i m really interested in DTSHD audio...
anyone tried Windows 7 on Arctic?

Is it fast? (XBMC use)

Aeon Nox works well?

[Greddy2000]

Well seeing as my middle name is 'ThreadKiller' I'll answer my last question and pose a new one. To enable ;'Hard' On/Off with the remote one needs to disable EUP in the Bios.

Hey guys, I have a question! What does one do when not one single F key nor DEL key gets you into the BIOS during Boot. USB keyboard and held 'em all down during boot and Nada. No Bios. Boots into Openelec. Pulling my hair out at this stage.

so just to confirm, did you get a Harmony remote to hard power on/power off this unit running Openelec? If yes I will be purchasing one to replace my XIOS DS (what a dissapointment that was).

thanks

[solamnic]

BTW... from Amazon.de package will leave in about 3 weeks

[cosmicvibes]

BTW... from Amazon.de package will leave in about 3 weeks

Mine said that when I ordered on Thursday of last week, but it actually arrived on Tuesday :-)

---

New user, long time lurker. Really loving the XBMC software.

I ordered this one myself. Too good an offer to pass. Looking forward to getting rid of my Boxee Box.

What are you're thoughts about SSD or USB 2.0 / USB 3.0 thumb drive with openelec on it?

Will I see any difference in GUI etc. speed at all?

I'm running OpenElec on a USB 2.0 thumb drive I had kicking around. GUI is smooth for me. Try it first if you have one lying around. All my files are on an NFS - so for me, a hard drive isn't worth it. I just timed boot time from cold at 40 seconds - 11 of which before it gets out of post. I'm sure a SSD would slash that, but for me it's not worth the extra expense.

But I would be interested if anyone has tried a USB 3.0 drive or SD card though? Assuming those are bootable?

[Chris P Bacon]

Well seeing as my middle name is 'ThreadKiller' I'll answer my last question and pose a new one. To enable ;'Hard' On/Off with the remote one needs to disable EUP in the Bios.

Hey guys, I have a question! What does one do when not one single F key nor DEL key gets you into the BIOS during Boot. USB keyboard and held 'em all down during boot and Nada. No Bios. Boots into Openelec. Pulling my hair out at this stage.

so just to confirm, did you get a Harmony remote to hard power on/power off this unit running Openelec? If yes I will be purchasing one to replace my XIOS DS (what a dissapointment that was).

thanks

I know from his posts on another forum that he has been able to hard power on and off the Arctic with a Harmony remote.

[calibos]

My wireless keyboard wasn't waking quick enough. A wired USB keboard and the DEL got me into bios to disable EUP. Power Toggle on Harmony emulating an MCE remote now turns off unit and turns it back on from cold.

USB3 Trascend Jetflash 16gb (Capacity Overkill) plugged into USB2 port on back boots in about 28 seconds. USB2 Jetflash takes closer to 50.

Hopefully they'll both have a few seconds knocked off when the MC001 Specific build comes out in a few days with Openelec 3.0 Final (Frodo)


I had pre-ordered some Xios. I'm glad I heard of the €99 Amazon deal on these before I purchased them. I've since heard several people say they were disappointed with the XIOS though in some cases I don't think they fully understood the limitations before purchasing. I knew of the limitations but the price was right. It just so happened though that I was able to get the arctics instead for the same price but better performing. The Linux/AMD limitations of these don't affect me (Don't care about Mpeg2/4 TrueHD) So I'm as happy as a pig in s**t

Currently typing this on one with Win7 64bit installed. Not much snappier than my 8 year old P4 Dell for some tasks and much snappier in others but its perfectly fine for light tasks and is about 1/20th the size and silent So I'll be ordering another 2 which will make 6 in total. 5 will be Openelec XBMC clients and one will be my desktop replacement till I build a real desktop later in the year. (i5,8gb Ram, SSD GTX680 etc)

[ED-209]

Does the Arctic barebones unit come with a remote or not?

The €99.95 barebones unit does not include a remote they charge €12.95 for the Arctic branded one but I think you can get the same remote with different branding on ebay for around €5.

The limited edition OpenElec version has a remote included.

Hi Chris

The link to the Arctic remote on Amazon looks significantly different than the one that comes with the limited edition OpenElec HTPC. After considering all information available to me, I'd like to purchase the barebones unit and add 4GB ram and 64GB SSD. However in doing this I'd need to purchase a remote separately and the remote that you've provided a link for on amazon.de looks crap to be honest with you, the one that comes with the OpenElec machine looks much much better.

Any idea where I'd be able to purchase remote separately, meaning the one that comes with the OpenElec version?

Thanks.

[voochi]

Any RC6 remote will work.

[Chris P Bacon]

I agree entirely that the remote that they sell separately looks cheap and nasty and the one in the OpenElec bundle looks to be much nicer but it is not to be found elsewhere on their website.
All I can suggest is that you drop Arctic an email and ask them if it is going to be available separately.

[eterimos]

I have ordered this as a barebone as well as I have been waiting for a cheap HTPC without a fan with XBMC capability. (2-3 weeks shipping time .. I have to be patient or lucky!)

Now I came across this review:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?op...mitstart=2
stating: "Although the BIOS features a thermal warning and shutdown feature, we discovered that some high-bitrate MKV video file playback would occasionally cause system alerts. Ultimately it was decided to disable these alerts and remove the auto-shutdown capability so that extended movies could be enjoyed."

That sounds a bit ridiculous to me .. I think the warning is there for a reason.. Have you faced any thermal issues under heavy load?
If temperature is a problem .. Has anyone tried or found any mods for this to add a fin heat sink to the case? (EDIT: I have seen something similar for Xtreamer Ultra 2 - Sidewinder).
Also can someone post any experience with cloud gaming on this machine?
What bluray drives are compatible with this case?

Thanks.

[voochi]

That sounds a bit ridiculous to me .. I think the warning is there for a reason.. Have you faced any thermal issues under heavy load?
If temperature is a problem .. Has anyone tried or found any mods for this to add a fin heat sink to the case?

My GPU goes to about 60C after 2hrs watching movies in OpenElec. In Windows it will probably be higher because your CPU will be doing more background stuff compared to OpenElec.

If you were really running the machine under heavy load, stressing the CPU and GPU simultaneously, yes I expect you will see some pretty high temperatures.

It is up to you if you want to enable thermal shutdown. Or do fanmods. Personally im happy with the temps and I don't care if it runs hot. I have computers that ran at 90C for 10 years with no problems.