Small rig for the girlfriend

pwurple

dwighet wrote: »

Shes not into gadgets..Nor am I..
But thanks for the suggestion.

My mistake, I thought you sounded like you were building a big gadget.

Fluffy88

The budget for this build is in around the €500 mark if I'm not mistaken.
The iPad 3 cost €600 so you'd have to buy an old one to get it within budget and there isn't a hope in hell you could get any other Apple products that fit within the budget so I don't think dwighet will be forking out for an Mac mini or what ever they are called.

I won't go Mac bashing but why bother suggest a Mac when it's not within budget?

Monotype

I'd echo what a few of the others said above, get a decent power supply anyway. I think the Celeron G540 would be plenty of processing power. It's actually deceptively powerful for its celeron name and great value.

Of course, the Trinity APU would be even better when the release the ITX boards.

marco_polo

Could we even get forego the Windows tax here and throw on a installation of Mint?, might be a possibility if this is just or web, movies, music (and of course no windows only software is required).

You could always go back to get windows later on if she absolutely hates it.

Genghiz Cohen

marco_polo wrote: »

Could we even get forego the Windows tax here and throw on a installation of Mint?, might be a possibility if this is just or web, movies, music (and of course no windows only software is required).

You could always go back to get windows later on if she absolutely hates it.

That's a great idea, no idea what Mint is but I stuck my dad on Ubuntu 11.11 and he had no problems.
(Well except Google Earth not playing nice with his 11" screen)

Monotype

Mint is much nicer than fugly-buntu.

marco_polo

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

That's a great idea, no idea what Mint is but I stuck my dad on Ubuntu 11.11 and he had no problems.
(Well except Google Earth not playing nice with his 11" screen)

They are fairly similar, Mint is basically an Ubuntu spin off but probably even more newbie friendly than Ubuntu as it come with a load of proprietary codecs pre-installed (DVDs, flash etc), and is just better looking all round.

Genghiz Cohen

Built around the Celeron G540. No Windows as Mint looks like a winner.


Item|Price
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€12.09
Super-Flower SF400Atlas 12CM 400W|€22.99
Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000.C 500GB, 16MB, SATA II, 8,9cm (3,5")|€51.51
Intel Celeron G540 Box, LGA1155|€38.49
Gigabyte GA-H61N-D2V, Intel H61, ITX|€48.79
4GB G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€14.46
Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced, Mini-ITX, ohne Netzteil|€43.57
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€250.89

For an extra tenner you could get the Element Q and maybe swap out the PSU for the SuperFlower, if it's the same size.

dwighet

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Built around the Celeron G540. No Windows as Mint looks like a winner.


Item|Price
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€12.09
Super-Flower SF400Atlas 12CM 400W|€22.99
Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000.C 500GB, 16MB, SATA II, 8,9cm (3,5")|€51.51
Intel Celeron G540 Box, LGA1155|€38.49
Gigabyte GA-H61N-D2V, Intel H61, ITX|€48.79
4GB G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€14.46
Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced, Mini-ITX, ohne Netzteil|€43.57
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€250.89

For an extra tenner you could get the Element Q and maybe swap out the PSU for the SuperFlower, if it's the same size.

Thats a tidyset up...I could even throw in a copy of windows and still be well under budget...

Nice one..I going to take a good look at that.

Monotype

Ah no, don't get that crappy PSU. The hard drive is also an old series. Their "D" series is much faster.

Genghiz Cohen

Monotype wrote: »

Ah no, don't get that crappy PSU. The hard drive is also an old series. Their "D" series is much faster.

Y'all gonna have to recommend a PSU, I saw SuperFlower and thought they were a good brand.

Better HDD? Toshiba DT01ACA Series 500GB, SATA 6Gb/s I know the Sata6 doesn't mean anything to a HDD but that means it's probably newer than the SATA3.

Monotype

"SATA 3" = SATA 6Gbps.

Superflower make good PSUs =/> All Superflower PSUs are good.

The amazon is a good one around the 40ish mark, when it is in stock.

To be honest, I haven't been monitoring Toshiba's progress in the HDD market but I know the new WD Blue is good:
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/7200+RPM/39670/WD+Caviar+Blue+500GB+SATA+3+6Gb+s.article

Actually, it's the same price as their mobile 500GB if you were to buy a very small case.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/7200+RPM/39670/WD+Caviar+Blue+500GB+SATA+3+6Gb+s.article

U_Fig

Be quiet do some good low watt psu's

I build a htpc a few weeks ago..

G540
Asrock b75 itx
Element q
SSD
4GB ram

Had to replace the psu element q psu was way to loud.. Got a be quiet.. I know it's SFX but It comes in ATX too do you could use that one with the cooler master advanced 120

dwighet

Well lads after sitting here at my gaff with Herself and 3-4 jamison and cokes in us:D I let the cat out of the bag and told her I was going to build a pc for her...

So I showed her a list of the cases that I thought were appropriate and her being her picked out the most expensive one..This bad boy and I think it is a good choice..

Thanks to Glynf for the recommendation:cool:

Now because of the price of the case im going to go for the celerion cpu(thanks monotype). so what I need now is a decent board to suit with decent audio and hdmi as well. and a good psu as well..

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated..
Cheers lads.. your a good bunch:cool:

Monotype

You could go with the BeQuiet SFX PSU:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/300w-be-quiet-bn133-sfx-micro-atx-psu-with-80mm-quiet-fan-80plus-green

I have the 350W version, I think, and it's quiet but it does seem to suck up a good few watts when the system is supposed to be off... I really need to check this out. It could be the motherboard as I'm suspecting that it's a bit wonky.
Alternatively, you could go with Silverstone all the way and they have two great looking ones on scan, but unfortunately, they're £30 and £40 extra, so you probably wouldn't be bothered with that kind of extra costs.

Judging by the pictures of that case on the silverstone website, you could fit a good sized CPU cooler in there and have a pretty quiet system.
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=333

dwighet

Monotype wrote: »

You could go with the BeQuiet SFX PSU:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/300w-be-quiet-bn133-sfx-micro-atx-psu-with-80mm-quiet-fan-80plus-green

I have the 350W version, I think, and it's quiet but it does seem to suck up a good few watts when the system is supposed to be off... I really need to check this out. It could be the motherboard as I'm suspecting that it's a bit wonky.
Alternatively, you could go with Silverstone all the way and they have two great looking ones on scan, but unfortunately, they're £30 and £40 extra, so you probably wouldn't be bothered with that kind of extra costs.

Judging by the pictures of that case on the silverstone website, you could fit a good sized CPU cooler in there and have a pretty quiet system.
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=333

I notice with that case that there is a good bit of room for a half decent cooler...will have to have a look around to see whats available for that socket.

Im leaning towards the be quiet psu... should be fine.

U_Fig

for the mobo i'd went for ASRock B75M-ITX, Sockel 1155, ITX cheap has USB 3 and SATA 3...so if you were to get an SSD it wouldn't be bottle-necked...though it only had one SATA 3 port, but any HDD will not see any benefit from being on SATA 3 as opposed to SATA 2