Warning: questions about boring office machine in this thread...

stefk005

stefk005

stefk005

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Title says it all!! I'm building a machine for office use - no games, only plenty of multi-tasking with boring office apps and multimedia.

I have a budget of £300 - £400, which needs to cover an mATX case, mobo, CPU and RAM. Already have a new Corsair PSU, Force 3 SSD and DVD-RW.

So, which would be the faster platform on this budget, Intel 1155 or AMD FM1? Am happy to overclock a bit with a half-decent cooler factored in. Any recommendations for the mobo? Not too worried about the specific chipset, as long as it has USB 3/SATA3 etc, and decent built-in graphics.

Also, anyone have any experience with Shuttle-based systems? I'm looking for a discreet, smart and small-as-poss case, and the Shuttles look good. However they're not cheap. How do the quality of their mobo's and PSU's compare with Asus/Gigabyte and Corsair equivalents? Anyone have a good case to recommend otherwise?

Any advice appreciated! Cheers!
 
Example ITX system (do you really need MATX?):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £97.99
1 x Asus P8H77-I Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MiniITX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Lian Li PC-Q11B Aluminium Mini-ITX Cube Case - Black £76.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £64.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38192M1600HC11DC) £39.95
Total : £384.43 (includes shipping : £17.10).

Lian Li case is smaller, but £10 more due to aluminium design/Lian Li tax/build quality. The Prodigy is larger and offers more expansion capability though - it's really quite popular at the moment as a result. Overclocking is out of the question with an Intel system at this price range, though the AMDs will OC (not sure about ITX VRMs though).
 
If it's just for office work and multimedia, and you want it as small as possible, how about this?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus P8H77-I Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MiniITX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Silverstone Sugo SG06 HTPC USB3.0 Case with 300W SFX PSU - Silver (SST-SG06B USB 3.0) £82.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £69.95
1 x Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £34.99
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £23.98
1 x Cooler Master GeminII M4 Low Profile CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775) £21.95
1 x Samsung SN-208BB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - OEM £18.98
Total : £349.43 (includes shipping : £10.50).



CPU cooler is optional, but I find the stock cooler to be pretty loud.

The PSU the case comes with will power the system fine.

Board is out of stock, but it seems to be the cheapest ITX with SATA3/USB 3.0.
 
Why the SG06 out of interest? He's already got the PSU and optical drive, so might as well go for the cheaper Bitfenix Prodigy (though it's a little larger than the SG06).
 
True, and while the Prodigy is a brilliant case, it might be a bit too big, it seems more similiar to mATX cases in size, while the SG06 is far more compact since the OP wants "as small as possible".

I'm also condering maybe adding a 5450? The Intel IGPs are very capable but there's a 24 fps bug with them which doesn't exactly sync up with HD videos (which are 23.99 or something like that), which could cause a little stutter problem when watching videos.
 
Thanks for the above suggestions. One thing I forgot to mention is that I want external 5.25 AND 3.5 (or second 5.25) spaces. That's partly the reason why I was veering towards mATX.

I did say "as small as possible"... however I meant that in terms of mATX size - I'm not needing tiny mini-ITX size. Sorry for not being clearer!! As you say Orcvader, a case like the Prodigy is no smaller than some of the smaller Lian-Li mATX cube or the Fractal Design Mini cases anyway.

And presumably with a decent mATX mobo like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-520-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2265 a bit of overclocking should be possible? If video is a concern with the Intel CPU's, aren't the AMD offerings supposed to be better, especially at similar price points?

Thanks!
 
Orcvader said:
True, and while the Prodigy is a brilliant case, it might be a bit too big, it seems more similiar to mATX cases in size, while the SG06 is far more compact since the OP wants "as small as possible".

I'm also condering maybe adding a 5450? The Intel IGPs are very capable but there's a 24 fps bug with them which doesn't exactly sync up with HD videos (which are 23.99 or something like that), which could cause a little stutter problem when watching videos.
Click to expand...

Might as well consider an AMD APU setup in that case.
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1A75I_DELUXE/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A75M-ITX/

EDIT: Anything that isn't a K series CPU (bar an exception for LGA2011) is locked down pretty tight. You can't OC via BCLK by that much without other things cocking up.
 
scrlk said:
EDIT: Anything that isn't a K series CPU (bar an exception for LGA2011) is locked down pretty tight. You can't OC via BCLK by that much without other things cocking up.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's why I was beginning to wonder about an AMD APU - overclocked they prob wouldn't be much different to an i3, with the advantage of better graphics, as I understand?
 
If you want to overclock, only the Intel CPUs with a "K" at the end can be overclocked. It also requires a Z77 chipset, so it may go out of your budget.

As for an mATX build...

AMD if you really want to overclock, but it's not really needed for your use:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Fractal Design Arc Mini Tower Case - Black £69.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £69.95
1 x MSI A75MA-P35 AMD A75 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Motherboard ** FREE NEXUIZ GAME ** £43.99
1 x AMD A4-3300 2.50GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor (AD3300OJGXBOX) £41.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38192M1600HC11DC) £39.95
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £24.79
Total : £304.75 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Intel on the other hand with better CPU performance:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Fractal Design Arc Mini Tower Case - Black £69.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £69.95
1 x ASRock H77M Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £62.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38192M1600HC11DC) £39.95
1 x Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail £34.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £24.79
1 x Asus HD 5450 SILENT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Low Profile Graphics Card £18.95
Total : £335.70 (includes shipping : £11.75).



(CPU Cooler optional again, but sorry, the stock ones just annoy me :p)
 
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