Budget Prodigy Build Help

[Bennie-Mac]

Hi guys

Im in love with the Bitfenix Prodigy case, so would like to build a cheap system around it for work/gaming/media usage, but need a bit of help as im not as up to date with components as I would like.

Im going to be harvesting some components from my current machine, mainly the i3 550 cpu, psu, ram and optical drive. So i guess ill be needing a motherboard, smaller cooler, graphics card a small SSD and a 1tb+ HDD.

Id like to keep as many of the hard drive bays free for future upgrades as I can so a short graphics card (I have no idea what will fit) is a must, mid spec would do me fine, im not wanting flawless million fps bf3, as long as it runs most games at a respectable level ill be happy.

Im more than happy to buy used, so im more after general advice than a shopping list. The hard drives are obviously easy enough to spec for myself, but for everything else I could do with some recommendations. Lets say a budget of absolute max £250 for everything except the hdds.

Cheers!

 

[tjp148]

Socket 1156 boards are hard to come by, let alone mini ITX versions!! Given that that CPU socket is effectively obsolete.
Every now and again there are a few on ebay but the specs aren't that great by today's standards.

If you're gonna be buying a new SSD then you'll wanna be looking for a board with at least one SATA III (6GBPs) port, so i'd be tending towards 1155 and a new CPU (maybe a second gen i3??)

There are several threads on this site about the Prodigy case, the information you're after regarding GPU capacity is bound to be buried somewhere.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

 

[tamzzy]

ZOTAC H55-ITX
on fleabay for 85 quid

 

[tamzzy]

and you can use members market so you can get the parts you need for cheaper anyhows

 

[Bennie-Mac]

Cheers guys, never even considered the fact that my cpu was socket 1155 May have to totally rethink this...

 

[tjp148]

Zotac board has wifi antenna though IIRC??