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Shaikoten

Budget Micro ATX Options

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I really don't play very many computer games, but since the death of my Socket A AMD tower with its glorious AGP 8X graphics card, I haven't had anything that can play all of my various Steam games particularly well - I have a netbook and a tablet laptop, neither of which have dedicated video cards. For most purposes, this is fine, because I don't play many new FPSes, but I wouldn't mind the occasional L4D or TF2. However my main problem is that Civilization 4 when modded and playing on huge maps crashes consistently in the late game because of memory allocation failures. I want to fix this. Of course I am a poor college student.

Basically my goal here is a budget Micro ATX system, preferably a very low noise setup. I don't want a slimline system. My budget is $400 or less for all of the interior parts and case. I'm wondering if anyone has particular hardware recommendations for me since I haven't built a new computer since 2004, and if people have knowledge of (slightly outdated) hardware that works well together. Again, not looking for a powerhouse computer. I know what little juice HL2 engine games take, and I don't have any need or desire to run Crysis on high settings. Just want to play Civilization without crashing.

Thanks for the halp, if anyone can <3

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Note that if you're looking for internal hard drives, you should check for how many IDE/SATA ports the mobo has, my newer uATX mobo has only 1 IDE port which is used for DVD drive and 5 satas for HDD's, limiting my storage expansion to SATA/external drives.

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Micro ATX and cheap do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. I suggest you go to 4chan and ask /g/ what the budget build of the day is.

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I don't get why it has to be Micro ATX. In that form factor you're only guaranteed to spend more money to build a low-to-mid powered box than if you went with a budget normal desktop configuration. They are the closest PCs can get to Macs, knowhatumsayin' ?

The box will be more expensive, the PSU too, especially if "low noise".
You won't be able to reuse most of your drives, and it may not even have a PCIe 16x slot, so you'll have to use integrated graphics. Even if it has one, you'll probably find that the only stuff that fits will be some silent, low-profile 6200s, 7200, 3250s etc. that are probably worse than what you had in your old box.

All in all, for the amount of money you said you're willing to spend, you will likely end up with something comparable, if not actually worse than your netbook.

My suggestion is to make a fresh start with a "normal" desktop computer, something at least Dual Core (don't cheapen out and forget about those last Semprons and Celerons...), at least an nVidia 9400 or Ati 34x0/44x0-(class video card) or better for starters, and you'll build up from there along the way. This way you'll have something that will last you for years and allow upgrades.

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Thinking about it, that example isn't the best - it matches what you want (mATX, small form factor), but if the PSU dies, its near impossible to find a replacement without having to buy a new case.

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If you are in America, my advice would be to buy a Dell. No, seriously. If you are chasing the low-end you absolutely cannot compete with them on price - they get volume discounts and special deals from manufacturers that you won't be able to match on NewEgg. If the video card isn't good enough you can buy a cheap one yourself and install that. The Small Business system are crapware-free, not so with the "consumer" lines.

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They are good at cheap stuff, though the prices for new stuff from them have gone up recently. They don't have $300 desktops anymore.

You can also buy their returned stuff from http://www.dfsdirectsales.com and get some stupidly good deals occasionally. The catch with those is they don't let you return them if you don't like them. They do have warranties though. Well, also most of what they sell on there is old and not waht you want. I noticed the Canadian version of that site sells a lot of newer stuff, some of it brand new for 30% off.

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In regards to the micro ATX: It's mostly about having a tiny dorm, and virtually no space to begin with. Smaller = better. But I guess a midtower wouldn't really hurt.

That little Acer actually looks like just what I'm looking for, sans the crappy keyboard and speakers. What takes up the majority of the room in my apartment is my huge 1970s turntable and amplifier plus my records, and I run my computers through the amp, so have pretty much no need for computer speakers. "G100" graphics card sounds pretty dubious though.

I'll check on /g/ too I guess, forgot about the instant gratification of 4chan nerds. Thanks for all the input guys.

Edit: Just checked the Dells a little bit. I really didn't see anything that seemed worthwhile :\

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I can't imagine space being an issue, unless we're talking about a 3-foot tall server tower or something like that. That, or you're dreaming of having a computer workspace that looks like a Mac ad...(big, bare glass desk with just a single "slim line" computer monitor and a teeny-weeny box on it. Heh, good luck with that.

