Hello all!
I'm after some advice, guidance and suggestions on miniaturising my PC.
Since buying a house and losing my spare room/office to my youngest daughter we've been stuck with my PC on the dining table in the corner of the room. Whilst it's quite a big table and can still easily fit 4 of us around without disturbing the PC my wife would prefer if it was stowed away somewhere.
Current system is in an Antec Sonata III case with a 22" LED Samsung monitor, which takes up a fair amount of space.
Luckily, the innards are a mATX motherboard with an SSD as the system drive.
I already have my Raspberry Pi set up as a low powered NAS (and highjinks machine) and the sideboard beneath the TV has a cupboard which is about 420(w) x 470(h) x 300(d) and my plan is to decant the small guts of my PC into a smaller case and use an HDMI switch to run it through the TV (or control it over VNC using my Chromebook) as a media centre.
Unfortunately, my budget is virtually non-existent so I'm looking at cheapest options.
I found this case which should fit in the cupboard perfectly, house most of my current PC and is nice and cheap. Any suggestions on something about the same size and price which has more 3.5" bays available (I have 4 HDDs in the PC at the moment but whilst I'd like to keep them all then I am happy to drop them in favour of storing things on the NAS) but still able to take a full size ATX power supply and full height GFX card would be great.
However, my current GFX card is DVI only and looking about then splicing DVI and audio into a single HDMI output (to plug into the TV) is expensive and adds in cables. So I'm after suggestions on a decent GFX card with HDMI out, which will be as good (or better) than my current card (an Asus GeForce 8800 GT 512MB) and handle sound as well (they do this now, yeah?) for as little as possible.
Obviously, if a GFX card replacement would fit in with changing the case to an HTPC option and still be nice and cheap then hurrah!
For info, my current system is:
Intel Core i3 CPU
Gigabyte H61MA-D3V mATX motherboard
8GB DDR3
Samsung 250GB 2.5" SSD
Assorted 3.5" SATA HDD
Thanks!
I'm after some advice, guidance and suggestions on miniaturising my PC.
Since buying a house and losing my spare room/office to my youngest daughter we've been stuck with my PC on the dining table in the corner of the room. Whilst it's quite a big table and can still easily fit 4 of us around without disturbing the PC my wife would prefer if it was stowed away somewhere.
Current system is in an Antec Sonata III case with a 22" LED Samsung monitor, which takes up a fair amount of space.
Luckily, the innards are a mATX motherboard with an SSD as the system drive.
I already have my Raspberry Pi set up as a low powered NAS (and highjinks machine) and the sideboard beneath the TV has a cupboard which is about 420(w) x 470(h) x 300(d) and my plan is to decant the small guts of my PC into a smaller case and use an HDMI switch to run it through the TV (or control it over VNC using my Chromebook) as a media centre.
Unfortunately, my budget is virtually non-existent so I'm looking at cheapest options.
I found this case which should fit in the cupboard perfectly, house most of my current PC and is nice and cheap. Any suggestions on something about the same size and price which has more 3.5" bays available (I have 4 HDDs in the PC at the moment but whilst I'd like to keep them all then I am happy to drop them in favour of storing things on the NAS) but still able to take a full size ATX power supply and full height GFX card would be great.
However, my current GFX card is DVI only and looking about then splicing DVI and audio into a single HDMI output (to plug into the TV) is expensive and adds in cables. So I'm after suggestions on a decent GFX card with HDMI out, which will be as good (or better) than my current card (an Asus GeForce 8800 GT 512MB) and handle sound as well (they do this now, yeah?) for as little as possible.
Obviously, if a GFX card replacement would fit in with changing the case to an HTPC option and still be nice and cheap then hurrah!
For info, my current system is:
Intel Core i3 CPU
Gigabyte H61MA-D3V mATX motherboard
8GB DDR3
Samsung 250GB 2.5" SSD
Assorted 3.5" SATA HDD
Thanks!
