Project Princess - Super Budget Build

[Cyanide]

Another completely insane "why would you do that?!?" build from me!

Firstly - apologies for any rubbish pictures, I've always planned to do a build with amazing shots but I've just finished working as a photographer and sold my entire kit. Plus I haven't got a clue how to render so it's all doing to be dodgy photoshops!

I've decided to do a build with my daughter as part of our Youtube channel. With her being so young there's no point spending a fortune as she only needs things like the CBeebies and Disney websites and some basic games (she loves Rollercoast Tycoon and Worms) so outright power isn't an issue.

Obviously I could just go out and buy a basic system... but where's the fun in that?!

My initial plan is to build a fully working base unit for under £250. I'm only slightly over that with this lot -

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 750 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N750-1GD5/OC) £79.99
1 x be quiet! SFX Power 2 300W '80 Plus Bronze' SFX Power Supply £37.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £35.99
1 x AMD Athlon 5350 2.05GHz Quad Core Processor - Retail (Socket AM1) £35.99
1 x Silverstone SST-SG05W-Lite Sugo USB 3.0 - White £25.99
1 x MSI AM1I AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) Mini ITX Motherboard £24.95
1 x Kingston HyperX Fury Black 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Single Channel Kit (HX316C10FB/4) £19.99
Total : £260.89 (includes shipping : Ex.VAT).



I've gone with AM1 mainly because it's as cheap as they come and I've got the MSI AM1 board in a cupboard somewhere already

I've done my research and the Athlon 5350 is roughly the same performance as a Q6600 - I'm fine with that level of performance given the tiny power usage and stupidly low cost.

I'll be doing this one in stages as funds are tight with it being almost Christmas but the initial build should be done in a couple of weeks and then I'll be adding extras (such as the GPU) a little while after. The case will be turning up next week (nabbed the last one on TWO!) so I'll take it from there.

I've also discovered that my spare AM3 waterblock fits it...

 

[Cyanide]

I'm just waiting on the PSU to turn up and I'll make a start. Ended up getting a 300w Seasonic SFX unit dirt cheap. Evidently you can get cheap, low powered CPUs and boards but the PSU's to fit SFF cases are still high powered and expensive - gap in the market there if anyone from OCUK reads this

 

[Cyanide]

Nice one. How old is she?

2 and 3 quarters as she would say

Far too young for any serious gaming but I'm teaching her to use a PC at the moment. She can already use an Xbox controller though!

 

[Cyanide]

Oh thanks, my daughter just saw your pic and now she wants one "coz it's soooo cute"

Better not let her see it when it's a real photo and not just a dodgy Photoshop job then

It is almost Christmas though...

 

[Cyanide]

...and I found out my girlfriend has played wow for years 3 months after meeting her, what a surprise.

Marry her.

PSU turned up today so I'm going to do a little test run with everything and check it all works then Emily's going to be helping me build it properly either over the weekend or early next week. There will be a video

I've also ordered pink spray paint...

 

[Cyanide]

It's alive!

The test run is all completed, I'm just installing a copy of Windows at the moment. So far, so good - it's pretty much silent other than the occasional HDD sound.





Here's my £15 PSU - Seasonic 300w, brand new and a decent make for SFX units. Should be fine with my tiny processor and a 750ti.



1tb WD HDD stolen from an old laptop I got rid of ages ago. It won't be fast but then neither is any of the rest of it! I do intend to swap it out for a cheap SSD when I've got the money to spare.

And also horrible, green 2Gb RAM. I'll be changing that for something prettier and hopefully 8Gb soon.



Cable management fail

Only the test run but I'm not sure how nice I'll be able to go it - may resort to braiding




By my calculations, with the HDD coming from an old laptop and Windows free with Dreamspark I'm in it for <£115 at the moment and I've got a fully functioning PC.

Tomorrows job is to paint it!

 

[Cyanide]

What you thinking of painting pink??

I'm doing the fan, bottom of the case and a couple of internal bits when I get them (probably ram heatsinks and gpu)

 

[Cyanide]

could you stencil your "project princess logo" on it somewhere?

I could do a "Princess Emily" logo on it somewhere but I'm not sure how easy it'll be to do a stencil from that font. Might see if I can get some vinyl cut at some point

 

[Cyanide]

Can't fault OCUK for packaging things well, slight overkill though! Just hope the rain holds off so I can paint later

 

[Cyanide]

2Gb RAM and a slow hard drive are letting it down at the moment but for £185 I think this is pretty respectable!



http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9110119

 

[Cyanide]

Seems pretty decent! Do you have the full version of 3DMark?

Just the free version, I'm not hardcore enough to warrant paying for it

I'm hoping for ~3000 when I've topped up the RAM. I can get a very, very slight OC out of the CPU too - multiplier can go from 20.5 to 21

Also - painting is now complete! Pics tomorrow when it's all dry and re-assembly should be on Tuesday

 

[Cyanide]

 

[Cyanide]

ORRRR you could go balls out and watercool it! Pink would look really cool!

Funny you should say though, my current AM3 waterblock fits it... Kinda defeats the purpose of a sub £200 build though!

 

[Cyanide]

That looks well cool. Maybe paint that top white bar?

If you'd said like 3 days ago I had 4gb of ddr2, which is what this is? That I threw away!

It's DDR3, I've got a set being delivered Tuesday to top it up to 6Gb - the wonders of single channel RAM

Total spend is now... £234 including a lovely new 120Gb SSD

 

[Cyanide]

edit: on a side note, whats the quality of the case like as its a smart looker?

It's not too bad, especially for the price. Some of the panel gaps need a bit of tweaking and the top grill is a bit warped bit it's fairly solid, comes with decent instructions and it looks great.

 

[Cyanide]

More ram definitely improved it!



http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9140161

Had a crack at a video with Emily this evening too but it didn't come out very well, I'll get a better camera out and re-do it tomorrow

 

[Cyanide]

I think I'm going to need to mod the 750ti as after a couple of days of testing I've decided it's too loud compared to the rest of the system. It's not particularly silent anyway, which is odd given that it's got the heat output of an ice cub, but as it's a dual slot card it comes too close to the perforated side of the case which makes it even worse.

I've tried flashing the bios but fan control is locked to a minimum 30% so I'll either need to replace the fan, mod the existing fan with a resistor to bring the speed down or replace the whole cooler. If I can get my hands on a blower cooler or make one myself that'll probably be the best option.

Also, anyone fancy voting for us to win some lights? http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18699113

 

[Cyanide]

I've still got to edit the build video we've done today but here's the out-takes from our mid-week attempt

 

[Cyanide]

It's great to see something like this being done! Top marks on being a father!!

Excellent to see you invlove your daughter in the building process. Also the painted pink has a good finish and the build is a cracking bit of kit for someone of such a young age.

Great job

Cheers guys

Build video part 1 is going up ~6pm tonight, part 2 will be Wednesday and the benchmarking/testing will be next week.

Not expecting it to set the world on fire but I've ran it through a few tests already and it's holding up surprisingly well. I thought the Tomb Raider Ultra test would kill it but it didn't!

 

[Cyanide]

I'm currently working on a custom GPU cooler courtesy of savagesam117. Evidently the heatsink from a 4870x2 fits directly on to the 750ti with absolutely no modification to the card whatsoever and I've just had to trim the shroud down and extend the fan cables! Thanks Sam!