Hello all. I have always been a fan of SFF Pcs and until I joined the RAF even ran a SFF review website called walibe.com. However after a few years of using laptops as my main PC I decided it time to build a nice little rig again. I had a look at Shuttles offerings but have found that none of them meet my requirements so I had to build a little bigger.
MATX was the obvious route and I settled on the G45M from Foxconn which could support 1066 RAM whening OCing. Its based in the P45/G45 chipset. Its a great board, lots of connectivity and was really easy to setup. Paired with this was a Quad 8200 which would run nicely for games etc cooled by an Akasa Nero Cooler which is both quiet and god damn huge.. 4 GIG of Corsair memory of some variety completed that bit, may take this to 8 gig seeing its so cheap but is there any need? a 750 gig hitatchi drive couple with a spare 250 gig for applications and windows and third for backup completed the harddrives. An LG DVD writer is the first optical drive and a secondary Lite-On blu ray drive fits in nicely. My only complaints is Scan told be it could write DVDs when they subsituted this for the Sony I had originally ordered, it can't but its no real loss.
Not since the days of the Gefore 4200 has there been such a good value mid range pair of cards as the 4870/GTX 260. I opted for the 260 XFX version with 216?? cores purely because I usually use ATI cards and its superb in the games I've tried like Far Cry 2, Mirrors edge etc. It puts my PS3 to shame.
I had planned to run Windows 7 as I have access to technet, and this system was the first time I have had it install without any problem. Its such an improvement over vista, thanks in part to the clear MAC OS rip offs.
So I housed it all in the Silverstone TJ08S which isn't bad seeing how Scan were practially giving this case away. Its all powered by a 460 Watt Silverstone PSU I had from a very old build and it all works very well. I'm glad 120mm case fans are the norm, now. Its very easy to make a quiet PCs. Pics will follow!
Seeing I've been out of this world for so long now whats the best Motherboard/temp monitoring package and whats good for monitoring the Geforce?
Many thanks!