Help with speccing the missus a micro itx :)

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Hi all, I could do with your advice and help!

My missus is hogging my rig, and so I decided that it would be best if I bought her a pooter and moved my rig somewhere else.

He computer use amounts to Microsoft office, web browsing, photo viewing chatting on skype - you get the picture. Nothing heavyweight like gaming or such.

My first thoughts were a micro itx with built in dvi and perhaps a dual core or quad core processor. No gpu as she wouldn't see the benefit, and a single big hdd - I got a WD 500gb green knocking around doing nothing.

I was looking a some real small cases, as all its going to have is an optical drive and the hdd.

My question is, I've played with a netbook on the atom processors and i'm not impressed - so if I went for a C2Q or C2D, how would you cool it in a really small case?

I'm looking to give her my W7 HP licence and install my W7 Pro on my own machine. Alternatively I was half thinking of buying an old copy of xp, but for the proce that OCuk are doing W7HP, it's hardly worth the effort!

So if you guys could help me, knowing the use, and also the sort of smallest size poss, If you could throw together a spec and advice on cooling the bugger i'd really appreciate it, and finally I can mod my own rig in peace instead of her (under) using my processing power to type a letter and checkout her mates of the facebook! :D
 
Case: Lian Li PC-Q07B Mini-ITX Case or Silverstone Sugo SG05B Mini-ITX Case
offer reasonable cooling or In-Win BM648 Mini-ITX Case if size is important to your wife (sorry, had to crack that joke...)
Mobo: Zotac make a number of LGA775 mobos but OC don't sell them
CPU: If all you are doing is as described then any 775 CPU would be fine
 
Right,

I've been looking at using a s775 G41 mobo a friend had knocking around - since the supply on OCuk seems to be thin on the ground :(

I am going to put the following in from my rig:

Q9550
4gb DDR2 Corsair (2x 2gb sticks)
1x WD Caviar green drive
1x Optical - slimline or normal depending on case
Thats it!

no gpu as she's not getting the benefit.

I'm undecided on the case, but what is the minimum PSU requirement that others have found you can get away with? As this would ultimately dictate the case I settle on. :)

Oh Cooling - the low profile german fan that OCuk sell :)
 
hmm very true, she doesn't actually need a quad thinking about it, after all it'll be used for web, email and skype so really a dual core could be the ticket.

I really like the idea of a pico psu perhaps 150 or a case with one already included but they're all 120w and realistically I don't actually know what I can run safely for that psu power.
 
well, the S series quads have a TDP of 65W, equal to the Core2Duo, so I am guessing it would draw something in the region of 95W at full load, akin to the machine that I am still running. The slimline optical that I got really doesn't add that much more draw with the disc spinning, so the 120W should be enough- especially if you undervolt that dual core.
 
I bought a Dell GX620 SFF of the bay for the same reason. Its a Dual core Pentium D 2.8, 2gb Ram and 80Gb HDD.. Its suprisingly nippy running win 7 and was only £75 all in delivered...
 
I just had a brand new zotac 9300 delivered so nearly ready to get my build started. so i would go zotac 9300 to give you plenty of power with a dual core cpu.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
If you are getting the Zotac motherboard make sure you get the latest I-E version:

http://www.zotacusa.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2072-gf-9300-g-e-or-gf-9300-i-e/

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56421
Click to expand...

I just went from the D-E version to the I-E version last night, it's nice to have wake on USB working now, plus that extra SATA port is going to come in handy.
The whole build is in flux atm though, as I'm juggling a lot of stuff from one hard drive to another and also transferring a ton of Play TV recordings from my PS3. In the end I'll have a clean W7 install on a 120GB 7200rpm lappy drive, with my media on a 120GB 5400rpm lappy drive, although I'm considering my options in regards to making that a bigger drive.
It'll also free up 50GB of space on my PS3 which is taken up by Match of the Day recordings!
 
thanks for the input guys. I have to say that for 75 sheets a pentium d box sounds ideal, although I don't have any experience of this precessor as I came into intel stuff with a 6600 C2Duo.

I would get her one of the n330 boards, but i've used an atom netbook and they're ****e!

I'm going to do some more digging as the whole pico psu idea i like, but it seems that i can't run jack on it - even with the core 2 duo 65w processors, the outervision calculator comes up at over 120w by the time i've included 2 sticks of ddr2 a hdd and an optical drive. Then again, it doesn't have a dropdown for mini itx unless you go for atom processor.

I wonder how much the power usage would drop by if i went for a small ssd (64gb) ?
 
The answer is not terrible amounts-
a power hungry 10k raptor is about 9.6 W on video access, i think yours will be in the 5-7W category:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/chart...rive-charts/Power-Requirement-Video,1026.html

whereas a laptop drive, which the small ssds would be close enough to at their best are 2-3W:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2.5-hard-drive-charts/Maximum-Power-Consumption,684.html
not taking averages here, just max power use, as you're not calculating battery life, but whether you have enough juice at all. So gain of 4-5 W max?
 
At the end of the day though, is she likely to notice the difference in performance between a Core 2 and an Atom?

Just that with an Atom, you could get a small box, have it passively cooled, and run a really small PSU. Having a Core 2 just tends to introduce questions that you simply won't need to answer with an Atom (like cooling, case, PSU, etc).
 
not to mention that the atom is actually quite clockable- I have a N510 samsung netbook that is going at just shy of 1.9Ghz, no voltage increase. Couple that with the ION graphics, and I think it'll handle all but the serious calculations I am throwing at my other machines...
 
mcwildcard said:
I just went from the D-E version to the I-E version last night, it's nice to have wake on USB working now, plus that extra SATA port is going to come in handy.
The whole build is in flux atm though, as I'm juggling a lot of stuff from one hard drive to another and also transferring a ton of Play TV recordings from my PS3. In the end I'll have a clean W7 install on a 120GB 7200rpm lappy drive, with my media on a 120GB 5400rpm lappy drive, although I'm considering my options in regards to making that a bigger drive.
It'll also free up 50GB of space on my PS3 which is taken up by Match of the Day recordings!
Click to expand...

Hi m8 where you get your I-E version from ?

Its ok i found it.
 
Last edited:
Grimgoth said:
not to mention that the atom is actually quite clockable- I have a N510 samsung netbook that is going at just shy of 1.9Ghz, no voltage increase. Couple that with the ION graphics, and I think it'll handle all but the serious calculations I am throwing at my other machines...
Click to expand...

Now this is interesting, as I'd never considered the atom after playing on her NC10 - SO, if I went for a Zotac ION board with onboard cpu and a green HDD and slim optical what would I be looking at for day to day office app and internet performance and PSU requirements?
 
well, the N330 version should be hyperthreaded, so thats 4 cores right there for 16 W TDP (not sure here)?
Have no experience in overclocking that so can't say how easy or whether it would even work, but even so, that should be much better at multitasking than the NC10.
I haven't tried blu-ray disc playback, but ripped blu-ray files play absolutely fine on my N510 (and thats only a single core version).
 
I'd personally just go for a D510 (Pineview) out of the Atom range. Dual core, HT, integrated graphics, everything all ready to go.
 
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