I'm going away to college next fall, and I figure it would be a good thing to have a nice reliable computer to have just in case mine is in shambles or something. Nothing fancy, 1700+ and 512MB Kingstop and an 80GB and a cheap vid card would be nice, so a couple hundred bucks. Anyway that's not the issue, I want it to be as small as humanly possible, and I don't want a shuttle. I was thinking of some sort of ammo box that I could mod (which would give me something to do with my dremel and I over the summer), which I would love to do. Best case scenario it would be something I could stick my LCD monitor on and only be 5-6 inches high and then (some help here would be nice, i have no idea how big the desks will be and if i'll have room for my keyboard)a 1.25 ft sq ish. I have a few buttons I canabalized from a crane in a condemned junk yard that I really want to use as the reset/power buttons, so I think I will start my mod on those. I am thinking some sort of shuttle motherboard (must be tiny as hell) and a laptop CD-ROM. Like I said, nothing fancy, just something that will get the work done. I will probably get a low-voltage mobile barton and some sort of creating ducting system to get sufficient airflow. An issue that may present itself is the power supply, which I will definetly put in the back of the case, but it needs to be small. I think a 200-250watt will do, so I'm thinking a shuttle power supply will be perfect. Anyway, anyone know of a box that will work? I would probably be fine with some sort of mundane metal box, as long as it would fit well. This is all in my head now and haven't started to think of the layout at all, I need to find the box and the components and before I buy them discover how they'll go and if i can make this work. Thanks everyone for your help!
Are you hoping for a full ATX solution or are you going with Micro-ATX? Smallest ATX case on the market
I like it, but it's really expensive. What are the disadvantages of micro-ATX and ATX? Could I still have a barton and one DIMM slot? I would only need an AGP slot, wouldn't have a need for a PCI.
microATX is not all that different the mATX boards are generally not for enthusiast though (ie super overclocking boards) but right now im running a gigabyte mATX board in my main comp, and will be putting this comp into this case (http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=54482) yes its not the smallest, but its pretty damn small... mATX boards have 1 agp slot and 3 PCI slots, so your pretty well covered unless you have alot of PCI cards...
or go a size further down and go FlexATX, its got 1xAGP, 2xPCI, and its 9"x7.5" not too shabby compared to mATX at 9.6"x9.6". www.newegg.com should have a few of them right now.
Well I think I would rather just build my own box, it would not only be cheaper but more fine tuned to my needs as well. I need the smallest nForce2 400Mhz as humanly possible, doesn't need much (don't need ANY PCI slots), but it needs to have the bare minimum. Would a shuttle motherboard work, do they sell those separate from the machines?
i think they do, but i haven't bothered to check that myself (don't see buying one, seperately at least) take a look at their website. www.shuttle.com i think.
Well I can't seem to find the actual motherboards that they sell in shuttle (do regular MicroATX motherboards fit in shuttles?), just a few MicroATX ones on their site. From personal experience, can someone recommend a good 400Mhz nForce2 MicroATX motherboard? Thanks everyone!!
