castanyes blaves

TV COMPUTER BUILD
Posted 2008-07-27

If assembling a system from parts, it looks better to get a somewhat larger case with a case fan, rather than a tiny case with a CPU fan. A maybe-working example of this could be:

* Silverstone GD02 case $160
* Silverstone fanless power supply $140
* An oddly-shaped heatsink apparently designed to fit in the GD02 case (advertised to run fanless for CPUs up to 65W) $50
* Celeron 430 $40
* DG45ID board $140
* 2G RAM $50
* 2.5-inch notebook drive $100
* Standard-def read-only DVD drive $20
* Wi-Fi card $50

Total hypothetical cost: $750

This has case fans, but with the slow CPU and notebook drive it may be possible to turn them off or dial them way down. The fanless power supply is expensive; the Nexus quiet power supply fan in my development system is pretty inaudible, so perhaps that is a better option, saving $70 or so and bringing total cost to only $680. A power supply fan could reduce the need to run the case fans. Scrounging for stuff on sale could save a few more dollars no doubt.

These built-from-parts systems always run over budget when it turns out some part doesn't work with some other part.

An expensive version could have instead:

* Extra-quiet case fans +$40
* E7200 processor +$85
* 4G memory +$50
* Blu-Ray drive +$80

Total extra cost +$255 so the "deluxe" approach is $1005.

Though larger and uglier, this system would be roughly comparable in cost to the Mac Mini, despite much better hardware specs. However, if a next-generation Mac Mini ever came out, I'd expect it to have specs and cost similar to the above. It would quite possibly use the X4500HD chipset, even.

Looks like nobody sells the X4500HD Intel motherboards until late August, so I'm not going to run out and buy anything. Maybe better options will come along in the meantime.