And anyway, don't you already have space reserved for your old box? Plus a monitor? You could replace the mobo inside it and keep all the good components, placing the old mobo in a box, selling it or throwing it away. Hey presto. Same space, better computer. With that amount of money you can get an up-to-date rig, which will be tons better than any micro-ATX runt you can afford.

Never make compromises regarding the ability to use standard -and thus cheaply available and replaceable/upgradeable- components, as that choice may soon get back and bite you in the ass.

Now, if obtaining separate components or assembling them is a chore/hard/impossible....well...there are so many nerds around, get one to do the dirty job for you ;-)

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Maes: Seriously don't have space. I haven't had a tower in a couple of years, and I just moved into an efficiency apartment (one room, two people.) The space under my desk is completely taken up by my bigass scanner/printer, so the only logical solution is for it to go on the desktop, or somehow under my printer.

I'VE BEEN USING BILLY MAYS HERCULES HOOKS TO HANG THINGS OFF OF MY WALL LIKE MY SPEAKERS. MAYBE I CAN USE THE EXTREME POWER OF HERCULES HOOKS TO HANG A MIDTOWER! BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! I'LL USE HERCULES HOOKS TO HANG MY CRT MONITOR! THAT'S THE STRENGTH OF HERCULES HOOKS!

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Honestly I'm not sure what you're expecting to find. A system smaller than a slimline for $400 doesn't leave you with many choices.

Have you looked at a nettop? One with the NVidia Ion chipset and one of the faster Atom CPUs (like this one) is probably the best thing you're going to find unless you're willing to bump up the size or price. You can hang it behind the monitor so size certainly shouldn't be an issue. It will probably do OK with the games you're talking about as long as you keep the resolution down.

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Shaikoten said:

huge 1970s turntable

in the trash

Shaikoten said:

amplifier

trash

Shaikoten said:

my records

trash

Now you have room.

Can we have some pictures? I'm finding this hard to visualize.

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david_a: Not looking smaller than a slimline. Actually was looking larger than a slimline because I want the option of full sized cards. No big deal though, I'll just get what I can.

DuckReconMajor: Fuck off, that's like $1,000 worth of equipment and music. Not everyone likes tinny sound out of piece of shit unamplified speakers and even shittier ipod earbuds.

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Shaikoten said:

DuckReconMajor: Fuck off, that's like $1,000 worth of equipment and music. Not everyone likes tinny sound out of piece of shit unamplified speakers and even shittier ipod earbuds.

I was jk lol. I was gonna suggest getting one of those turntables that converts records to mp3s and find some storage elsewhere for your records and turntable, but I figured you'd prefer the sound of the turntable.

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DuckReconMajor said:

I was jk lol. I was gonna suggest getting one of those turntables that converts records to mp3s and find some storage elsewhere for your records and turntable, but I figured you'd prefer the sound of the turntable.

Never suggest mp3 to an audiophile. 24bit FLAC, maybe, but not mp3.

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DuckReconMajor said:

I was jk lol. I was gonna suggest getting one of those turntables that converts records to mp3s and find some storage elsewhere for your records and turntable, but I figured you'd prefer the sound of the turntable.

Discussing the topic seriously: Yes, I do prefer the sound of the records direct through the turntable in certain circumstances, not always. USB turntables are trash in comparison though; and I can easily directly record to a wav file via a tape output into my laptop from my receiver. On top of sounding fantastic, too, this 70s stereo equipment looks great; not like ugly black plastic stereos of today.


My receiver looks like this, but with a nice wooden box around it.


And this is what my turntable looks like.

They're kinda like pieces of furniture in addition to sounding great.

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I can show you a build that will fit your budget. But first off, a few questions:

1) Are you planning on cannibalizing any parts from your old machine (e.g. case, PSU, etc.). This is important; it may allow me to suggest a more powerful computer within your budget limits that may exceed the typical Dell/Acer complete package.

2) How much storage do you need in GBs?

3) How much leeway are you going to give this budget? The performance difference between an $80 GPU and $100 can be magnitudes when it comes to frames per second, something to keep in mind if you're going to play twitch-dependent games like L4D or TF2.

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1) Old machine is long, long gone.
2) 500gb would be good. More doesn't hurt.
3) I'm really, really fucking poor. I shouldn't even really be buying a new computer.

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Super Jamie said:

Worst advice ever.

Not really. After the "install gentoo" and "reaction image" posts are done with, there's a large part of /g/ that apparently does nothing all day but build dream rigs on NewEgg.

