Thin ITX system opinions

[uncle_rufus]

Okay so to go full circle I'm now back to this (updated slightly as I realise I had selected stupid memory last time)...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte H61TN Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Thin ITX Motherboard £74.99
1 x Akasa Euler Fanless Thin Mini-ITX Case - Black £69.95
1 x Crucial V4 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £41.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Plug and Play 4GB (2x2GB) 1866MHz - KHX1866C11S3P1K2/4G £39.95
1 x Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £35.99
Total : £262.86 (includes shipping : FREE).



With the intended use as being a dedicated media streamer running openELEC or something like that, and maybe some retro game emulators if I fancy having a play about with those. I just did a bit of searching around on the issue and it seems like there are plenty of reports of Celerons handling any 1080p content completely fine, so I think it will be okay

It'll be slick, very small, totally silent and hopefully a more than worthy little box for what I need it for

 

[oceaness]

That would certainly be the cheaper more straightforward option... It's a shame the NUC/thinITX option with a cheap Celeron processor won't cope with playback of everything (according to comments above - would you agree oceaness?)... Another potential problem I just thought of with having a main gaming PC and a second game-capable HTPC is what would I do about my Steam account? I'm pretty sure you can't log into steam in two locations at once, and I wouldn't want to be constantly juggling which machine is logged in

I don't really know about playback on some of the basic Celerons, I think a lot depends on whether the particular video codec being used can be offloaded to the GPU part of the chip. If not I suspect you'll end up with choppy playback on high quality 1080p videos.

Edit: Yeah you can't sign into Steam on two PC's simultaneously, it will log you out of the other every time you log in, very annoying. If you've got a hefty gaming machine how likely are you to fire up a game on the new one anyway?

Sounds like you're living the dream to me

Haha, I will be once it's all set up. Getting it so is another matter. Trying to learn a new OS at the same time as setting some of this stuff up is hard work. But it'll all be worth it when I have a nice simple storage pool and XBMC working for TV and recordings and playback of my Movie and TV library.

Okay so to go full circle I'm now back to this (updated slightly as I realise I had selected stupid memory last time)...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte H61TN Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Thin ITX Motherboard £74.99
1 x Akasa Euler Fanless Thin Mini-ITX Case - Black £69.95
1 x Crucial V4 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £41.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Plug and Play 4GB (2x2GB) 1866MHz - KHX1866C11S3P1K2/4G £39.95
1 x Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £35.99
Total : £262.86 (includes shipping : FREE).



With the intended use as being a dedicated media streamer running openELEC or something like that, and maybe some retro game emulators if I fancy having a play about with those. I just did a bit of searching around on the issue and it seems like there are plenty of reports of Celerons handling any 1080p content completely fine, so I think it will be okay

It'll be slick, very small, totally silent and hopefully a more than worthy little box for what I need it for

Erm one of us is missing something.
Am I right in thinking the case can only run up to 35W fan less and the G550 is 65W?

How about something like this, it costs a bit more but is a lot more powerful whilst consuming less energy, and should be able to play just about anything.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-3225 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (55W) - Retail **High Performance IGP** £109.99
1 x Asus P8H77-I Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MiniITX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Streacom Nano 150w HTPC Power Supply/Adapter £77.99
1 x Streacom ST-F1CB HTPC Aluminium Case - Black £59.99
1 x Crucial V4 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £41.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
Total : £415.33 (includes shipping : £9.50).

 

[LePhuronn]

You can save £60 on oceaness's spec by swapping the case and PicoPSU for the Antec ISK110 case - great Mini ITX case with 90W power brick.

You could also save some cash getting the MSI H61I-E35/W8 motherboard (not the one on OcUK - the W8 version is the same price but supports Ivy Bridge out of the box) and maybe even dropping to a Pentium G860 - it's a Sandy Bridge Pentium but plays my Blu-Rays fine.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Cheers for the responses guys, I'm still trying to decide what to do but this has been very helpful. I'll be sure to post back here or in the project logs section if/when I get around to pulling the trigger...

Come to think of it I wonder if people would be interested in a project log which extends to the actual setup of the system? Could act as a nice sort of tutorial with some screenshots and stuff, what do you think?

 

[oceaness]

You can save £60 on oceaness's spec by swapping the case and PicoPSU for the Antec ISK110 case - great Mini ITX case with 90W power brick.

You could also save some cash getting the MSI H61I-E35/W8 motherboard (not the one on OcUK - the W8 version is the same price but supports Ivy Bridge out of the box) and maybe even dropping to a Pentium G860 - it's a Sandy Bridge Pentium but plays my Blu-Rays fine.

I chose the Streacom because I quite like the look of it, but that's obviously personal opinion. If the aim is to hide it out of sight anyway then it doesn't matter what it looks like. Also I don't particularly like the power brick that I included, it's just the only one I could find on OcUK, if the photo's anything to go by it looks on the large side. There's also the Lian Li PC-Q09FB that uncle_rufus found before that's £5 more than the Antec, though it is out of stock.

Also just noticed I put a Haswell board and Ivybridge CPU on the build I posted I've edited it to reflect this.

Cheers for the responses guys, I'm still trying to decide what to do but this has been very helpful. I'll be sure to post back here or in the project logs section if/when I get around to pulling the trigger...

Come to think of it I wonder if people would be interested in a project log which extends to the actual setup of the system? Could act as a nice sort of tutorial with some screenshots and stuff, what do you think?

Haha, what an "Infinite cosmic power, itty-bitty living space" tutorial type thread

It could be useful, as I think a lot of people come in here to ask similar questions. The only problem I can foresee is the rate at which technology changes, different issues will get quashed and arise. But if it's kept fairly generalised I think it could be good.

I'd love to do a passive build like this but obviously need a Haswell Thin ITX board:

Haswell i7-4765T - 35W - £225
Haswell Thin ITX board - Est. £100

YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Vengeance SODIMM 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C10 1866MHz SODIMM Kit (CMSX8GX3M2A1866C10) £69.95
1 x Akasa Euler Fanless Thin Mini-ITX Case - Black £69.95
1 x Plextor M5M 64GB mSATA Solid State Drive - (PX-64M5M) £64.99
Total : £204.89 (includes shipping : FREE).



Total cost: £530

 

[uncle_rufus]

Haha, what an "Infinite cosmic power, itty-bitty living space" tutorial type thread

It could be useful, as I think a lot of people come in here to ask similar questions. The only problem I can foresee is the rate at which technology changes, different issues will get quashed and arise. But if it's kept fairly generalised I think it could be good.

True about the technology in terms of hardware, but I was thinking more from the perspective of the process of setting up and installing the software - the Linux subforum isn't exactly bursting at the seams with users on here, maybe some would be interested to see what's involved (and of course how *awesome* it is )

I'd love to do a passive build like this but obviously need a Haswell Thin ITX board

Wow, yeah that would be pretty amazing... Another option would be to build the system and slap a pentium/celeron in it for the time being to keep costs down, and then later on buy a 35W i5 or i7 to upgrade it.

 

[oceaness]

True about the technology in terms of hardware, but I was thinking more from the perspective of the process of setting up and installing the software - the Linux subforum isn't exactly bursting at the seams with users on here, maybe some would be interested to see what's involved (and of course how *awesome* it is )

Yeah the actual install side of it is where I've had fun and games. Had I just opted for default Ubuntu it would probably have been a little easier, but because I wanted minimal resources usage for the system I chose Lubuntu. There are other minimal distros and you can go even thinner if you're happy to use command line for everything, you can hide your headless box in a cupboard and just SSH in to to do everything. But I'm just not that comfortable with command line only. And figured Lubuntu should mostly support what Ubuntu does and so have more packages easily available.

Wow, yeah that would be pretty amazing... Another option would be to build the system and slap a pentium/celeron in it for the time being to keep costs down, and then later on buy a 35W i5 or i7 to upgrade it.

Yeah you could run an Thin ITX Ivy Bridge system with a 35W CPU (which is basically what you've been looking at) until a Haswell Thin ITX board becomes available but there's probably not much point then in upgrading. Nobody needs a Haswell system for an HTPC, it's just fun to see how much power you can cram into a tiny space and how low the power requirements can be. Though Haswell's low power states could be of some benefit particularly when you're already as low as 35W, it would require a Haswell compatible Nano PSU too, I'm not sure if any exist yet?