Mini ITX Build for Mother

WoZZeR

WoZZeR

WoZZeR

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19 Jan 2007
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Northampton
Heyup chaps

The ancient Shuttle I built my Mum years ago is showing it's age and she now fancies an upgrade.

I'm not sure about the build quality of newer Shuttles, feel free to advise, her budget is £500 approx inc Win 7.

I was pondering a Mini ITX build using the Antec ISK 600 case, a Power Supply, Gigabyte FM2+ Mini ITX Motherboard, AMD Processor, 8 GB of RAM and a bog standard 1TB WD Black HD, maybe a cheapo Optical drive too. No mouse, monitor or keyboard are required.

Any advise?

EDIT: Is this AMD Kaveri 7850K any good? My Train has the A6800, worthwhile upgrade?
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
1 x Sapphire Radeon R7 250X 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £65.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £59.99
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 £49.99
1 x Antec ISK 600 Small Form Factor ITX Chassis £44.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £34.99
1 x Samsung SN-208DB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - OEM £17.99
1 x Raijintek Aidos Direct Contact CPU Cooler - Black £14.99
1 x Akasa Slimline Optical SATA Cable (AK-CB050) £2.99
Total : £518.48 (includes shipping : £8.00).



£508 with free shipping.
pentium with a 250x. this will destroy any apu build easily.
cheap, decent heatsink for overclocking
also ditched a hdd in favour of a 256gb ssd (assuming that 256gb is enough?)
 
Interesting spec, thanks for the replies. :)

My Mum probably needs the 1Gb drive, she has a lot of files, she's had PC's for 15 to 20 years! Although she is 73! :) I could use a SSD and her existing drive I suppose, she currently has a 500Gb WD Black.

Not sure if she needs the fancy GFX card, although she does need more modern features, HDMI, support for 2 or more monitors etc.

I'll have a read of the G3258 and the motherboard and see what I think.
 
This is a build I recently did for my Fiances parents, they needed a monitor but you can easily replace it with win 7 and save some more pennies.
I think its pretty pointless getting a GPU or different CPU cooler tbh and even a DVD drive since everything can be loaded by USB or dtools nowadays.

1 CORSAIR CMV8GX3M2A1600C11 £52
1 CORSAIR CX430W £31.50
1 CM N200 Black £26
1 Intel Core i5 4460 s1150 £110
1 GByte Z97M-DS3H MoBo £57
1 24IN ACER K242HLbd Monitor £80
1 256GB Crucial MX100 £66
 
Last edited:
Cheers for the reply, I am still trying all types of builds in my basket trying to hit the magical £500 mini ITX price point.

I have got hold of an Antec ISK 600 and it is a wee bit big so my Intel basket looks like this:


  • Silverstone Sugo SG05 HTPC Case with 450W Power Supply £99.95

  • Intel Core i3-4330 3.50GHz Socket LGA1150 Processor £97.99

  • Gigabyte H97N-WIFI Intel H97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX £94.99

  • Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM £77.99

  • Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 £65.99

  • Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache £59.99

  • Samsung SN-208DB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive £17.99

  • Akasa Slimline Optical SATA Cable £2.99


Grand total £517.87
 
No need for discreet GPU for your Mum unless she is a gamer.....I run the G3258in a mini-ITX unit and it does what I need fine, movies, netflix TV, browsing, even photoshop.
The HDMI is dependent on the motherboard. I chose an AS Rock board that has HDMI, DVI-D and VGA, no graphics card frees up room for extar fan or SSD and helps for better airflow, which is more critical in m-ITX cases.
 
Well, it's built and running.

I ordered the Gigabyte Z87N board in the end saving a couple of quid.

The intel heatsink isn't too bad, the CPU does throttle under full load in Prime 95 but the heatsink doesn't get noisy, a nice heatsink would cure that if I was worried about it.

The SG05 is a lovely case and seems well thought out, the only tricky bit was fitting the slimline optical. The USB 3 headers are a bit long for the board but I've managed to tie them neatly with zip ties.

Overall, it's very quiet, the quietest PC in our house, I'm taking it over to my Mum's on Sunday so have two more days to play with it.
 
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