Whats the smallest PC you have built?

Soldato
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Whats the smallest PC you have built?

Looking to build an itx one soon and would be interested if any of you have built a small ITX system and what you thought of it and pics would be great!!

Wen to a friends house yesterday and he has been given a very small itx system. Think it was an Acer, not sure.

Really fancy building a small PC!!
 
If your planning on running a Linux OS, like ubuntu, you could always base it around a cheap ARM dual core A9 dev board (and make any ITX system look morbidly obese :D)

harmony_kit.jpg
 
wow that is crazy can I haz scale sarge?


Crap vid but it shows the general size. ARM dev boards are becoming quite popular now (to the point of selling out quickly :eek:)

I had planned to using TIs OMAP4 pandaboard (£120) for an HTPC/XBMC build but can't see when they'll become available again :o

It has similar performance to the Atom/Ion pico-ITX Guardsmon linked to, hopefully there'll be a nVidia Kal-El/TI OMAP5 dev board soon :p
 
My current Lian Li Q11, the appropriately named 'Fanboy Folly'. As much as I love it, I do think it's a bit on the chubby side. ;)

I'd love to go smaller, if only because I think 2.5" HDD's and SO-DIMMS are so cute (:D) but the desire for silly amounts of 'horsepower' in what would be my main PC makes this a tough ask. I don't think I could ever go back to one of the 'massive, but actually containing very little' ATX cases again.


With regards to the OP. Small and jolly powerful can give rise to heat and noise issues, as you'd imagine. Depending on the size of your intended build, you'll also need to compromise on some hardware choices and check, then recheck component dimensions. However, whatever you might choose to build, post pics! :D
 
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ITX is fine for size. Just need to find the right case / components.

Smaller the better but also powerfull
 
Yeah, got a mobile desktop which is small enough to carry about easily with a 15" screen etc from plug-in points to plug-in points.

Think it's the smallest ITX round here with a discrete card and on-board PSU.

tmp1.jpg


http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18121012

Memory label is wrong btw, its 4GB of DDR2, aside from that it's a little monster which fits in a backpack.

The rest of it is on a tray that fits over that lot, slim optical, 128GB SSD, 320GB HDD.

Can probably fit eight of these in my main desktop case which itself is a mini-tower case (mini-p180).

With all the newer kit out it could be slightly upgraded by changing the mobo to a 1155/1156 ITX and going to DDR3 but there's nothing better than the 5570 that fits in there and can be powered by a 220W PSU.


I think it was about £600 all in, it's not cheap to build small and powerful.

SSD 145
Mobo 116
CPU 85
Case 70
HDD 56
gfx 55
Memory 35
Optical 30

Plus bits and bobs.
 
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What about building one with an i3 setup? Would a 150w Pico PSU be ok?

Pico PSUs are fine but may not be able to run discrete graphics.

However I have checked the energy usage of my 8400+5570 rig and it did only seem to come to 138W when being stressed which would suggest it may be possible to run that kind of thing on a 150W pico.

Just not very much headroom.
 
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i like my itx, case is a bit big though, id love a shuttle. Thinking about a 580 and ssd for mine atm but unsure. But then again i need a quad with 8gig of ram and a good gfx card so :x
 
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