SFF advice please - total newb to SFF

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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17 Jan 2006
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I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to gie me some advice on what motherboards and processors I should look at for building a small pc.

I know this is a huge question so I shall give as much info as possible.

My intention is to build a small pc into a piece of furniture to go in a lounge/sitting room. I'm currently thinking I'd like it to be a small cube (possibly) shape wooden box that could be used as a coffee table as well as containing the PC.

My intention for the PC is for it to run some software called Media Engine, which is, as the name suggests, a piece of media software (ie music and video playback). Really it is intended for use in car pc's but I use it on my home PC for all my music playing and it does everything I want it to and it does it well.

I have the software running really nicely on a P3 866hmz with 256MB RAM and a Geforce2mx graphics card, so I won't be needing the latest technology really and I don't need anyt thing mega powerful.

Ideally I'd like the unit to remain fairly cool so I don't have to use fans, or could use low speed ones if necessary, so if there are any board/CPU combos that I should avoid please let me know.

I would need to have a network connection for the comp so would need to be either built on or I could use a network card. Also I would want a decent sound card so would need a PCI slot for that.

Going from this info, can anyone recommend me anything???

Ta muchly for any help, it would be very much appreciated.

Valve
 
Careful about building a SFF box into a wodden cube; you're in danger of blocking all the vents, which means it probably won't run quiet and certainly won't be cool.
 
My plans for the cube are for it to be big enough to have a good amount of room for air to move about, and I want the back of the cube to be vented as well as being where all the connectors are located.

If I have to run a big slow fan or two I will.

Any thoughts on what boards to look at?

Valve
 
if all its doing is playing back music and video then check out mini-itx boards and some of them projects people have done.

Their small, have everything integrated, and reasonably powerful for their size.

as an idea you could use an M10000 Nehemiah board, swap the small heatsink and fan on the cpu for one of them Zalman NB coolers (not the latest one, the older tall blue one) and providing you have a bit of airflow in the case it should run passive nicely. You can also get an external power brick for them (i think upto 120watt but cant remember) so again, less components in the case and still passive and silent

unfortunitly i cant give you a direct link to the webpage with all the projects and info on mini-itx stuff cos they sell components but if you google for mini-itx it should be the first result. Hundreds of projects people have done as well as tonnes of info on the bits.

lol if you can think of somewhere to put one of these boards, someones allready done it!
 
hmmm, what to do...

Thanks for the advice, I've done some reading up on mini ITX boards but am a little unsure about what to go for. The board that has been suggested, M10000 Nehemiah, sounds interesting and seemingly up to the job. Thing is I don't know if I really need something quite so small but from what I can make out, it's either this or pretty much a normal sized motherboard.

Gonna need to think about exactly how I want the final thing to look before I go any further forward.

Having seen how small people have managed to make computers with the mini ITX boards, I’m starting to wonder about my original plans and whether I should change them. Initially I wanted to have a computer built into something that could be placed next to an armchair or sofa, and have a touchscreen built into the case (at an angle along one of the top edges) so it could easily be reached and used to control the software I use for music playing. This would mean the case could be quite big… maybe even as big as a normal computer tower, in which case I could just re-house the components I’m using at the moment and make a nice looking fairly large piece of furniture.

Having seen how small I could possibly make (or indeed buy) a case, I’m wondering if I would be better off going for a mini ITX solution and having a small and quiet box tucked away near the armchair and having the touchscreen mounted separately somewhere, maybe on an extendible arm or something so it can be accessed easily.

Does anyone have any thoughts, either positive or negative about either of these ideas??

Valve
 
Honestly, I was going to do a similar thing. But then I realised, the cost adds up very quickly indeed.


In the end I just bought the basic mac mini - its smaller than you could do yourself, loooks great, powerful and comes with Front row, which would be very cool to have on your tv.


Its also wireless internet and bluetooth enabled, with a cd rw / dvd drive too.

Personally i'm blown away by it, and its soo much less hastle than building your own.


Another cool thing is it has instant power up when in standby, and runs silently.
 
hogfather said:
In the end I just bought the basic mac mini - its smaller than you could do yourself, loooks great...

...Personally i'm blown away by it, and its soo much less hastle than building your own...


...Another cool thing is it has instant power up when in standby, and runs silently.
Click to expand...

I haven't actually seen a Mac Mini in action yet, but I reckon a few SFF 'PC' people will be using them very soon.
 
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