Intel NUC 847 as an HTPC: Part 1 (Hardware)

So my newest toy is an Intel NUC DCCP847DYE which I'm using as a Home Theatre PC as replacement for the increasingly obsolescent Boxee Box - good timing, eh?

Attractive packaging that plays a little jingle when you open it

So what do you get when you buy a NUC? Well what comes in the attractive packaging is an unprepossessing little grey box with various inputs and outputs, and a power supply (but no mains cable). What you get inside is a motherboard with a dual-core processor, graphics chip, fan, and not much else: RAM, harddisk, WiFi card are all extra.

Unprepossessing

Now I'm well known as a cheapskate, and having just taken out a mortgage for a loft conversion I'm naturally going for the cheapest option for my HTPC. The 847 is the cheapest NUC model and sticking to the barebones philosophy I'm equipping it with a minimum 32GB mSATA SSD and 4GB RAM. I have an old D-Link USB wireless-network card and plenty of power cables lying around so that keeps my total purchase under 2000DKK.

Putting it all together is pretty much too trivial to describe: the SSD fits here and the RAM fits there and you're done and ready to start installing your favourite Operating System. But that's for another post.