SG05 to fill, cheap spec?

gizmo1990 · 16 Jul 2011 at 20:30

I've got a empty SG05 chassis which I'd like to put to use. The only real requirement I have is that the motherboard must have a pcie slot so I can fit a video card in there too. The other of course is price - as cheap as possible!

It's been a time since I dabbled in mini-itx stuff. Would anyone be able to spec me up a mobo/cpu/ram combination?

Any advice much appreciated.

lsg1r · 16 Jul 2011 at 20:36

what use? You could look at amd fusion mitx boards if all you want it for is web/video playback etc

gizmo1990 · 16 Jul 2011 at 20:39

Oops sorry should have said I'd prefer an intel route. It would be for light workstation use, hence the additional video card.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 16 Jul 2011 at 20:53

The Asus P8H61-I can be had for around £64 delivered. It does lack SATA3.0,USB3.0,RAID and ACHI.

I would probably get a Core i3 2100 too.

Skyboat · 16 Jul 2011 at 21:00

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The Asus P8H61-I can be had for around £64 delivered. It does lack SATA3.0,USB3.0,RAID and ACHI.

I would probably get a Core i3 2100 too.

What he said.

Pair of DDR3 chips and you'll be looking at around the £200 mark for the kit altogether.

Gepetto · 16 Jul 2011 at 21:05

What do you mean by "light workstation"? I ask because the 1155 system (with an i3) that I've just put together is handling MS Office/Web/Video no problem at all on the onboard graphics. It is running the standard cooler too, which saves you money.

When I was investigating the build I looked at 775, 1156 and 1155 boards and to be honest there was no huge advantage going for the 775 over the newer tech as far as boards were concerned. A brand new board should only set you back around 60-70 quid for the newer ones. CPU's are a little different though with the newer ones being more expensive.

Ram is pretty much available from 20-30 quid on the MM whether it is 4GB of DDR2, or DDR3.

What sort of budget are you looking at?

Zarf · 17 Jul 2011 at 00:22

As a "light workstation" put together an AMD llano system. It's on-board GPU will cope fine with light gaming and the money you save on the graphics card will pay for a small SSD that'll do far more for your overall system performance than having the faster intel i3 cpu. Motherboards have decent support for SATA6Gb/s and USB 3 too.

SSD is the best upgrade you can make for this kind of system, I put a cheap £40 30GB OCZ Agility drive in an old Athlon X2 system and it flies through desktop tasks.

lsg1r · 17 Jul 2011 at 17:49

gizmo1990 said:
Oops sorry should have said I'd prefer an intel route. It would be for light workstation use, hence the additional video card.

What do you class as light workstation use?

And what's wrong with amd, I know they might not be the fastest but they do offer equal value for money at the lower end :confused:

WILD9 · 19 Jul 2011 at 12:23

Id be looking at one of the G840 pentiums rather than the i3 for light workstation use, they compare pretty favourably with the i3 2100 and are almost half the price.

mobo : Asus ITX £65
CPU : intel pentium G840 £60
memory : 4G of whatever £30 ish

£155 ish

for an extra £10 you could hop up to the Asrock H67M-ITX for USB3 and SATA3 etc which would probably be worth while.

Im looking at something like this for my next HTPC