i3 2100T with ISK 300-65?

gropingmantis · 18 Apr 2011 at 21:53

That is pretty much the HTPC build I was planning. Nice to see a direct comparison between the 2100T and E-350. Although my build will have some larger capacity 3.5" drives to store all my media.

I think that 65W may not be comfortable, I'd be tempted to get a pico PSU for the peace of mind that when the going gets tough it wont go pop.

Tute · 18 Apr 2011 at 22:32

I'm looking at building a small, quiet machine for the missus. I'm torn between the E-350 or going for an i3-2100T so this is a useful review for me.

Thing is, the most strenuous thing that it's going to have to do is play WoW, apart from that it's a web browsing and flash games machine.

Not sure the E-350 is good enough to keep the frames flowing in WoW.

Legion · 19 Apr 2011 at 01:01

Cleanthes said:
I have just seen this comparison of the Zacate E350 APU and the Core i3 2100T:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2100t.html

The Intel chip is so close in power consumption, and even beats the AMD chip at idle and in a couple of other vital areas, like 1080p playback. Obviously, all round performance is vastly superior as well. Because of this, I am considering going Intel rather than AMD for my upcoming HTPC (when I can get the motherboard!).

However, I have had my eye on the Antec ISK 300-65 case and am not sure that the bundled psu could provide enough power - although the 2100T looks like it will provide equal or better real-life power usage, when stressed it does take more power - hence the 35W TDP. Do you think that it would be sufficient, or should I look elsewhere?

As well as the chip + board, I am planning to include:

Slim Blu-Ray Optical Drive

5400 rpm 2.5" HDD for storage

40GB Intel 320 series SSD boot Drive

BlackGold BGT3620 TV tuner

4GB DDR3

A couple of case fans

Will this be cutting it close? What do you think? I have seen reports of Zacate builds taking up to 50W.

Get the ISK 300-150 to be on the safe side,power draw can spike heavily from an optical drive during spinup and shutdown the pc with power limits so close to the bone.

The 150w version is only around £8 more than the 65w one and well worth the extra.