Spec me a ITX

[lauy]

Budget is 700-750 quid. Need all components including windows.

Want a small pc for media and light gaming. Also Need a monitor preferably 24 inch and a printer for university use.

Also need a keyboard and mouse but a cheap OcUk ones will do

Thanks

 

[lauy]

Anyone have any decent ideas?

Never built a small system before. Are the parts the same as a normal tower but only the motherboard is smaller?

Cheers

 

[lauy]

No real specific requirements really. Just need to build one for a friend who is going university. Will only be light gaming anyway like minecraft and the sims. Nothing too major.

Case wise, the smaller the better I guess. Could be nice to include an SSD but not a necessity.

Thanks mate

 

[lauy]

Unfortunately memory and Case are currently out of stock

Slightly over budget because I've put in a better keyboard and mouse. If you go for the OcUK basic wired stuff it comes in at £718.76 leaving enough for a printer, but I think it's worth paying a little bit more, particularly for a wireless mouse with a 12 month battery life.

If you wanted to be able to overclock at all it would come in at £828.76 with the good keyboard and mouse and £784.76 with the basic OcUK stuff. You'd just want the i5-4670K and MSI Z87I instead. Though it does say there are only 8 CPU's left at that price.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £149.99
1 x BenQ GL2460 24" Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor - Black £129.95
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 650Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (01G-P4-3652-K1) £99.95
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x ASRock B85M-ITX Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case - Black £39.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Guarantee £35.99
1 x Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £32.99
1 x Gigabyte ECO600 1600DPI Wireless Gaming Mouse - Black £20.99
Total : £762.76 (includes shipping : FREE).

That actually looks really good.

Is the graphics card really needed if the only games being played will be the sims and minecraft? Other than that it be used for work and media etc

Just spoke to the person asking me to make this, they told me they want a BitFenix Prodigy case? They like the look of it. Is it as easy as just swapping the case that has been recommended for a BitFenix case?


Another thing is, i need windows and a normal HDD to store the data on as the 120gb one most likely wont be big enough.

Thanks

 

[lauy]

For Minecraft, no, on-board graphics should be fine, heck I can play it pretty smoothly on a 2Ghz Pentium E2180 Intel G33/G31 express chipset family.

Generally speaking Intel's integrated graphics aren't geared towards gaming so tend to have issues when used as such. A quick Google turns up plenty of people having graphical glitches when trying to play The Sims using them.

Also the GTX 650Ti will blow the HD4600 out of the water, you could play most games fairly comfortably on that.

You could swap the case yes, obviously it'll cost a little bit more.
However if you were to go for the Prodigy you'd be better off pre-ordering the new Prodigy M and building a Micro-ATX rig around it.
The Prodigy M is exactly the same size as the current Prodigy.

If you don't have a copy of Windows or an existing HDD, either from an old PC or an external, that'll push the budget way over.

If thats the case, you think it will be more within budget if we went down the AMD A-10 processor route so no need to get a graphics that way and can spend part of the budget elsewhere?

Or is it worth paying more to go the route that is being currently taken?

Cheers

 

[lauy]

I'm not up to speed on the latest AMD offerings to be honest. I prefer Intel just because of the comparative CPU performance, the A10 scores 5159 whilst the i5-4430 scores 6355 on cpubenchmark.

I don't know how well the A10 will handle The Sims, I can't see any reports of any issues with it.

Personally I'd probably try and get a dedicated graphics cards just because it'll wipe the floor with either of the integrated options and I play Anno 2070 which needs a pretty hefty graphics card, as will any reasonably new game.

If you're sure it'll just be The Sims then the A10 might suffice, you can always add a dedicated GPU later, however that's not particularly efficient as you'd then be disabling the internal graphics.

These two are the exact same build just one's A10 and one's i5, neither have a dedicated graphics card. You could take off the SSD to come in well under budget, however it's hard to describe just how much faster an SSD does make a system. Or you could opt for the cheap OcUK keyboard and mouse which saves you £44.

