Ok so I'm looking to get a small form Factor so I can run my Cintiq off it. It doesn't have to be anything to fancy, ideally it'll have enough horsepower to run Photoshop and it ideally has to have DVI on it bonus points if I can stuff a sound card do it to listen to music while I work. Anyone have any recommendations?
If it's just for doodling in PS, Autodesk Sketchbook or whatever then you can probably get away with just about anything... an NUC would do the job [with a DP->DVI adaptor for the Cintiq, granted]...
On board would probably do me, but this is probably the way to go if you want something of decent quality for music rather than worrying about add-in sound cards.
Next Unit of Computing. They are small form factor units made by Intel. Either bare bone systems or fully built. They're sort of specced similar to ultrabooks but in a very small desktop form factor. Normally you would by a NUC and add RAM and storage.
NUC is def the way to go if you want just ease of doing it. But be warned depending on the model the cpu fan can be far from silent. I just retired my NUC5i7 was a mini beast, but as I said that blower fan was a little loud for my liking. +1 on the USB DAD For self build all depends on budget. At the higher end you have the likes of the Dan A4 case (which is great btw!) Smaller you get the more expensive it can become. Do you have any parts lying around or will this be a complete new build?
I've got plenty of parts kicking around so that not an issue. In fact I'm in the middle of destroying my studio rebuilding it at the moment and in the middle of moving stuff around I discovered I have an old shuttle lying in the back of the spare room I don't know why it's there I might have to do some investigating but that might be what I need.
