Media PC for my sister

[fredrök]

Hello!

Last year I (finally) built myself my first PC. At first my parents and my sister were very skeptical about me building my own PC but since my machine still works perfectly (well, it’s still a computer), my sister has asked me to build her one too.

My sister is not a gamer and she uses her computer to watch movies (1080p), for web browsing and working in MS Office. She might also play an occasional “facebookâ€-game and maybe one or two oldschool games (like Age of empires II).

I have decided that she doesn’t need a dedicated GPU so good integrated graphics are important.

The goal with the build is to make it a cheap and cheerful machine that’s decently fast and clean looking

This is the specs so far:

Display: 22-24†1080p

Case: Fractal design Define Mini

PSU: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze

CPU: i3-3225 or A10-5800k or …?

MB: mATX ???

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Dual C DDR3 8GB Kit, 1866MHz

Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Boot drive: 120Gb SSD Samsung 840

Storage: 1000Gb 7200rpm Seagate/WD/…

Now my questions are:

• Which CPU should I get? i3 or A10 or something else? According to the internet the A10 has the best graphics but the i3 is the best processor.
  
• Which motherboard should I get? I have no idea. Suggestions? I’m not going to overclock.
  
• I’m getting 1866MHz memory because I read somewhere that when you run integrated graphics fast RAM makes a big difference. Is it worth the cost?
  
• The Define Mini seems to be out of stock (in Sweden at least), is there any other clean looking mATX cases?
  

Best regards,

fredök

[Guest]

Those two CPU's are fairly matched except when it comes to graphical performance. It''s really up to you which way you go - I'd probably go with the option that works out cheaper overall which on low budget builds often tends to be AMD. For a motherboard if you were to go with Intel I'd look at a H77 chipset board seeing as you're not overclocking. I'm personally a fan of Asus so something like a P8H77-M which is a mATX board would be a good option. ASRock also has a H77M board.

As for your memory question; yes, AMD APU's perform better with higher clocked memory however if she's just playing things like AOE2 ect, you won't really notice it - I can run AOE2 fine on my netbook using 1600Mhz RAM and an E350.

The only other case I know of that's MATX that is any good is the Silverstone TJ08. However, would you want to go for mini ITX? Something like a Bitfenix Prodigy or Fractal Aray R2? One thing I will say with smaller builds is that finding a modular power supply or atleast a power supply with short cables will make building a lot easier. I know Silverstone has a short cable kit that fits their fully modular PSU's like the Strider Plus ect. The cable kit is about $20.

[s3ns3]

even the i3 3220 has enough gpu power for those needs. so i3+b75 board .runs cooler and uses less power.like 30W while watching movies...

[asusfan]

if you or your sister has the money to go with a prodigy case that might work well as you can get all kinds of colours now and just as well with an m-itx board and lots of good design for cooling systems and stuff. there is also side window ones avaialble from FrozenCPU.com

http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/pr...assis/prodigy/[/url=http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy/]

you can also get pretty cheap and slightly smaller gpu's if you can't get good onboard.

there is so many options, as it will be used for music (i assume) then look for something with good onboard sound.

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product...111-IB-E692-KR[/url=http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=111-IB-E692-KR]

^^^ that board is amazing for the price and i think you still can put a chip in that with intergrated graphics, that in a pink Prodigy might she like??

and then fit a blue ray player and small psu and you should be good to go, like the idea with the memory.

hope this helps, i just think if your wanting a media PC a Matx isn't that small a system / case than a mid tower normal ATX system, but the m-Itx looks more like a media / homework pc.

your call, its just an idea, one i would like to do myself oneday.

also look into the smaller 2.5" HDD as it will save room

[Ledhead900]

Well my friend built a media pc, they don't really require any good hardware at all to function as a media center in fact he just went online and filtered parts by lowest to highest cost built around a socket 1155. I have a core 2 duo on server/ media duty and it does a great job. Though you would want more than 1TB just buy two of those green power rated slower 3TB WD drives that cost about $80 these days.

He built the i3 machine for about $300 :cool: