Small Is Good??

eoinmurphy

Hey everybody,
I wasn't sure where to post this so I just thought that I'd give you a try.

I thinking about building a small form factor pc this summer but to be perfectly honest with you I not to sure on where to start...

For one I'm finding it difficult to find any sort of range when it comes to picking a case, its seems toi me that places such as Komplett.ie prefer just to sell these systems as barebones packages and in seperate parts.
I wa thinking along the lines of one the Biostar iDEQ cases, but again I think that these are only available as pre-built systems.

I was hoping that you, with all your wise wisdom, could help me.
And maybe share some of your views on the different MOBO's there are for this factor and cooling etc etc.....

Much appriciated,
Murph.

Inspector Gadget

There are a number of "small" form factors out there: the smallest would be the soon-to-be-released Nano-ITX spec, at 120x120mm (yikes!), followed by the more available (and slightly larger, at 170x170mm) Mini-ITX spec, both of which were designed by VIA.

There are a number of Mini-ITX boards available from different manufacturers, some with soldered-on processors (i.e. most of VIA's range, with their C3's which are pin-compatible with a Pentium-III, at speeds of up to 1GHz), but some offer alternatives such as Intel P4s and the like.

(See http://www.mini-itx.com/ for an idea of what's out there in the line of ITX derivatives, as well as some bloody unusual case design ideas!!!!)

I'm not sure, but I think the motherboards used in the Shuttle range of SFF PCs - they call them XPCs, I believe - are a unique size and layout (254x185mm), but their range is very large, and they have boards for P4s, XPs and Athlon 64s.

(See http://eu.shuttle.com/ for more)

Some manufacturers are trying their hand at their own shuttle "clones" (Shuttle were the first to try this, as far as I can remember), such as Biostar, Epox and others. As they only seem to sell full systems rather than bare motherboards (again, as far as I know) the layout and form factor may be customised to suit the shape and size of the case.

Remember, this small size comes at the price of expandability - many of these boards don't feature AGP slots, favouring on-board graphics instead; this will be important if you want high-performance 3D for games and such like.

Some (for example the Nano-ITX boards) don't even ship with a PCI slot, or a floppy connector, so know what you need and keep an eye out for little "gotchas" like this.

Hope this lot helps,
Gadget

koneko

I highly recommend the Shuttle systems (the recent ones anyway, some of the really early ones were a bit flakey).

You could get (for instance) an Athlon Shuttle, it has onboard graphics, LAN, sound, all you'll need to add is a harddrive, memory and a DVD/CDRW drive. If you're going to be using it for gaming, add a graphics card (there's an AGP slot in them and a spare PCI slot so that's fine), and you'll be flying.

What are you going to be using the system for (mainly)?

Cyrus

ive recently built a system using the antec aria case, do a search of the forums and ull see it

Nichololas

I can also recommend the Shuttle cases - I recently got an SN45G one.

You can choose Intel, Athlon or A64 depending on what you want, there are several different chassis' and faceplates (take a look on http://us.shuttle.com/product_mini.asp).

If it's your first time building a PC (it was mine) it's fairly simple and I had no major problems.

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by Cyrus
ive recently built a system using the antec aria case, do a search of the forums and ull see it

Had a look at the page on the Antec site. Looks pretty, 300w PSU is a nice touch considering so many of these cases come with woefully underpowered PSUs... however, I think they're being just a little brave in their assertion that:

And finally, Aria is the quietest PC case in the entire world. (Really. We're not kidding. And we've got the independent lab tests to prove it.)

Zalman TNN500A, anyone?

Gadget

Xithus

a shuttle is defo the way to go, Iv an SN45G myself and its the best thing I ever bought. If your not sure what to get just post up what you'll be using it for and what your budget is and im sure you'll get plenty of advise.
Shuttles are also very easy to assemble. I put an athlon64 one together about half an hour ago, took me bout 20mins.

eoinmurphy

Well I wasn't too sure what I'd be using it for because I don't know the limitations of the SFF. But it would be mainly for gaming and multimedia really. Also a bit of programming.

My budget is a bit of a guess at the moment. It will probably be around €1000. I don't really wasnt to spend more than that on it(if I even need to spend that much)

I've had a look at the shuttle site and like what I see.
I've also been considering going down the AMD 64 road. Any suggestions??

Cheers
Murph

davidclayton

CHOOSING A SHUTTLE

if you're going for performance / gaming
you really are only choosing between 2 shuttles;
AMD 64 SN85G4
INTEL SB75G2
you can't really go wrong with either.

if you go intel, don't even contemplate putting in a prescott.
i've got my SB75G2 running a

2.8 northwood
512 OCZ DDR400
sapphire 9600xt
nec 2500 dvd burner
160gig sata + 80gig pata
cpu temp is 30 @ idle, about mid 40's @ load.

mine has the enhance 220W powersupply,
but it comes with the silentx 250w now.
i've also replaced ALL the fans
[cpu/ice, gpu, psux2] - left the northbridge alone.

shuttles even run the new ATI graphics cards!

if you need info or opinions,
go to www.sudhian.com

YOU'LL DEFINITELY GET A KICKASS SYSTEM FOR €1000.
[assuming you don't need a monitor]

KdjaCL

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=1691024#post1691024


Not bad pc may be what you want.

kdjac

eoinmurphy

What's the story with Shuttle suppiers in Ireland. I could only locate one, Multimedia in Nutgrove.
Yeah I'm deffinatly looking at an AMD64 system.
I prefer the Shuttle SK83G to the SN85G4.

Any opinions??]

Cheers
Murph