Legit Reviews

Ok, for my work I have gotten tired of custom OS, custom part thin clients. The last straw in this was the clients I have are old, and can't run some viewing program that is now required for the shop. Mainly because the TC is flash based and not enough room for the program. Ok, start shopping new off the self stuff, cant find stuff for what I would consider cheap (sub $500) and doesn't use some off the wall custom OS or Linux. Yes has to be winders, thank you INFOR and Autodesk.

So I set out to see what I could build myself.

Settled in on this list-o-stuff.
Case: Antec ISK 310-150 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121381
Mobo: Intel DG41MJ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121381
CPU: E3300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116264
Hard Drive: WD Scorpio Black 160GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136278
RAM: Kingston 1GB KVR800D2N6/1G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820134634

Total: $336 shipped

It has the room needed and the horsepower to run the programs required, hell it has more umpf then most the desktops here. Picked most this stuff by finding the cheapest thing on New Egg that was in stock. Except for the case. I know the enviroment I'm sticking this thing in. Its not pleasant in July/August, routinely over 115*F.

Now for the pictures.








Single 80mm Tri-Cool, room for a second. I'll see how warm this gets before I put in another.


The PSU wires are a bit long and have more connections than you can use in this case. Once I know how the little guy is going to work out I may do a bit of snipping.



Drive caddy, space for two 2.5" hard drives and a slim optical. Only using one HDD and no optical.


PSU whole whoppin 150W LOL


Accessories.


Mobo and CPU, love how the retail box for the CPU is almost as big as the motherboard box.




LOL


Setting it up


Snug, and I dont have the wifi card in it yet.


So far I'm quiet happy with the little bugger. It runs good, doesn't stutter with all its programs running. Guys in the shop should like it. I'll let them beat on it a couple weeks, if it does well I'll get 3 more.

Nice little setup, itx is one formfactor I'm itching to get into.
I've been looking at some of the Atom 330 itx boards with dual Gbit nics from Supermicro as I am looking into building myself a router/firewall so I can ditching my randomly rebooting Linksys WRT54g.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... .cfm?typ=H

So XP is running smoothly on it? I don't doubt it as those E3300 cpus are quite good for just being "Celerons"
The only thing I'd really want to do with that setup is add another 1gb of ram.

Hmmm, cool concept. The dual core celeron line is very good for office work, i own one, it does molecular dynamics all day. Just dont try to use this for gaming .

tekgek wrote:Hmmm, cool concept. The dual core celeron line is very good for office work, i own one, it does molecular dynamics all day. Just dont try to use this for gaming .

Whats wrong with gaming on it? I built one for my uncle and it runs CoD WaW perfectly fine!

Don't suppose you have a Kill-A-Watt or something similar to report us the power consumption? (idle and load)

I want to replace my desktop file server with a mini-itx setup, save some money/electricity...

Yeah I got one around here somewhere. Will get some numbers when updates finish.

Sorry, got a little side tracked at work.

-just plugged in an setting pulls 1w
-setting idle at desktop 35w
-transferring 2gb of files off USB thumbdrive 38w
-running PCMark05 tops out at 62w.

Having trouble getting a score, site keeps timing out.

Edit: A whole whopping 4,420 PCMarks

bubba wrote:Sorry, got a little side tracked at work.

-just plugged in an setting pulls 1w
-setting idle at desktop 35w
-transferring 2gb of files off USB thumbdrive 38w
-running PCMark05 tops out at 62w.

Having trouble getting a score, site keeps timing out.

Thanks for this. I have a Mini-ITX build with the Zotac GF9300-G-E and Pentium E6300 Wolfdale. Planning on replacing it with a Celeron E3300 for slightly lower power consumption (PSU is only 80W) and hopefully better cooling.

Next project is a (relatively) high performance Mini-ITX gaming rig.

wow very cool, I have been wanting do to a mini itx for a while now

what parts would you use to build a mini itx gaming rig? i'm curious...

Wavid wrote:what parts would you use to build a mini itx gaming rig? i'm curious...

Silverstone Sugo SG-05
Gigabyte H55N-USB3 (not yet released)
Intel Core i7 860
Cooler Master Geminii S
either GT 240 or GTS 250

The HD5770 offers better value but if getting an inferior card means I don't have to deal with Catalyst Control Center, so be it. Besides, I'll be mostly playing with emulators meaning I'd need an uber-fast proccy instead of a top of the line GPU. The GT 240 may be a bottleneck for some PS2 games, but with the GTS 250, the bottleneck's going to be the Core i7 CPU.