Mini ITX build for girlfriend - office / light gaming £400

[Homeking]

That's great - you've got everything!

Did you manage to keep well within the budget?

Looking forward to seeing the finished result and yours and trippedup's verdict on it.

[Pob255]

That's the corrugated type of aluminium filter I mentioned before, didn't use it on the cm 120 as I had the spare sliverstone filter but I do use one of them on the side panel fan of my haf 912
Great little filters and cheap, although those raised corner lumps are an issue for short screws as you found out.

[Ciber]

That's great - you've got everything!

Did you manage to keep well within the budget?

Looking forward to seeing the finished result and yours and trippedup's verdict on it.

Yep within budget.

Coolermaster Elite 120 Advanced Mini ITX Case 28.79
450W XFX Pro Core Edition P1-450S-X2B9 35.34
AMD - A10/5700 95.35
MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 AMD A75 FM2 Motherboard 69.98
2x2GB DDR3 1600 RAM 20.99
SanDisk SDSSDX-120G-G25 120GB Extreme 70.96
DVDRW SATA 13.49
1TB hard drive 50.39
Fan Filter 2.79

Total 388.08

So far I have installed the CPU(APU) and RAM to the mobo, installed that in the case and wired up the essentials. It boots up to the BIOS screen.

Looking quite a mess of wires at this stage:






Now to wire up the drives and all the front panel. Got a bit of a conundrum in that there are two front panel audio connectors.



I will have to do a bit of googling!
Edit: and it seems the AC97 front audio connector is legacy so I will use the HD one.

[Ciber]

Next a bit of tinkering with the BIOS (or UEFI) and updated it by USB to 1.2. Pretty nice and easy. Then I installed XP which required SATA to be in IDE mode and then Windows 8:



Quite pleased with it so far. It certainly boots up fast. I knew Win 8 can start fast but the UEFI BIOS starts really fast as well.

Applying many cable ties and it starts to get tidier:



This side needs work though:



Looks like the innards have spilled out of this creature!

[trippedup]

Looking good! Even if you think Leeds Castle is in Yorkshire......

[Pob255]

Yes cable management in mini ITX is never easy, also be careful with the cable ties on two frame struts (bars running front to back at the top)
The U panel cover thing (what is the correct name when it's all one bit not separate panels?) comes very close to the frame struts so your ties can get in the way.
I think the idea is to run the wires on the inside of the struts (they are U shaped) feed the cable tie through the holes that run along them and round the bottom half of the strut only.
Well I think that's what coolermaster's plan was, from looking at it.

[DanceswithUnix]

Looking good! Even if you think Leeds Castle is in Yorkshire......

That better than thinking York Castle is in Leedsshire

[Ciber]

So it's finished! Wires tidied up:




The case fitted over the cable ties with no problem so that's OK. It looks tidy and it's nice and quiet. I took out the little fan. With some testing the case cools OK and I have set the mobo to auto control fan speeds and after the fan speed reducer made it run at 300rpm I removed that. It's much quieter than my PC.

The windows experience index is pretty good. The SSD is very fast indeed!

[trippedup]

So it's finished! Wires tidied up:




The case fitted over the cable ties with no problem so that's OK. It looks tidy and it's nice and quiet. I took out the little fan. With some testing the case cools OK and I have set the mobo to auto control fan speeds and after the fan speed reducer made it run at 300rpm I removed that. It's much quieter than my PC.

The windows experience index is pretty good. The SSD is very fast indeed!

Thank you - looking forward to getting my hands on it!!

[Ciber]

I've also tried some light gaming and it works well. Going to deliver on Friday. I tested with passmark and got a score of 2190. Which is good. Her current PC scored 261 on the same test so that is a big improvement. It is not far behind my gaming PC which scored 3011.

I tested the power draw at the plug and at idle it draws 60 watts and while playing a game 70 to 95w. Which I'm pretty impressed by. Performance per watt must be very good and miles better than my PC.

Very pleased with it overall and looking forward to handing it over as a kind of easter egg! It is dark in colour like chocolate and the performance is tasty even if you can't eat it!

Thanks for all the helpful advice and comments enabling me to build a better PC!

[Ciber]

I'm resurrecting this thread as I'm having a CMOS battery related problem with this PC. It started coming up with the BIOS has been reset, press F1 etc. screen so I've replaced the CMOS battery twice and it's still doing it.

[watercooled]

Easiest things first, are the replacement CMOS batteries definitely good, and not ones that have been sitting on the shelf for 10 years?

Failing that, try fully clearing the CMOS if you haven't already, then put your settings back to the way they were.

If that doesn't work, it might be worth re-flashing the BIOS. I seem to recall coming across a similar problem where it seemed like the BIOS itself had been corrupted somehow, and re-flashing it resolved the problem.

[Ciber]

Easiest things first, are the replacement CMOS batteries definitely good, and not ones that have been sitting on the shelf for 10 years?

Failing that, try fully clearing the CMOS if you haven't already, then put your settings back to the way they were.

If that doesn't work, it might be worth re-flashing the BIOS. I seem to recall coming across a similar problem where it seemed like the BIOS itself had been corrupted somehow, and re-flashing it resolved the problem.

I thought that when the first new battery didn't work but I've tested them all and they all give a good 3v except the old one I took out. I also checked the voltage on the connector to make sure the battery is plugged all the way in. It's the type with a lead and a little plug. I also tried using the clear CMOS jumper.

I'm wondering is this is by design somehow as the battery itself was glued on and the motherboard manual makes no mention of replacing the battery as if they don't want you to.

[watercooled]

Occasionally those plug-in batteries are rechargeable cells with a nominal voltage of 3.7V. Were there any markings on the original cell to indicate whether this may have been the case?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The battery has probably run out. You can buy the replacement batteries:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...ttery&_sacat=0

[Ciber]

Occasionally those plug-in batteries are rechargeable cells with a nominal voltage of 3.7V. Were there any markings on the original cell to indicate whether this may have been the case?

Rechargeable CMOS battery? It had CR2032 and 3v on it IIRC.