BrooksyX Mini-Itx Rig

[Geofrancis]

dont go the pentium 4 dualcore route they put out more heat than a nuclear reactor. look into one of the celeron dualcores or a e2140 or e2160 on ebay. or if its jsut any cheap 775 cpu you are after you can get 3ghz p4 based celerons for $20 but i wouldnt use it for anything more than a temporary cpu as they are shit.

 

[mlee49]

Whats the IGP on that Zotac? Does it support HD encoding?

 

[BrooksyX]

Its a geforce 7100.

 

[mlee49]

Will that do HD support?

 

[n-ster]

What if you sell your rig parted out and use your Q66 underclocked? or just wait like 2 weeks so you can get 15$ more so you can buy a 430 NIB at the egg

 

[a_ump]

he's not sure if he's going to part out his rig yet, as he doesn't know if the performance of the ITX build will be satifying lol

 

[Geofrancis]

theres no point running a quad in that motherboard as its only single channel ram it will kill performance by 10-20%

and the gforce 7100 doesnt do hd decoding so you need a gforce 8200 or above or a fast enough cpu to do it on.

 

[BrooksyX]

Looks like the build is still on thanks to bogmali!

I got the case today. Will be uploading some pics soon.

 

[a_ump]

fuck yea, what CPU did you get? that's awesome, happy for ya, and me as it may help me on builds ....though i went to newegg and tried to put a rig together around ITX and i can build a budget system for 300 that is much better performing but i suppose i'll just be asking if they care for desktop space and whatnot should performance be acceptable.

 

[SystemViper]

Looks like the build is still on thanks to bogmali!

I got the case today. Will be uploading some pics soon.

super

 

[BrooksyX]

Looks like ill be getting an e5200, so looks its a step up from the celeron! Case is a little bigger than I was expecting but still pretty small. The base is a little larger than a standard peice of printer paper and its about 5" tall. PSU looks like decent quality. 24 pin cable looks a little too long though lol. Wish I had everything so I could do the entire build tonight.

 

[a_ump]

dam dude, that's one hell of a step up, i recon you got a good deal so kuddos to bogmali. that ITX will definitely satisfy you if your just looking for a media/homework/light gaming rig.

 

[BrooksyX]

Lol, well very light gaming. Nvidia geforce 7100 is a pretty weak gpu. Won't play any newer games but should have no problems with older games and emulators.

I am tempted to cut the back of the pci-e 1x and throw a low 16x card in there so I could game with it. But then I couldn't use my pci-e 1x tv tuner.

 

[BrooksyX]

Pics:

 

[Geofrancis]

so how are you planning on getting a fan on that heatsink? it looks like your going to need a low profile heasink/fan.

 

[BrooksyX]

so how are you planning on getting a fan on that heatsink? it looks like your going to need a low profile heasink.

I'm gonna have a 120mm intake fan right next to it on the other side. Ill take a picture and show you. I don't have an extra 120mm fan right now so ill show it with a 92mm one. Give me a sec.

 

[Geofrancis]

lol that was fast

are you going to run the fan from the motherboard header? if you are u should get a pwm fan so its controlled by the cpu temperature.

 

[BrooksyX]

That should keep the cpu nice and cool, right?

 

[Geofrancis]

yea those 45nm core2's run cold pretty much. but i would advise on a pwm fan so you dont have to run it at full power all the time. so it throttles up with increasing cpu load rather than full speed all the time

what about one of the intel heatsink/fans from a newer cpu all the new quads and core2duos come with a much lower profile hsf than that one you are using its probibly about half the hight and should leave enough clearence for the stock fan or a 15mm 80mm or 92mm fan

you should get one with your e5200 if your buyingh it retail.

 

[mlee49]

more pics= Thanks

What modding are you doing to the case? Anything fun?

 

[BrooksyX]

yea those 45nm core2's run cold pretty much. but i would advise on a pwm fan so you dont have to run it at full power all the time. so it throttles up with increasing cpu load rather than full speed all the time

what about one of the intel heatsink/fans from a newer cpu all the new quads and core2duos come with a much lower profile hsf than that one you are using its probibly about half the hight and should leave enough clearence for the stock fan or a 15mm 80mm or 92mm fan

you should get one with your e5200 if your buyingh it retail.

Well I plan on running the 120mm on 5v so it should be pretty quite but still move lots of air. I like the heatsink I have because it does use the copper core, many of the lower end intel cpus have all aluminum heatsinks. Might have to try both out.

more pics= Thanks

What modding are you doing to the case? Anything fun?

I am not sure what modding I'm gonna do yet. Might have to do some. I don't like how the hdd mount system is setup so for now I am gonna have to mount it in the external 3.5" bay but if I ever get a card reader i'm gonna have to find some other way to mount it.

Ill probably look at some ways to improve cooling and cable managment as well. As it seems like heat is one of the biggest problems with this mini-itx builds.

edit: also plan on mounting that usb wifi adapter I got internally. Got a mini usb bluetooth adapter I wanna mount internally, and maybe pick up a media center remote and mount the ir receiver internally as well.

Oh and got a usb tv tuner I'm thinking about mounting internally as well so probably gonna have to drill a hole for the antenna jack. Also gonna have to get a small usb hub for all this too. Gonna probably have to mod that as well lol.

 

[mlee49]

Quick question, do you want/have a low profile stock heatsink? I have one for my Q9450 that is just sitting here and I'm not sure if you might want that vs a silent copper cored hs.

Otherwise, I would try to figure out the HDD troubles cause you dont want to have to run an external 3.5 bay, especially USB. What about a 2.5" laptop drive? Maybe a cheap 50GB SSD?

 

[Geofrancis]

what about mounting the hard drive on the bottom of the case on some rubber feet or some foam. that will free up the 3.5" bay and stop any vibrations going through the case.

 

[BrooksyX]

Quick question, do you want/have a low profile stock heatsink? I have one for my Q9450 that is just sitting here and I'm not sure if you might want that vs a silent copper cored hs.

Otherwise, I would try to figure out the HDD troubles cause you dont want to have to run an external 3.5 bay, especially USB. What about a 2.5" laptop drive? Maybe a cheap 50GB SSD?

I might want it. Ill get back to you later on that. I have thought about those options for the HDD, would eventually like to get a Terabyte or bigger drive so I can store all my dvds on there. For now I am gonna steal a 250gb from my main rig as I have 4 and can easily spare one.

 

[BrooksyX]

what about mounting the hard drive on the bottom of the case on some rubber feet or some foam. that will free up the 3.5" bay and stop any vibrations going through the case.

Thats what I am thinking. Somewhere along the lines of that at least. There is plenty of space of front to put a full hdd.