mATX Case Question

[Steve]

My Uncle wants a compy building "As cheap as possible" for his work. The current one is a 75mhz Pentium, so I'll have no trouble blowing him away with one of those all integrated Duron included motherboards.

Anyway, I found this nice mATX case:

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=8791

My question is, will the 200watts provided be enough for the all-in-one el cheapo mobo, 1 stick of RAM, 1 hdd and a CDRW? I'm thinking yes.

Otherwise, I'm gonna stick it in a cheap small ATX case - but will an ATX case have the standoffs in the right place for a mATX mobo?

Thanks guys,
Unts.

[Theo]

That psu should be absolutely fine... The 200W mATX psu I have runs:

Asus A7V266VMSE
Duron 1.2Ghz
512MB ram (1 stick)
1x 120GB Maxtor 8MB
Pioneer 120S DVD

[Steve]

Excellent, though those cases are a bit expensive - I can get a small MIDI for a tenner - sorted.

Cheers.

[SilentDeath]

then postage will make it £20.
i have a better idea
get a box - can be found in many shapes and sizes. the one i have is perfect (came from a maxigamer phonix - 3dfx banshee pci gfx card). inside i have 2 pieces of cardboard under the mobo, to raise it up enuf for the pci backplates not to get in the way. the mobo is very small. i dont need any pci cards - just about everything is onboard - so i will eventually have a 4gb hdd secured to more cardboard, above the pci and isa slots. i have the power button secured with 2 screws onto the front of the case. the ATX psu fit perfectly next to the mobo - yet to be permently secured though. i have holes in the back for cables and it works perfectly. once the pc is nearer complete, i wil think about adding fans to it for ventilation, for now though it runs with the lid up and is compleatly silent with passive chipset and k6-2 500 (overclocked to 600) cpu.

if the pc is just for work, it works out much much cheaper to use old bits like me (k6-2's cost about £2.50 each!, mobos cost about the same plus postage!, the most exp item is the hdd, with a 4gig costing £10 and 2gb cosing £8

i have just relised somethign incredibly nice. there is infact also room for a cd rom drive to lay sideways across the pci slots, with the tray ejecting out the side. a hdd should fit between the psu and the front of the box

[Steve]

OK, there's cheap and there's CHEAP! I'd rather have a case made of steel - particularly as it's in a leather workshop.

[SilentDeath]

it looks nicer than most steel cases tbh. anyway the two steel desktop cases that i have are REALLY pooorly designed, for example a metal bar going down the middle, which is right above hte cpu and gets in the way of the cooler. the psu was seated above the mobo - it tok ages if i just want to put another stick of ram in, or change cpu multi/fsb. also both cases were about 4x bigger than they needed to be...