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Okay shut up everyone, I have the answer:

CPU-Mobo Combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.273368
Combo Price: $154.98

PSU-Case Combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.265972
Combo Price: $74.94

GPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855
$69.99

RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220426
$73.99

NOTE: Of RAM, anything less than 4GB and you will punished.

With this build, you WILL run Crysis, and all that's left is your HDD and DVD drive to pick.

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Doom Marine said:

Okay shut up everyone, I have the answer:


With the difference that he said:

Shaikoten said:

Maes: Seriously don't have space. I haven't had a tower in a couple of years, and I just moved into an efficiency apartment (one room, two people.) The space under my desk is completely taken up by my bigass scanner/printer, so the only logical solution is for it to go on the desktop, or somehow under my printer.


Given these constraints, a "desktop replacement" type of laptop would make more sense (they are infinitely more powerful than those micro-ATX runts), but it's unlikely that $400 will cover it.

Doom Marine said:

NOTE: Of RAM, anything less than 4GB and you will punished.


Nonsense, considering what he aims to play. Hell, with XP and 1 or 2 GB it's still possible to have a smooth-as-silk versatile desktop that will play and run almost anything currently under the sun. With a 32-bit OS the 4 GB would be wasted anyway (and sure you don't suggest moving to 64-bit Vista?)

I am not suggesting he should go for a sub-GB config (I don't know if it's even possible, with DDR-2 and DDR-3 DIMMs), but in practice even 2 or 3 GBwill be more than enough*, he doesn't need to put 16 GB on it.

* At least with an OS that doesn't suck, like good old Windows XP ;-)

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Bucket said:

Not really. After the "install gentoo" and "reaction image" posts are done with, there's a large part of /g/ that apparently does nothing all day but build dream rigs on NewEgg.

Doesn't mean they build good ones. Seriously, it's 4chan, the collective intelligence of /g/ is at best equal to one Best Buy technician. The rare people who actually do know their shit don't waste their time on such lowly pursuits as putting compatible components into the shopping cart on NewEgg.

In other news, get that system Doom Marine put together. I can't believe how good low-priced hardware is these days. That box will run Crysis at 1280x1024 smoothly.

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Super Jamie said:

In other news, get that system Doom Marine put together. I can't believe how good low-priced hardware is these days. That box will run Crysis at 1280x1024 smoothly.


It's mostly because we hit a technological saturation point. Frequencies have stopped rising, and architectural improvements can only get us so far. On a a per-cycle basis, no modern CPU is more than twice as efficient as my Athlon 3200+, which was released some 5 years ago. The only viable thing to do now is going multi-core, but that has its limitations as well as being utterly ineffective for purely serial processing tasks.

Even the crappiest CPU you can buy today will be dual-core, 64-bit (with a few exceptions) and be as clock-cycle-efficient as the best one available on the market, save for stuff such as cache size. That was clearly not the case when "Pentium" could mean anything from 66 to 333 MHz, with or without MMX. Compare this with the enormous power disparity (and requirements gap) that came from releasing Pentium CPUs in a world filled with 486s and 386s: it just stopped being this way from a long time.

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I don't know too much on the subject but what about those flat desktops you can put your monitor on? You know, like the ones they have in schools and libraries and stuff.

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DuckReconMajor said:

I don't know too much on the subject but what about those flat desktops you can put your monitor on? You know, like the ones they have in schools and libraries and stuff.


Overpriced runts, 'nuff said. The most negative thing about them is the inability to use full-height, full-length expansion cards, and having proprietary chassis, PSU and motherboards. They are preferred by said organizations because they are easy to replace/service, since they are usually big-name contraptions such as Dell, Acer, etc. which are more likely to appeal to a public service that needs a company and address to turn to when the shit hits the fan.

If you're looking for the most bang for the buck though, these just ain't it.

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Super Jamie said:

Doesn't mean they build good ones. Seriously, it's 4chan, the collective intelligence of /g/ is at best equal to one Best Buy technician. The rare people who actually do know their shit don't waste their time on such lowly pursuits as putting compatible components into the shopping cart on NewEgg.

You're absolutely right. Better to go to a fansite for a 15-year-old game.

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Bucket said:

You're absolutely right. Better to go to a fansite for a 15-year-old game.


The very least you'll find a higher percentage of people that didn't grow up writing "Your a moron and you're pic is t3h f41l! ZOMG lolz!" on 4chan.

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