Considering going small form factor

[greengiant]

At the moment my system is an AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 2GB ram, GF4 MX440 (which I kept from two upgrades ago - I don't do gaming but it does struggle with many windows open at 1680x1050!), SBLive soundcard and tv tuner card, all housed in a Antec 3700BQE case. My main use of the computer is photo editing / panorama stitching and light dabbling in 3d graphics.


Looking at my rig if I want a faster CPU then I pretty much need to change everything, so now may be the time to downsize to a smaller case which would fit on the desk rather than bashing my knee off the tower case as it sits under the desk.

Thought about this spec:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000 3.10GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (£70.49)
Silverstone Sugo SG01B Evolution Aluminium Micro-ATX Case - Black (£88.11)
Asus M3N78-CM NVIDIA 8200 Micro ATX (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 (£52.86)
Antec EarthWatts 380W PSU Antec EarthWatts 380W PSU (£35.24)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) (£24.66)
Total £271.36

hard drive I'd retain from current build, wouldn't need graphics card or sound card as the ASUS M3N78-CM has them onboard?

Quite out touch with current processors so not sure if this would be a reasonable build for my needs?

The other plan I had was to replace the system with a laptop, however it would be hard to get a decent a spec as above for a similar price, plus I don't think I need the portability of a laptop.

 

[greengiant]

Id go for something like over the AMD setup, will be more than adequate.

Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H GeForce 7100 Micro-ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £52.86

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz £58.74

I'd also go for 4gb (given the price) and case/psu is your own choice

Thanks for that - I might try Intel.
Only thing I'm unsure of is if my choice of PSU would be sufficient? Although I'd run with the onboard graphics to start with I might get a better graphics card in the future, so would a 380W psu for example be enough?

 

[greengiant]

Nanobot, thanks for that suggestion of motherboard, however it has Intel integrated graphics and I'm not sure how well supported that will be in Ubuntu. Nvidia is pretty much a fair bet for linux users.

 

[greengiant]

Pretty well supported. See http://intellinuxgraphics.org/download.html

I've got an Asus P5E-VM HDMI motherboard with onboard Intel gpu for a media PC using accelerated xvmc for media playback.

I'd look at this route first since you can always add a gpu if you don't like it or don't get the performance you need.

The 3d software I use in linux is Blender, which is an opengl app. Nvidia supports opengl very well in linux. Besides the intel gpu boards are a lot more expensive!

Only other query I have regarding my spec is that the stock intel cooler will fit in the sgo1?

-- Edit --

Not entirely sure whether to go SFF or not! I had a look and if I ditched the £70 I would spend on the sugo SG01 that would be a bit more money to spend on a faster processor + graphics card.

Hmmm... Well, in the end decided to stick with current pc case. Thanks for all the help none the less.