mITX Build for Customer

Got the parts ordered for a customer. They wanted just a simple desktop and tasked me with building them a solid box on a fairly tight budget. Here is what I came up with.

Lian Li Case
They wanted a very small footprint, and nothing flashy. This little guy should work out just fine and the price was right. $45

Asrock Mobo
Intel G3220 Haswell CPU
Originally I had planned on going AMD and their new Kabini, but after thinkin about it, I am not real sure if I want to use them as my crash test dummies, so to speak. Went with Intel as I know what we will be getting with it. Plenty of speed and decent power consumption. The board, well, not many choices in mITX for budget Intel builds. This one should work just fine. $125

EVGA 500W PSU
Not 100% sold on EVGA's new line of PSUs, but for the price, I'll take a chance. (At least their customer service is great, so if there is a problem.. ) $40

GSkill Ripjaws X RAM
1866? I know, don't really need that. These are for me. I have a set of these 1866s and a set of 1600s in my rig. I paid the extra for the faster RAM and will be swapping it for my 1600. Cost $80, but charged them $45 for the 1600s

Western Digital 1TB HD
I kinda wanted to go with a smaller SSD for Boot and also a mech for storage, but the money wasn't in the budget for it and capacity was more important to them. $60

LG 24" Monitor
Not many reviews, but for a non-gaming, basic panel, this should be more than capable and give them plenty of real estate to work with. The $20 promo brought this down to $130. Crazy price for a 24" HD monitor. LOL

Logitech Wireless Keyboard/Trackpad
Again with space in mind, and as little clutter on the desk as they can get. $40.

ASUS Wireless Adapter
Bought one of these from Wes at the last LAN and it works great. Had a promo code on it which brought the price down to $15. No brainer.

All total, just a wee under $500.00. IMHO, heck of a deal considering what $500 gets you at say, Best Buy, WalMart or other name brands.

I will be tossing Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit on it (freebie on me) and should be a very capable and solid machine for at least the next few years seeing what they will be requiring it to do.

Once all the parts make it in, I will let you guys know how it all goes.

I know you like the SFF builds. I do as well. Waiting on my board back from my sister (used it till their RMA came back in.) Gonna start on the LianLi test bench build in a bit. Should be interesting. I'm thinkin fully polished aluminum, then powdercoated a translucent color yet to be decided. I will be incorporating acrylic in this one as well. (Its fun to work with and give me lots of options for some artistic flair.) For sure it will be water cooled as well. Thinking rigid tubing for this as I have all the fittings already. Pumped to get started.

Oh, BTW, the parts due Monday. Update then.

Ok, well, got everything installed and setup. Very sweet case. My thoughts on this build.
IF you are planning on using this case and a similar CPU, make sure you have a better cooler for it. The stocker is an all aluminum unit and in this very cramped case, there is nearly no airflow once other components are installed. There are no fans OR mounting points for a fan. The only active air movement is from the HSF and PSU. Once I had everything finished, at idle, the temps were in the mid to upper 70s. No how, no way that would be acceptable. My solution was to go my pile of parts and try the stock cooler from my i7. It is the copper core/aluminum version and is the same physical size, so it fits without clearance issues. I also grabbed a small 92mm fan and found a small area near one of the grills and mounted it there. It doesn't push much air, but I figured any air movement would be better than none. After the changes, huge difference in temps. Idle temps are now in the mid 30s and under full max load (Intel Burn Test Maximum Settings) it didn't hit 70. Impressive. On a side note, it is nearly silent as well, so all is good. I took it over to their house and mentioned how sweet it would be hooked up to their TV. After a bit of explaining, they said go for it. The wireless keyboard with built in track-pad is very slick and works quite well. I stayed there for about 2 hours while Cindy tinkered around with it. She loves it. She gave me a flash drive with a pile of pictures on and I uploaded them onto the pc. She was amazed how cool it was to be able to see her family and friends pix up on the big screen and said that she thinks that will be a fantastic feature to show off to friends and family. As for the 24" monitor..well, it never even got unboxed. LOL. I did tell them if they want to keep it, to at least hook it up to test it before the 30 days. It will go upstairs on the desk and may be used later on, but for now...they are sold on the HTPC idea. Anyway, I got some crappy pictures of it, but I don't think they are even worth uploading. LOL. All said, I am very pleased at how it all turned out and even more pleased that they love the build.

For sure Wes...gotta love full power in a tiny box.

I looked at coolers, but again..budget constraints. For a decent one...lookin at around $50 and the money was not there.

Add the the case size restrictions, I also went with a full size PSU instead of the SFF. Money AND the small psu only gives an additional 3/4 inch if that (I test fitted my Silverstone 450) just couldn't justify the diff in price. The way it is setup now...works just great.
Check out how small this little guy is. 11.42" tall, 7.6" wide and 8.2" deep. In the one pic, you can see the free space without the PSU. Once it is in, nada. lol

The LG Monitor is going back. (or I will buy it for a spare, lol ) They love the TV setup so much..don't even want to keep the monitor.

Last item update. The DVD is coming out and a new Blu-Ray is going in. They have a dedicated Blu-ray player currently hooked up, but the older LG TV only has TWO HDMI ports. The Cable box is using one and the Blu-Ray/HTPC the other. They own a nice collection of Blu-Rays, and don't want to be plugging and un-plugging everytime they want to watch one. They will move the dedicated BR player to their bedroom TV, and then the HTPC can stay hooked up and they can still watch AND burn media without juggling things around. (also saves them some cash)

Well, that is that. Another very happy customer...just like we like it.