Someone build me a pc please

[Phate]

Hi guys,

Heres what I require:

Shuttle case/compact pc/mini thing/small: Mainly due to it being on a TV stand, so needs to be smart and compact
Bloo Ray Reader
HDMI out
Capable of playing 1080p files without issue
Quiet and cool - I don't want to be watching the tense part of a film and then you hear a fan speed up
500gb of space. Standard hard drive will do

Budget...£300?

Cheers all,
Jake

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there,

Here is my suggestion, it's probably not too standard but it should work.

First, use AMD fusion. It's not particularly powerful - but if you are mainly using it for playing video then it is plenty (have a look at this review of an MSI Mini-ITX board). Plus, it is good value and crazy low power (and low noise).

Add to that a good value Blu Ray drive, 2GB DDR3 (thats all you need for media uses tbh), Win 7 OEM, 500GB HDD and a case and you are away.

For the case, I have put an ITX Lian-li in the image below - this is just there as a place holder. The case I would reccomend you get is the "In Win BP655". This is a case that OCUK used to sell (and is still available in UK retailers) that is small, includes a 200W PSU, supports mini-ITX boards and cruciall accepts a full size DVD/BD drive (slimline BD drives are mega expensive), it costs around £50.

Including your free deliver this should be ~£25 over budget.

 

[Phate]

Ok realising my original budget was a bit err optimistic...I've specced this up.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Shuttle SH55J2 Intel i3 / i5 / i7 H55 Express DDR3 Barebones £167.99
Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £89.99
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 64MB Cache - OEM (WD10EARS) £48.98
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - OEM Black £47.99
OCZ Intel Extreme XMP 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 10666C7 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit (OCZ3X1333LV4GK) £29.99
Total : £396.94

So that's basically everything covered.

However my one and only issue with it is the OEM coolers tend to be noisy, I'd like something quiet, but god knows what will fit in one of these little beasts?!

Any ideas folks?

£400 is not bad at all, affordable to

Cheers,
Jake

 

[Phate]

snip

Cheers for this pal, btw...don't need to worry about software

When speccing my little list up I didn't realise how much things have changed!

Haven't specced a machine up, well a windows one up for YEARS. Anyway, enough of memory lane!

I avoided the lite-on drive as I've had a lot die on me in the past. Plus the one I added does DVD burning as well, handy to have even if I won't use it much What do you think of what I've specced? (ignoring that its £100 over budget lol)

 

[cmndr_andi]

Ah, no windows makes things so much easier.

The Intel system looks good, but I would personally steer clear from relying on the Intel GPU for HD video duties, mainly due to this issue (start reading after the 4th photo) which I believe is yet to be fixed. You could always add a cheap GPU like this amd 5450 and perhaps drop down to a pentium s1156, but this does add to the cost a bit.

also, a 73w i3 is probably overkill for a htpc box and you may get heat/noise issues. compare that to the amd fusion system which can do youtube 1080p without issue and uses a maximum of 18W for the main board (CPU, chipset, GPU).

Another option would be to get a Sempron or Athlon II CPU and use a micro-ATX or Mini-ITX 880G board. These boards do 1080p decoding without issue and you will have a fair bit of CPU grunt and use a bit less power than an i3. That said, this is still a desktop class processor being given a nettop workload and working environment.

Good call on the BD drive, I was picking the lowest price kit that would fit the requirements (I also that very drive in my parents HTPC, so was happy reccomening it). If you can afford the extra £10 for the drive that can also do DVD/CD RW then it makes sense, also paying the extra £8 for 4GB makes a lot of sense, especially if you plan to keep the system for a while.