Buying a mini computer, installing Windows 11, and streaming movies online

RD Mercer said:

I'm not the processor guru, but I have often wondered how to decide on the performance of a processor. I see some processors today that have a base frequency of for example. 2.7 GHz but a Max Turbo Frequency of 4.5 GHz. I have an old socket 1150 i3 4170 that's 3.7 GHz 2 cores 4 threads, and it's really performs pretty well. I think you had to step up to the i5 4450 to be able to watch anything 4K. Maybe we should have a class on processors, because they can be confusing when it comes to performance. I still use the 4790K, it's base is 4.0 GHz and 4.40 Turbo, with 4 cores and 8 threads, and it still performs very well, for all my needs.

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It always depends. For hardware-decoding of video in 4K, the importance of AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) has been steadily on the rise, and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is in decline. World's first iGPU that can hardware-decode AV1 video streams on a Windows PC was the Intel Iris Xe that can be found in Tiger Lake-U, like, e.g., the Core i5-1135G7 CPU, which is a mobile (laptop) CPU, released on 2 September, 2020. (I have it in my older laptop that I expect will probably be retired soon-ish, as I recently bought a new one.)

By comparison, Intel 11th Gen desktop CPUs such as, e.g., the Core i5-11400 do not support this capability, as their iGPU is the UHD 730, which is inferior to the Iris Xe. It should also be noted that Intel desktop CPUs ending with an "F" (e.g., the Core i5-12600F) do not have an iGPU. AMD didn't support AV1 hardware-decoding until finally, they released RDNA 2 with the release of Rembrandt, i.e., the Radeon 660M/680M (on Ryzen 6000/7035 series), which were launched on 4 January, 2022.

That said, if you don't care about AV1 hardware-decoding, and you only want to watch online video streaming content in 4K, then you can refer to this FAQ: FAQ
Even so, if you buy a new Mini PC that lacks AV1 hardware-decoding right now, then you might later regret having not paid that little bit of extra money that would've gotten you AV1 hardware-decoding when you had the chance. Or you might not regret. Like I said, it always depends. The HDMI port of my new laptop can actually even support 8K, BUT... my 4K TV from Sony can not. There's always something new on the horizon. The moment when you start to talk about it, it will already be outdated.