Media Box Spec!

Indie

Indie

Indie

Soldato
Joined
11 Jul 2006
Posts
4,530
Location
Cradley, West Midlands
Hi There,

My parents have asked me to build them a media centre for their living room. It will be used mainly for playing HD Video (47" TV), Browsing through photographs, playing music, internet browsing and whatever else the older generation use PC's for these days!

Requirements:
£250-300 Budget
- Case (Black - Smaller the better)
- PSU
- Mobo
- CPU
- RAM
- HDD (I have an external USB3 HDD they can have for it, so not sure if its an idea just to have an SSD?)
- WiFi (dongle, card, or on the mobo)
- Blu-ray drive (If one can be fitted in, if not can wait until a later date)

I've never really built anything on such a tight budget before, so my knowledge at this end of the market is very limited...

I've recently built an i3 BF Prodigy build to hook up to my TV for gaming purposes, but would an i3 Build be over-kill for something like this? If that's the case are the Pentium G620's ++ upto the task? or would I be better off going down the AMD route?

Any feedback would be appreciated, feel free to ask me any questions...

Fingers crossed I havn't forgotten any details! :)
 
 
Looks pretty good! Although I think they may want a smaller case? could be wrong though i'll see what they think shortly :) Thank you!

Anybody got feedback on Intel builds?
 
Will be looking to purchase today, anybody have anything else they can throw into the mix? :)
 
Smaller cases tend to be more expensive.
if I was building this id get one of the silverstone sugo's with psu included, but the itx Fm2 boards are still on pre-order.
 
I've used a g530 before and by crikey, for a £30 1155 processor, they do the job. I know the new amd apu's are supposed to be fairly awesome for media builds, looking at your parents uses for it I'd be tempted to get a cheap H61 board and a g530 which would be less than £80. Then the rest of the gubbins of course.
 
Sorry, just had to say something as I've just checked prices, I find it amazing that a g440 which is single core at 1.6ghz, is £28 and for £5 more for the g530 you get a dual core 2.4ghz!
 
One of my concerns was that its a tight budget to get a decent small case (and the rest!), but had a look at those Silverstone Sugo's and they look quite nice actually, That would probably be the perfect size and with a PSU too I think it might fit into the budget, I don't mind going a bit over the £300 mark actually, Its a no brainer for an early xmas pressie then ;)

Reviews for the G530 and the rest of that range do look quite good for a simple build like this. Do you think it would be worth investing in something like this rather than the new AMD's... with the option of upgrading to maybe an IB i3 or greater at a later date?
 
Well the upgrade path is always nice to have, even with a h61 board, the i3's aren't clockable anyway. If it was me I would look into reviews of the onboard gpu for the g530, if it can easily handle what your parents need it for, which off the top of my head I think it can, then I'd go that route. However if a dedicated graphics card is then needed as well, I don;t know, if they were going for some light gaming or whatever, then the amd apu's would be the way to go as the graphics on those are far superior.

Obviously the price of a card as well would lose you the money you're saving on the g530. Decisions decisions!
 
I certainly don't think they will be using it to do any gaming, maybe a spot of solitaire but I reckon that's about it! I'll see what I can fit in :) thanks for all your help so far !
 
 
 
i like the CM case but its Out of Stock... might actually go with the 60GB SSD though, don't think they'll need anything bigger
 
 
Indie said:
i like the CM case but its Out of Stock... might actually go with the 60GB SSD though, don't think they'll need anything bigger
Click to expand...

You could ask in CS and see when it`s due back in stock. You have a few weeks before Christmas.
The mobo I specced has sata 6gbs and USB 3.0.
Or use a mix of our specs. Then upgrade the Cpu later, if you need to.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Sugo SG06 HTPC Case with 450W Power Supply - All Black (SST-SG06BB USB3.0) £109.99
1 x Asus P8H77-I Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MiniITX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Intel 330 Series 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £51.98
1 x Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £26.99
1 x TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N USB Adapter (TL-WN821N) £12.98
Total : £330.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 
Idleman said:
You could ask in CS and see when it`s due back in stock. You have a few weeks before Christmas.
The mobo I specced has sata 6gbs and USB 3.0.
Or use a mix of our specs. Then upgrade the Cpu later, if you need to.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Sugo SG06 HTPC Case with 450W Power Supply - All Black (SST-SG06BB USB3.0) £109.99
1 x Asus P8H77-I Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MiniITX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Intel 330 Series 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £51.98
1 x Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £26.99
1 x TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless-N USB Adapter (TL-WN821N) £12.98
Total : £330.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Click to expand...

Really like this spec! think this will be ideal.

Really appreciate everybody's feedback, will place the order after work today :)
 
oh really? anything specific that you'd recommend?

Theres a few reviews I've seen that say the Pentium's cope but nothing about the Celeron, I guess I could always go up to a Pentium, not much difference in price.
 
He could be thinking of the old celerons, a lot of people can't shake the horror of those off. The g530 is the new sandybridge celeron, same 32 nm process, hd graphics and brill for the price.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom