Very Small Micro/Mini ITX HTPC

Bam

Bam

Bam

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23 Oct 2003
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212
Hi Folks.

After some thinking, I've decided I want to spec out a low budget and VERY small HTPC for XMBC. I had thought about, and almost purchased a NAS for storage, and Pi for the HTPC, but I am aware that a Pi may not be great for delivering large 4-5GB mkv files?


The machine needs to be:

- Very quiet (will be sat in the front room)
- Very Small
- Preferably use a PicoPSU rather than a standard PSU to reduce noise.
- Able to take a 2TB 3.5 disk, but that seems rather optimistic from my searches around Mini/Micro ATX cases

Budget is around £200-250

Would the below spec work together?
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Akasa Crypto Vesa Mini-ITX Case with 80W PSU - Black £59.99
1 x Asus H81I-Plus Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £58.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £49.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
Total : £313.85 (includes shipping : £10.75).





Need to order this weekend, else Santa wont be bringing me any pressies.. :)
 
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So these are my current options:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Toshiba Hybrid 1TB SATA 3GB/s 2.5" SSD Hybrid Cache - OEM (MQ01ABD100H) £72.98
1 x Antec ISK300-150 Black Mini-ITX Case 150W PSU 2 x USB3.0 & E-Sata 0.8mm £64.99
1 x AMD Athlon 5350 2.05GHz Quad Core Processor - Retail (Socket AM1) £43.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Single Channel Module (TED34GM1600C1101) £29.99
1 x Asus AM1I-A AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £26.99
Total : £248.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Changed the drive from SSD to SSD Hybrid 1TB


Or the Raspberry Pi route:

YOUR BASKET
1 x QNAP TS-212-E 2 Bay Network Attached Storage For Personal Cloud £127.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD30EFRX - OEM HDD £96.98
1 x Raspberry Pi Model B +, SoC mini motherboard, 512 MB RAM, 4x USB 2.0 £31.99
Total : £266.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Ultimately I am looking for a way to stream (XBMC) movies to the TV, replacing my old ATX box, so storage is a consideration, which is why the NAS route is more appealing as I can add an additional drive and backup to Crashplan. Is there any real world performance issues here with either route?

Has anyone got a Pi+NAS setup, does it perform well?
 
Yeah I opted for the ITX and Pi route.

Looking at the below:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt Power Supply £41.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case - Black £39.95
1 x AMD Athlon 5150 1.60GHz Quad Core Processor - Retail (Socket AM1) £35.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Single Channel Module (TED34GM1333C901) £26.99
1 x Asus AM1I-A AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £26.99
1 x MSI AM1I AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) Mini ITX Motherboard £24.95
Total : £206.45 (includes shipping : £8.00).




I have plenty of hard disks lying about, but I will get some WD reds when I can. Hopefully this box can stay on 24/7 with that CPU.

Thanks for the food for thought, still tweaking parts (performance vs budget)
 
So I'm set on the below:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £49.99
1 x AMD Athlon 5350 2.05GHz Quad Core Processor - Retail (Socket AM1) £43.99
1 x Silverstone Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt Power Supply £41.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case - Black £39.95
1 x MSI AM1I AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) Mini ITX Motherboard £24.95
Total : £200.87 (includes shipping : ).




The only query I have is around the PSU. I've seen talk of '120 watt power brick', so a questions or two:

a)where can you get them (OC?)
b) Would 120 power the above + 1/2 2TB 3.5 Drives?
c) How do they connect to that board, adapters, or ?

EDIT: I think based on the eXtreme PSU calculator, that I just exceed 150w with my setup (including a possible 2 x 3.5 HDD), so I'll stick with the 300w PSU.

Sorry for the Q's.

Thanks :)
 
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