Buiding a desktop PC.

I rather fancy having a PC integrated to the main Hi-Fi etc system. Mainly to download/store music etc files. Got a fair bit of space for it, so even an older case size would be fine - but flat rather than a tower. Would like a decent processor so it doesn't become obsolete quickly. Only need an HDMI output for the TV, so probably not a fancy graphics card.

I've built a few in the past, but can't for the life of me remember who I got the bits from. Googling as usual gives several.

What would be the most reliable mother board to go for? Not had that good experience with ASUS before. And which processor? As I said not done anything like this for ages, so very out of touch.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)
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Given the choice of stuff you can buy from the likes of Morgan I can't see the point in building your own any more unless for gaming.

All the modern Intel i5 and i7 chips have more than adequate 2D graphics for normal users. Not up to partial screen video so if you intend to do video editing on it then you will need a graphics card. Otherwise you have have a high performance system that idles at under 50W using an i7-3770 or similar bought secondhand for around £300.

Many of the places I used to buy from are no longer in business. Scan are still going:

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First define a budget and then decide what your priorities are. I would tend to favour low power, fast enough and quiet if it is a media centre. Bigger quieter slow moving fans will help as will SSDs to avoid noises off. You might also want some acoustic foam and silicone fan mounts.

Reply to
Martin Brown

I've built a few in the past but these days it's generally cheaper to spec. the machine and have it built rather than buy components yourself. Seems like the PC Builders sacrifice margin to make a great value PC whereas components are priced for margin on individual product sales.

On-Board graphics which are part of the Intel processors are extremely capable and quite happily play HD Video without any problems. I'm a fan of QuietPC - have a look at these

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Reply to
www.GymRatZ.co.uk

Rather than buy the bits I think I would look for a recycled business machine. This isn't necessarily a particularly good example

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I think these towers work fine on their side too. I've had two or three Dells for my main office machine, very easy to maintain or update (they usually have all the spare disk carriers and cables that you need).

Or this?

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Reply to
newshound

Never thought of going for a used machine - which might make some sense.

Other thing I'd probably like is the ability to add a sound card with balanced in and outs - I'm still fairly analogue here for some things. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I think for this application I would actually look at some of the better NAS units. Very small and neat, loads of strage obviously, quiet, low power ( < 30W ) and you can get them with HDMI out and remote controls etc.

e.g.

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If building one, then you don't need a huge amount of CPU power for this application, so even an i3 class machine should be fine.

Oddly I would always go for ASUS motherboards - over the years I have found them to be the most reliable choice. Gigabyte are ok, and ASROCK a bit cheaper.

Reply to
John Rumm

I did this with a Zotac motherboard which came with an Atom processor, integrated graphics and RAM, all passively cooled. Stuffed it in a mini case, which could hold a couple of 3.5" drives - but I used 2.5" drives for lower noise, and an SSD as the OS boot drive. It uses an external laptop PSU.

That was some years back - it's still quite capable but only 720P video IIRC. These people seem to specialise it what you're after:

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IME it's the quiet/silent bit that presents the challenge/compromise/potential cost.

Reply to
RJH

I just skipped an atom board case and PSU...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I tend to use Overclockers.

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They often have some very attractive bundles.

I also bought a Silverstone HTPC case which will (honestly) one day go into the stereo stack underneath the TV.

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My last purchase was an AMD system (see signature) which required a separate graphics card but matched my i5-2500k in the (intended) HTPC for general performance.

My case is double height because I am also using it as a file server so it has a lot of space for HDDs. A single height case would be fine for most uses.

Motherboards - the HTPC uses Asrock, this PC uses Gigabyte. Both (touch wood) seem to be fine.

Should you ever desire to use Ultra HD which I think would require a separate graphics card, you might need some extra headroom on the PSU.

Cheers

Dave R

Reply to
David

Do you know about the problem with 2000 series (2550, 2558, 2750,2758) atom boards? There is a processor hardware bug that causes nearly all of them to fail in the first two or three years. Reputable ones actually made in the last year or so should have newer processors without the fault but it is hard to tell without the year of manufacture. Most board makers will repair/replace them, but that it obviously a big nuisance.

Reply to
Roger Hayter

this one did years withiut attention but teh PSU fans in te teeny cases were dead noisy and I got given a mini tower with a 64bit celeron or summat...free...

And that case and board hadn't got room for all the drives I wanted..the new server has two big disks and a CD rom

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message <q10cd2$mmm$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Noise was the problem with my mini-itx machine I'm getting rid of.

I'm also about to try to lose a Dell Vostro 200, which is an XP generation Core 2 Duo machine with an additional posh video card that needs an adapter to feed the lowly vga monitors here. It only takes the low-profile pci cards, though.

I'm a bit out of touch with current balanced i/o soundcards, but most of the ones here are full height cards or have external breakout boxes, so you might as well use a usb device.

Reply to
Bill

Same here. I had four 1U servers, all Mini-ITX. Mostly fanless (on the motherboard) but tiny, noisy fans in the case.

I dumped them in favour of HP microservers that I got for about £100 each. Large, slow fans.

Reply to
Bob Eager

Yes. I had wanted a low power server but in the end the motheboard I used wasn't hugely powerful, and the case/CPU fans were quiet, there was bags of room for disks, and it all sits in a cornber plugged into the ethernet anyway so who cares?

If you run headless Linux, you need only a GB of RAM or so, any 64 bit machine is well powerful enough - mine is an XP era home mechine - but tedesktop here is much hiher spec.

It has no disk except 64GB of SSD to boot and run programs from, an onboard sound ethrnet and video though it actually run an Nvidia card for playing real time games instead.

The case is old but te original XP era MB went peculiar on me and I was doing a fair bit of video processing and running an XP virtual machine inside it as well, so I went for a cheapo modern board with decent CPU and 8GB RAM, and a new nvidia card.

Mostly bought from

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Prices are up these days...hatrd to get anything under £500..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

CCL ebuyer Aria Scan Overclockers ...

Raspberry Pi 3+ with a DAC - do you really need more? :-)

Reply to
Rob Morley

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