Small PC (mini/micro)

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Hi

I am looking for small pc that must be less than 22.5cm x 22.5cm x 35cm. The processor must have at least a 3000+ score on cpubenchmark and I generally prefer intel but will consider other brands. I have been looking for a while now and all that comes up is the gigabyte brix and the NUC. I would quite like to build it myself (I have built a number of PC's but the last one was probably 5 years ago).

The main problem I am having is finding a case and psu combo that will work. I am looking at getting an i5 4440 or 4460 and an AsRock H81M-ITX Socket 1150 motherboard. I have used a psu calculator which says that I should have at least 170w psu.

Does anyone know of a mini-ITX case and psu of at least 170w that is no bigger than 22.5cm x 22.5cm x 35cm?

Thanks
 
and as a separate question - does anyone have any experience of Eggsnow? they have an i5 barebones for £205 on amazon which seems pretty good?
 
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That's a low power mobile i5, so it's substantially slower than the normal desktop processors. slightly below the level of a £30 Celeron G1820. Also, are you sure passmark accurately reflects your workloads?

Those dimensions are a large volume of 17.7L. Are you looking for something of a lower volume or does it also have to be a maximum of those figures in each individual dimension as well?

You shouldn't have much trouble either way. Silverstone CS01, Silverstone ML05 and ML06, All of the Mini-ITX options in Silverstone's Sugo series, Sharkoon CA-I*, In-Win MS04, Lian-li PCQ07 & PCQ09 & PCQ16, Powercool Qube, Jou Jye 526 & 528 & 568. All of those have either have standard power supply formats or come with 200W+

I wouldn't rule out any cases with a 150W & 160W power supply like Antec's ISK-310-150 or InWin's BM639 either, power supply calculators are only guidelines.

*The Micro ATX Sharkoon CA-M also comes in under your volume requirement, but exceeds one of the specific dimensions.

In terms of pre-built I quite like the options like Fujitsu's Q520/Q920 that are a nice halfway house. Desktop quad cores but low power versions and also mid-way between a small 5L Mini-ITX case like the Jou Jyes and a sub-1L NUC.

If you don't mind the external power supply brick of the NUC et al then it's also worth considering Intel's other board design used in the likes of Dell's Optiplex 3020 Micro and 9020 Micro.

In the last few years Mini-ITX has gone from being a niche to the latest big thing in the gaming world so sadly you can no longer assume all Mini-ITX cases are of reasonable size, but there are still plenty out there that are.
 
I'm thinking SG05B you can fit a hefty GPU in there too and an 18 core Xeon if you really wanted to (don't recommend that)
Same with the node 202 but itsbpower supply is a bit small so r9 280x max + decent i5/i7
 
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If he's considering a NUC then it's likely he's not doing anything that uses the GPU heavily. Ditto on the 170W power supply. The capability to fit a big double slot graphics card in does make the case considerably larger compared with those that take a single half height card or not expansion card at all.

The Node 202 is 37.7cm x 33cm (x 8.2 cm) so it exceeds his criteria in one dimension, although it's smaller by volume.
 
Anyway sorry I meant the SG13B not SG05
I build like this would be good. Consider adding an aftermarket cooler to make it quieter
This CPU might not be upgradeable without a new mobo but for the price its a good idea. The case supports full ATX power supplies and full length
and it fits all your requirements 222mm (W) x 181 mm (H) x 285 mm (D) 11.5 liters
The power supply is a bit overkill but some of the cheaper options were too long and its fully modular so its easy to work with and this also allows you to have alot of upgrading headroom in terms of power.
The motherboard has built in wifi too.
If you gave me a budget I could probably get you a more powerful system.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-7870K 3.9GHz Quad-Core Processor (£93.84 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI A88XI AC V2 Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard (£68.97 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£31.95 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£68.99 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£30.98 @ Aria PC)
Case: Silverstone Sugo SG13B Mini ITX Tower Case (£35.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£70.01 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £400.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-13 18:34 BST+0100
 
There is a revo in the classifieds I think would fit your needs?
 
Thanks EndlessWaves, that's a really helpful reply.

Unfortunately it has to fit in a cupboard which is why I have the size restrictions - I also need enough space for the cables to plug into the back, the height and depth are both about 23cm but the length is probably 40cm in total.

The Lian-li PCQ07 looks like it might just do it and if it takes a standard PSU that is even better as I have one spare so that will save me a bit. I am looking at that plus an i5 4460, 8gb kingston value ram and MSI h81I motherboard total £269 (plus the PSU and HDD which I already have).

I don't do any gaming so don't need a decent graphics card - I use it for watching films and normal office work with a very small amount of photoshop type stuff (maybe an hour a month of that).

Thanks again EndlessWaves :)
 
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-7870K 3.9GHz Quad-Core Processor (£93.84 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI A88XI AC V2 Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard (£68.97 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£31.95 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£68.99 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£30.98 @ Aria PC)
Case: Silverstone Sugo SG13B Mini ITX Tower Case (£35.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£70.01 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £400.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-13 18:34 BST+0100

This site is brilliant, thank you thekeemo, very helpful and now I have more decisions to make... :) thanks
 
This site is brilliant, thank you thekeemo, very helpful and now I have more decisions to make... :) thanks

It's useful to get an idea of the price range each components go for, but it has definite holes in it's listings so you do want to see what's actually available on the shop websites (even the ones it purports to cover) when it comes to the final choice of components.

I am looking at that plus an i5 4460, 8gb kingston value ram and MSI h81I motherboard total £269 (plus the PSU and HDD which I already have).

No solid state drive?

i5 seems a odd choice for 'normal office work'. Not a lot of office work is notably multi-threaded (or indeed, processor intensive at all). Have you considered a more mid-range option like a Pentium or i3 branded chip?

It might be worth looking at a motherboard with a DisplayPort output. I don't know what your screen situation is, but if you need to change your screen within the lifetime of the PC then the DVI, VGA and HDMI 1.4 outputs will restrict you to lower DPI monitors, not the coming wave of more detailed HighDPI screens (currently under £250 and falling). You'll need either DisplayPort or HDMI 2.0 for then, and the former is much more common.

I would be inclined to hold off for a couple of days. We've got Intel's Developer Forum on the 18th and we may hear more about the Skylake release schedule. Skylake won't offer much improvement in maximum performance, but notably for video watching it should bring much lower CPU use (power consumption/noise) for the next generation of codecs (notably against haswell, HEVC Main10) as well as more widespread support of HDMI 2.0 and other benefits like two more USB3 ports as standard.

It may well be that Skylake H110/B150 and i3/non-k i5s don't launch for three months but IDF would be an obvious time for Intel to announce something.
 

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