Hi guys, how you all doing? i've built many pc's in my time and am looking to put together 2 more but i have no experience with sff. I convinced my girlfriend that not only is her laptop junk and that she needs a new pc, but that i could build her one for around £350 or less, i would also like to build one for myself as a lan rig, nothing too fancy but still capable of gaming. Are shuttles the way to go? or are there better alternatives? what size of graphics card can i fit in there, what cpu etc? im used to putting together big expensive computers and often go ott, so any advice to keep me and my wallet under control would be appreciated.
I had a 4870 1GB and a Q9400 with 8GB RAM in my Shuttle, I had the P35 one.. I think that's about as much as you can expect to get into one though. I wouldn't recommend getting one, a mATX mobo with a small case is a far better deal. AMD based mATX mobos are probably the best way to go. Any 785G based mobo would do for you, the DFI LP JR 790GX if you want CF. What she gets depends if you're getting DDR2 or DDR3, but pretty much any of them will do, the AM3 AMD northbridges are pretty good. Athlon II X2 250 for her, idk what the budget is for your gaming box. Any Phenom II will do probably.
As posted over here That motherboard's already mATX, so just re-spec the case and PSU if you're after really small. Also, the same spec would do for your LAN rig if you beefed the GPU a touch. I only picked Core 2 because the price of mobos is rock-bottom. If you're prepared to splash the cash a bit more, AMD come in, with force. It's still a toss-up between the E5x00 series and the X2 chips, but it's pretty even. Get whichever is cheaper, tbh. You'll not really know the difference. Shuttles are great - they're sleek, small, and you get the mobo, case, and PSU. However, they're limited in upgrade scope, expensive, hot-running, and NOISY. If you can live with that for LAN gaming (ie headphoned up), might be worth a punt, but I'd still take the mATX route, purely on price.