You could also lose the Corsair H60 cooler if you don't mind some noise when the CPU get's going. I've just bought myself an H80 because my i7 3770K sounds like it's about to take off when it's being pushed at stock settings on the stock cooler, it sits at about 80°C.

A10:

YOUR BASKET
1 x BenQ GL2460 24" Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor - Black £129.95
1 x AMD A10-6800K Black Edition 4.10GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Quad Core Processor (AD680KWOHLBOX) £124.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00403) £73.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Midnight Black £69.95
1 x ASRock FM2A75 Pro4-M AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £59.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD10EZRX) **SINGLE PLATTER** HDD £53.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Guarantee £35.99
1 x Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £32.99
1 x Gigabyte ECO600 1600DPI Wireless Gaming Mouse - Black £20.99
Total : £783.79 (includes shipping : FREE).



i5:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £149.99
1 x BenQ GL2460 24" Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor - Black £129.95
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00403) £73.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Midnight Black £69.95
1 x Asus B85M-G Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £59.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD10EZRX) **SINGLE PLATTER** HDD £53.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Guarantee £35.99
1 x Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £32.99
1 x Gigabyte ECO600 1600DPI Wireless Gaming Mouse - Black £20.99
Total : £808.79 (includes shipping : FREE).

This looks closer to what I need. Most likely will take out the SSD because the person using it will hardly notice lol.

Thanks for all your help anyway. Will look to go for one or these systems!

Thanks again mate

 

[lauy]

One question. I probably neeed the case soon so probably won't wait for the new MATX cases to come out. If I just get the one that is out now, will everything like the cooler still fit?

 

[lauy]

No..

Either wait for matx case or re-think the build.

Ah right

If thats the case, can anyone re-spec me a PC but for the mini-ATX case as I need this to be made up in the next month or so, so can't really wait until the mATX cases come out.

Sorry for all the trouble!

Thanks!

 

[lauy]

It's a shame you can't wait for the Prodigy M, for an ITX build the Prodigy is a big case, they look nice, it's just a shame about the wasted space. Now they've done the M it'd be wicked if they shrunk the original ITX one.

Assuming you meant ITX, if you're going with the AMD build, OcUK only have 3 AMD ITX boards. I'd go with this one. It's got a couple of USB 3's and sata 6gb/s. And as LostPhil mentioned getting some 2133MHz ram will give the GPU a boost

+£10 for the ITX board
+£16 for the faster memory.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £69.95
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £65.99
Total : £135.94 (includes shipping : FREE).

So the rest of the parts can stay the same? The cooler etc? Will fit?

Thanks and sorry about all this! Appreciate the help!

 

[lauy]

Thanks a lot everyone appreciate. Will be getting it sometime today. Thanks all!

 

[lauy]

Got the parts on Tuesday, didn't get around to building it till now.

Thanks for all the help guys

 

[lauy]

Got the parts on Tuesday, didn't get around to building it till now.

Thanks for all the help guys

Here are some pictures!

 

[lauy]

Interesting.

Lauy, it looks like you got that memory and board?

Have you had any compatibility issues?

The only minor problem I got is that the computer is only using 7.2GB instead of the full 8 for some reason. In bios it reads as 8GB but not on windows. That's probably about it.

Thanks for your help again too btw! Appreciate it and its up and running well!

 

[lauy]

What version of Windows are you using?

I wonder whether it's the same issue welshdapper had with that combination or whether it's related.

And no problems I'm glad it's up and running nicely.

Should be a tidy little system.

Using the windows 8 64 bit OEM as specced above. It's not a huge problem, just a minor issue

 

[lauy]

A you say, minor problem, but if you'd like to see if we can fix it you could post what settings you have for the memory in the BIOS?

If you fancy a little troubleshooting you could test each stick on it's own in each slot as well to try and see if it's one stick that's causing the problem or one slot on the motherboard.

All the settings for the memory is set on auto. Haven't set it to anything in particular.

Should I be? I can try the slots too later, maybe just needs a reseat thats all.

Thanks for the help again pal