Home office SFF for Father-in-Law!

[damian35]

Hi,

Been away from speccing and building computers for a while but thought it would be sensible to help sort something out for the father-in-law!!

I'd be grateful of any comments on the spec for a home office SFF build. There will be no gaming, usual web surfing and basic office systems. Speed is the key priority, followed by quietness and aesthetics but these are not critical. He currently doesn't have any significant storage requirements but I am trying to encourage him to back up all of his SD card photos to an hard drive.

Initial thoughts from browsing this site - Streacom make some nice cases but maybe on the dear side, i3 processor, SSD.

In terms of budget, I've probably got up to £400 but if I can save a bit to put towards a new monitor in future then this would be great.

Many thanks for any views you may have.

Damian

 

[damian35]

Hi,

I've had a go at putting a spec together which I think may be suitable and I'd be very grateful of any comments.

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Streacom F7C Black Home Theatre Aluminium Chassis
Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 LGA1155 Mini ITX Motherboard
Sony AD-7640S Slot Load DVD+RW Drive
picoPSU 160W picoPSU and AC/DC adapter block
Crucial 64GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD M4
Intel i3-2120 Sandybridge Core i3 Dual-Core Processor, 3.30GHz, 3MB Cache, Socket 1155
Corsair 8GB DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory
Acousti AcoustiFan: DustPROOF 80mm fan
TP-LINK TL-WN881ND Network adapter - PCI Express
Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64-bit OEM with SP1

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Many thanks,

Damian

 

[sean]

Hi Damian,

I've just recently built myself a similar system using the same motherboard and the passive version of that case (FC8) and it's an outstanding little machine. I saved some cash by opting for a lower spec Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 (2.8GHz) and only 4GB of RAM but the system flies through anything I throw at it and is even capable of light gaming.

I believe the retail i3 heatsink is a low profile unit? I'm not 100% sure so probably worth checking as there's not much clearance under the optical drive tray.