ASUS UN65U-M021M VivoMini Barebones PC

This review is based on the UN65U-M021M with Intel i7-7500U which is a very nice platform for a small, quiet, dedicated Home Theater PC (HTPC). While I'm quite impressed with the UN65U in general, and I'm sure building a Windows 10 PC would have been a breeze, I thought I would share my experience building a Windows 7 HTPC on this platform in the hopes that it might help others who head down a similar path.I had been quite happy using an ASUS VivoPC VM62N-G050R for the past two years as an HTPC running Windows 8.1 with Windows Media Center (WMC) to watch and record cable TV. Unfortunately, during a recent power outage in our neighborhood, this PC died completely and needed to be replaced.After a rather hurried search for a replacement I decided to stick with the ASUS VivoPC line and selected the latest bare bones version with the best processor available and decided to purchase the following:ASUS VivoPC UN65U-M021M with Intel i7-7500UCrucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR4 2400 MT/s (PC4-19200) DR x8 Unbuffered SODIMM 260-Pin Memory - CT2K8G4SFD824ACrucial MX300 1TB M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (CT1050MX300SSD4)Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit ISO downloadThe reason I wanted a Windows 7 HTPC was to continue using WMC since Microsoft no longer supports it in Windows 10 and I have two SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime TV Tuners with CableCards on my home network and don't want to use cable boxes. Our cable service is from Time Warner/Spectrum and most of the channels are encrypted so I need to deal with DRM and WMC is still the best solution available that I've experienced. Little did I realize the challenges I would face with this impulsive purchase decision.Installing the RAM and SSD was straight forward and the BIOS detected both without issues. I then had to create a bootable Win 7 Installation USB Drive from the ISO file I had purchased and was able to use the Windows USB/DVD Download Tool (https://wudt.codeplex.com/) without any trouble. I'd recommend using a blank USB drive with at least 8 GB since you will want to use this same device to store all the additional Win 7 x64 drivers that will need to be downloaded from the ASUS suppport page(https://www.asus.com/ae-en/Mini-PCs/VivoMini-UN65U/HelpDesk_Download/) The driver DVD that comes with the UN65U can be ignored since it doesn't include Win 7 drivers. The beauty of this is that only this USB thumb drive is needed for installation and you don't need to bother with an external DVD at all.Using this newly created Win 7 Install USB you quickly run into the "A required CD/DVD driver is missing" error during the install process that is due to the fact that the UN65U only has USB 3.0 ports which are not supported by the original Windows 7 installation. To solve this you need to use the Windows 7 USB 3.0 Creator Utility (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25476/Windows-7-USB-3-0-Creator-Utility) from Intel which will modify your Win 7 Install USB with the necessary 3.0 drivers.The next issue I ran into was the fact that the Crucial M.2 SSD came preformatted with GPT (GUID partition table) partitions which the Win 7 Installation said couldn't be used. I simply deleted all the partitions on the SSD and created a new partition through the Win 7 Installation software which allowed me to complete the install.Next, after installing the Ethernet driver I downloaded from the ASUS suppport page, I began the long process of Windows Updates. The first 187+ updates installed successfully, however I then received the "Unsupported hardware” pop-up error claiming that the hardware I'm using is only supported in the latest Microsoft operating systems. This is Microsoft's attempt to stop installation of older operating systems on newer hardware, however, in my case I'd be happy to use Win 10 if they would still support WMC. To get around this I had to use a patch wufuc v0.7.1.81 (https://github.com/zeffy/wufuc/releases) created by a developer using the handle “Zeffy” that kills the CPU detection that trigger this error and allow you to continue to get all updates for Win 7. This allowed me to continue updating but the error returned and I've had mixed success by rerunning the patch. I'm not sure how long this patch will continue to work as Microsoft probably has already found a way around it.Lastly, I was on to initializing WMC and remembered that I first needed to run the Digital Cable Advisor in order to allow the use of a CableCard. Then during initialization of WMC, installation of PlayReady PC failed. To solve this I needed to download PlayReady PC Runtime v1.3 (x64) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5445) manually and then rerun the setup sequence in WMC.Finally, after all this, I was able to use WMC running Windows 7 Home Premium on the UN65U and it seems like it will be a great little HTPC.

Can't get audio working. Googled, went to Asus web site. Loaded windows driver, loaded Asus sound driver. Soumd device won't show up in devices. No sound. Makes terrible crackling noise thru Hdmi device. Disappointed.

Ultra compact. Not so quiet though.

Just got this baby today and have spent the evening getting it setup.. It is amazing!! First and foremost it comes with a wifi card installed as well as a mounting bracket for the monitor so dont order those (I did.. oops) it was simple to install the memory 2x8GB cards as well as a 256GB SSD card and the 500GB SSD. All fit inside nicely!! One note for installers as it is barebones and does not come with an OS of course, If you are trying to install from a USB it ONLY has USB 3.0 so you may experience problems as I did. Two options, get and external CD drive and loads easy. Second option is to load the USB 3.0 drivers into your install image. All the googling I did said to use the ASUS CD to get teh EZ USB tool to input the drivers into your boot. Well it does not come with a ASUS CD with the tools, but it DOES have the EZ tool USB3.0 creator loaded in a section in the Bios to fix this. Other than that this is a great mini box.. sooo fast and runs amazingly. I bought this as a trial to see how well it works as I will be using for a Microsoft/Cisco boot camp training center I am starting up in the Philippines. I am getting ready to order 9 more of these as they are amazing!!

I have not had a desktop computer for a while. I had a 17 in notebook with an old I7 but the graphics could not drive the nice 28 in UHD monitor I bought on Prime day. The old notebook had two 512G drives so I thought I would move them into this. I had no experience with roll your own computers so I was not certain how this was going to work out.I bought two 8G ram sticks and was ready with them when it arrived. First thing I discovered was that I would not be able to put in both SSDs from the notebook. I could (and did) put in one as a second drive. If I wanted two drives, one had to be an M2 drive. Since a 512 M2 drive is about $150 I went for it and left a drive in the old notebook. (I left in the spinning drive). Now I have two 512 G SSDs and love the speed of this unit. (I had to make the spinning drive the boot drive in the old notebook and was painfully reminded how SLOW Windows 10 is on a spinning drive.) Since I kept the old notebook going, I decided to buy a new license for Windows 10. Creating a bootable thumb drive and installing Windows was easy. I found docs online which showed how to put in the M2 drive and the 2.5 in SSD. Other that dealing with some tiny screws, this went well.Now that it is going, and I have it connected to a 28 in UHD monitor, I have a system that could reasonably be called a "Workstation". I can have several windows opened, and can tear off Chrome tabs. I find the performance is good for photo and video editing.Now. why do I say "Great for Snowbirds or Home and Office"? I have a KBM at each place and (more expensive) a monitor at both places. This Mini PC is about 1/4th the size of the notebook computer that I used to carry. It goes into my backpack. I get to the other place and I have my "Workstation" going again.Things to note: This I7-7500 is 2 cores, not 4. Also has a little slower clock speed than the I7-7700. You would notice the difference is you did things like video encoding on several files at once. On the other hand, it runs cool so you can hardly hear the fan, when it runs. Another thing to note is that you should not expect to save a lot of money by buying this unit and buying your own memory, M2 SSD. Keyboard and Mouse, and Windows 10 license.

Sucky sucky

Arrived quickly and was everything we hoped for and more. however ahead of time the description was not very good when we bought it and we were a bit stressed before delivery because the description did not clearly state all of the features of the device. We are very happy with it and we look forward to purchasing more.