I looked them up and refurbed units tend to hide key specs. After reading what I could from some of the units suggested here, I think I need at least a 3.4 GHz rate and either 8 or 16 gigs of RAM, SSD for sure. 250 gigs seems to work for memory. Found for the first time flash computer drives but they did not get very good reviews. The last hurdle is trying to evaluate name brands. They're all made in China, the cheaper ones tend to lie about brand name parts, cooling is a potential issue, slower speed ports also creep into the discussion. The Lenevo refurb I found has an Intel quad i3, which is under 3GHz speed. Never bought a refurm vacuum, appliance, computer or tv. I hear enough horror stories about new stuff but perhaps I am too ignorant about the whole area.
One thing I have not tried figuring out is maximizing the picture quality. Right now, I clearly have a better picture using the bluetooth connection instead of a cable box. ( I still have a cable box becuse of routing wireless issues and, strangely enough, I can only transmit audio to my outdoor speakers through a cable connection for Spotify. Great speakers but they are not wireless). As for the mini computer, I have no idea what, if any, graphics card will be necessary.
Having a CPU with a clock frequency of 3.4 GHz says absolutely nothing about the performance. Back in 2006, I had an Intel Pentium 4 3.4 GHz on an Asus P5LD2 Deluxe motherboard. Just to give you some idea of how it compares to the AMD Ryzen 5 5560U that is inside that Mini PC from TrigKey that
@The Pool Man has:
AMD Ryzen 5 5560U vs Intel Pentium 4 3.40GHz [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software
That's it... the Ryzen is only about 50 times faster than the Pentium.
For streaming video content online, GPU hardware acceleration is very common nowadays. Even though any discrete GPU worth its salt still knocks iGPUs (integrated GPUs) out of the water, video decoding with GPU hardware acceleration is not a particularly GPU intensive task on any
CPU that has an iGPU feature, at least if the
CPU that we are talking about is half decent, or modern enough by today's standards. So, a modern iGPU should be able to handle decoding of video in 4K resolution with ease. However, the task of decoding video still consumes power, which generates heat. So, the noise of the cooling fan may be an important factor to also want to consider. Then again, if you are able to put the Mini PC behind the TV and you sit at a far enough distance away from the TV, then the fan noise becomes somewhat less of a problem.
That said, some people put a thick sheet of rockwool insulation in a wood frame that sits in front of the PC in such a way that it doesn't block the PC's airflow, but still helps to absorb some noise. What's more, having no room acoustic treatments of any kind can make a $1,000 pair of loudspeakers sound like a $100 pair of loudspeakers, anyway in the first place. So, because panel absorbers and corner bass traps are fairly easy to DIY, it makes sense to put at least one extra panel in front of the PC, i.e., if you're already going to build some panels anwyay. If you do that, and you also choose a PC with an aircooler that makes it run
almost silent, then it's possible to make it
completely silent. Alternatively, you could consider to use noise cancelling headphones in lieu of loudspeakers. I can't, as they start to irritate my skin before the movie ends. That plus the fact that the superior soundstaging of big floorstanding, quality loudspeakers makes listening through headphones feel like a true gimmick IMNSHO (and does so no matter what all the headphone addicts keep saying...).
