New case for my Main PC and Mini-ITX HTPC/LAN Rig

[Biscuit]

totals up to £155 with the FSP 150W adaptor (they dont have the 102w one in stock) thats a lot of moolah!

[scaryjim]

That's been the main thing that's stopped my mITX build plans, tbh. If you want a reasonably priced case and PSU you end up getting something that's not really any smaller than you can do with mATX; if you want something *properly* small you have to pay through the nose for it *sigh*

Although I still reckon that pico-itx set-up *might* be worth the cash just to watch people gawk as I pull out a full x86 PC the size of a DVD drive...

EDIT:
And dammit, now that I've worked out the 80W supply would be enough for a 45W Athlon II plus mitx 880G board I'm really going to struggle with the temptation to buy it

[Pob255]

Personally I don't see usb3 as that big a deal, there's not natve support for it in win7 yet (although the widows7 updater makes getting and installing drivers a whole lot easier)
And while it does give a big boost to transfur rates
The main benefit for a gaming based system would be portable hard drives but e-sata fills that roll well and will continue to do so untill we start seeing portable SSD drives as hard drives are still far from saturateing sata 3Gbit/s
And eSata 6 is availible which is faster than usb3 (although noting is currently fast enough to use it)
The other key benefits of USB3 is lower power demands (turning it seff off when not accessing a connected drive) but that's an issue for laptops not desktops.

Untill we see more AMD based ITX you'll not be seeing usb3 on them as intel is refuseing to support it in their chipsets untill some time in 2012 (because they are trying to develop and push their own proprietary altenative system (Light Peak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak) although there are currently rumors that Intel have backtracked and are going to put USB3 into the "Cougar Point" chipset, but which boards it will effect and how it will be implimented is still unknown)
The big problem here for ITX is that the only way to get USB3 atm is with the addition of an additional controller chip (the one made by NEC is currently most popular) and the space issues of ITX make it very hard to squeeze it in (a long with the additional traces and other components needed)

At the same time an mATX does make a lot of sense, not just the upgradeability but lower costs as well.
Just as long as you're happy to sacrifice size and protability for it.

For what you're saying I'd say your best bet is probably 2 matx systems

1 - gameing & portable/lan case
Silverstone SG03 or SG04 (handel version)

2 - NAS + media center case
Not sure what case you'd want here, you'll need to measure up available space, then look for something with plenty of hard disk space and matx in that size.
many of the big media center cases take full ATX and +4 HHD, so it will come down to space.

[Biscuit]

bloody spanner in the works you pob

[Pob255]

Happy to spanner

There's days when the obvious spanner hits you in the face and there are days when you hit someone else with it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Lian Li PC-Q11 looks like a nice ITX case:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1523097

Silverstone have also launched a new mATX case called the Fortress FT03:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/06/...fortress-case/

[Biscuit]

The Lian Li PC-Q11 looks like a nice ITX case:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1523097

Silverstone have also launched a new mATX case called the Fortress FT03:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/06/...fortress-case/

Silverstone and Lian Li are really stealing the show at the moment with regards to design.

Im not sure i like the FT03 at the moment, i really wanna see more of it!

Il take pics of my entertainment thing tomorrow so you can see what i have to work with.

[Pob255]

The Fortress03 does look good http://forums.hexus.net/computex-tai...-up-there.html
But I'm not sure when it's offically out.
The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't really look like the 01 or 02

Side note the Raven 03 looks really good too. (well layout wise, I'm not 100% on the styling)

[Biscuit]

its very eye catchign but too many angles :/

Tj11 is more my thing but its bigger than the moon!

[Biscuit]

As it stands at the moment.

Main Rig: I really liked the FT03 so i think im going to wait for that to come out before i make any decisions, hopefully BD & SB wont be far behind so it will be easier to make that decision. The SSD i was looking at has already dropped nearly £10-15 over the last few days, is this just a slight dip or are these getting cheaper already?

Media Centre: Seeing as i am not going down the route of a system with gaming credentials i think im going to keep this as a single low power device.
Here is what it looks like at the moment.

Its a pretty nice case which fits in well in its space. There is room for a fair few hard drives in it so i think i might just juice it up with a mATX mobo, a new CPU, a low end ssd and lots of 2TB drives.

I was looking forward to making an ITX rig but nevermind!