Looking to build a SFF PC for my father, not too expensive

yannis76 · 28 Feb 2015 at 12:04

Hi,

I am planning to build a SFF PC with Windows 7 for web surf, word and some image edit/manipulation for my father. He will place the box upon his desk so noise is an issue. Budget no more than 600€ including the monitor. Any advise is welcome...

Thank you in advance

Telecaster · 28 Feb 2015 at 15:33

Should be about as small as you can get, and pretty quiet too, although it pushes the budget I think.

YOUR BASKET
1 x BenQ GL2250HM 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £89.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
1 x Antec ISK110 MiniITX Vesa Mountable Case - Black/Silver with 90W Power Supply £64.99
1 x Asus H81I-Plus Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £58.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £53.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £47.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £46.99
Total : £440.93 (includes shipping : ).

chippy08 · 28 Feb 2015 at 16:41

Will that asus board use the pentium k without a bios update first ?

Telecaster · 28 Feb 2015 at 17:50

I guess it depends what version of the BIOS it ships with, the G3258 BIOS update was June last year.

yannis76 · 1 Mar 2015 at 10:22

Performance?

Thank you for the reply
I do have some doubts regarding performance in image editing . Wouldn't an four cores AMD APU work better?
Also he does need a DVD CD writer so this case doesn't work...

Telecaster · 1 Mar 2015 at 12:53

Anything else he will need before I have another look?

Telecaster · 1 Mar 2015 at 13:55

Slightly more expensive AMD APU build

YOUR BASKET
1 x BenQ GL2250HM 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £89.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
1 x Antec Minuet 350 Slimline Desktop Case 350W 80+ Bronze PSU 2 x USB3.0 & E-Sata £74.99
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor - OEM **PROMO** £59.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £46.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Savage Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK2/8) £46.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2 AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £40.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Total : £457.92 (includes shipping : ).

LePhuronn · 12 Mar 2015 at 12:54

yannis76 said:
I do have some doubts regarding performance in image editing . Wouldn't an four cores AMD APU work better?

Define "image editing". What exactly is he doing? I was doing some high-res, multi-layered stuff in Photoshop for 4K video on a SandyBridge dual-core Pentium for 2 years with no issue whatsoever. Before that I was still doing 1080p graphics and some print on a Pentium 4 for 8 years, again with no issue.

RAM is your friend when working with big images, not necessarily CPU speed or cores.

The anniversary Pentium would be fine, plus you can overclock the nuts off it.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 15 Mar 2015 at 11:35

I would get one with the A8 7600 or a Core i3. There is a B-Grade Core i3 4160 for £80 in the Clearance Section. Newer image editing and RAW conversions software is better threaded(or is moving towards that in newer releases) and more software uses the GPU now - even the latest version of LR will do.

Trying to save £20 to £25 on a Pentium dual core and hoping it might overclock is not a given- not everyone has got decent overclocks with it even decent coolers,and they seem to be conviniently ignored when they don't hit the headline clocks.

Remember,this build might need to last a good couple of years so you do need to anticipate the changes too.

OTH,if you intend to upgrade the CPU as time progresses,it does have a good upgrade path,but you would need to go for a secondhand CPU in a few years,but nothing a certain auction sight won't solve.