The Smallest Board for HTPC

Hey everyone I'm looking for the smallest board possible for a home theater PC. I have 1080p .mkv files that I'd like to play and I'm currently using a Raspberry Pi to do it but it just won't play it back smoothly. I'm not sure if it's the USB that's bottlenecking it (I have a sata to usb board connected to it) or the Pi doesn't have enough processing power to. Either way I think a board with sata and possibly a beefier processor or gpu would do the trick. I'd like it to have an HDMI out and USB to connect mice n such, any ideas?

quite a bit bigger than the PI but mitx will likely be your best bet unless you want to get into some of the obscure intel atom parts take a look at

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130759

The Pi has enough power to handle 1080P however the smallest motherboards you can get are nano-itx

but more available are thin-itx boards and then off corse the mini-itx ones.

Anyways a cheap NUC will do the trick nicely though.

If you want something very small, but still with full power and standard components, something like the Gigabyte GA-H87TN/GA-Q87TN or ASUS H81T/Q87T in a case like the Akasa Euler or Silverstone PT13B would work well. You'd need a power brick though since the cases are too small for power supplies.

The next size up would be a regular mITX system in a small HTPC style case. In Win makes like a dozen HTPC style mITX cases. My parents use one from them and it works well (I'd suggest replacing the fans though).

AMD AM1 boards?

Why not try an older laptop/netbook? I see them all the time in places like Craigslist for anywhere from $25 on up. Run some Linux on it (since XP is deprecated and riddled with security problems these days) and some dedicated XBMC/Kodi or even MythTV and you're good to go. My choice might be something like a HP Mini or any of the plethora of other similar netbooks. The only trick will be making sure the laptop/netbook has the video/audio ports you want. Though you're probably SOL on analog sound if you want anything more than 2-channel stereo -- so make sure it has HDMI.

BTW, laptops make some excellent (cheap) servers too!

 

Good idea! but I would like to store all of my movies on a local drive and 2.5" hdds won't cut it for 1080p files :/

ahh yes forgot about intel's NUC, that should work flawlessly thanks!

using another pico board might be the answer

http://www.mouser.com/new/Axiomtek/axiomtek-pico880-itx-sbc/