Building a mini-itx PC

Associate
Joined
17 Apr 2009
Posts
124
Im going to be relegating my huge tower from my living room and into my spare room, so im looking at putting together a nice small and quite PC for the living room, basicly all it will be used for is streaming films and the internet.

This is the spec ive managed to piece together;

Zotac Ion Intel Atom N330 Mini-ITX DDR2 Motherboard (IONITX-A-B) £172.99
Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive Kit (SNV125-S2BD/64GB) £105.00
In-Win BM648 Mini-ITX Case - Black (120W PSU) £59.98
OCZ Platinum Revision 2 XTC 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Series (OCZ2P800R22GK) £29.99
Samsung SN-S083C/BEBE 8x DVD±RW SATA Slimline Drive (Black) - OEM £25.99
Noctua NF-R8 80mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin £12.64
Total (in Tax): £418.96

It doesnt really need to be high spec as all it will be doing is...
  • Needs to be very quite.
  • Must have Ethernet for streaming.
  • Must be able to play back avi/divx and hd.

Couple of things im not sure about are...
  • Do i really need the DVD drive?
  • Could i ditch the SSD and use a USB pen to boot from?
  • Vista or XP, im lent more towards XP.
  • Is Atom the best option?
  • Would it be a lot cheaper to ditch the all-in-one mobo?
 
Ion is hugely expensive for what it is. I was looking at a similar system to you but decided that the huge price increase of any nano-itx system was too much when compared to pricing of micro-atx parts.

In the end I went with an Asus AMD 8200 micro-atx board, a AM3 Semrpon 140 Single core at 2.7Ghz.

I already had the case, HDD, blu-ray/HD-DVD rom laying around.

Micro-atx is a lot more cost effective over mini-itx.
 
Ion is hugely expensive for what it is. I was looking at a similar system to you but decided that the huge price increase of any nano-itx system was too much when compared to pricing of micro-atx parts.

In the end I went with an Asus AMD 8200 micro-atx board, a AM3 Semrpon 140 Single core at 2.7Ghz.

I already had the case, HDD, blu-ray/HD-DVD rom laying around.

Micro-atx is a lot more cost effective over mini-itx.

Hmmm, interesting, i'll look into micro atx.

Edit: Once you start looking at alternatives things get even more complex, i could bin the 2nd system idea and just grab a HDMI graphics card and a 30metre HDMI cable lol
 
Last edited:
Revo seem a nice bit of kit, but wheres the fun in opening all the boxes and building it :D

Windows 7 you say, do i really need it tho? Surely XP would ran everything well enough.

Well it's up to you but you'll be spending far more for the same and the Revo would be smaller and quieter.

Nothing wrong with XP but 7 is a lot nicer to use and has Media Centre.
 
You can get Mini-itx bundles including motherboard, case and memory for considerably less than that from an ITX store which I guess is a competitor. The case I'm thinking of is no where near as pretty as the one you have suggested but looks isn't on your must have's list...

You would just need a laptop hard drive which they also can supply and you'd be good to go. I have no idea how noisy or quiet these machines would be though...

Edit to answer your other questions:

* Do i really need the DVD drive?

I'd guess you already have a DVD player? Will you be needing to play them from this? Can you copy things across your home network onto the box should you need to?

* Could i ditch the SSD and use a USB pen to boot from?

I'd ditch the SSD due to cost but that's entirely down to you.

* Vista or XP, im lent more towards XP.

As much as I hate to say it I prefer Vista over XP now purely for looks etc. As has been mentioned Windows 7 could also be an option very soon.

* Is Atom the best option?

IMO Atom is perfect for what you have listed, especially the ION boards with built in Nvidia graphics. They quote on their website that these can play back 1080P HD video with ease and you say you don't need to do anything more than that. The power consumption depending on choice of motherboard / psu can be incredibly low.

* Would it be a lot cheaper to ditch the all-in-one mobo?

See first part of my reply. I think my suggestion uses the same mobo but the overall package is cheaper.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom