Builds, builds and more builds

Forum looks ok today. Guess our host got the security breach resolved.

Yeah they do....

Weird. Maybe that explains why I have not received any notifications of posts.

That is strange. I wonder what was going on? Everything looks to be okay now.

Speaking of the vaio ux



Fujitsu lifebook, not sure the model. Found the picture on my drive when looking for something else.

Have 3 of these myself:



Toshiba portege 320ct.

I had two of them I trashed about a year ago. No one wanted them.

Damn I would have taken one.

They were workable units, but missing a lot of stuff.

You know now that I think about it I may have saved that picture from one of your posts.

Neither of those are my picture

Ador email sent to your yahoo account.

Got three more builds I am working on now. Two will be full ATX cases, the other one will be a another m-itx build for work. I will take time planning the two ATX builds and will have some pictures to put up as soon as I get some shots of one of the cases I got off my phone. The second case is in transit or will be in transit soon.

I like a AMD combo I built and running now, it's slated to go into my bedroom, but I am looking at cases again for one even smaller so it will be easy for travel. It has to be light weight as the weight limit on the chopper is under 30 lbs. So everything I carry has to be under that including clothes. I am thinking a smaller case with no room for a external card and just keep the integrated APU graphics.

The A10-6800K right now plays skyrim on high no problems at all with it's 8670 ati mobile graphics. I am going to get another one of these or the new A10-7850M. If it was released the A8-7600 would be a option as the clock speeds on the CPU are slower, but is a 65 watt chip not a 85 watt. That should help cool it down some. They both use the newer R7 chip for graphics, but I haven't found the full specs for the onboard graphics yet, plenty about the cpu part of it though.

If I can't really slim it down I think I will get he Rosswell version of the case I already have, it's just a tad bigger, but looks layed out a little better than mine. Then throw in a mini double wide card. I am still thinking of sticking with AMD for the processor though. It will just have to be one compatable with the FM2+ motherboard as that is the smallest size I have seen for AMD.

If I get a dedicated card these are the two I have been looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127772

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487024


Any options I may have over looked?

I see me loading these games on it for travel.
FEAR 1,2,3
BIOSHOCK 1,2,3
OBLIVION
SKYRIM
DUKE NUKEM FOREVER
HALO 1,2
DEAD ISLAND
LEFT FOR DEAD 1, 2
CRYSIS 1,2,3
Bunch of my games from my GOG account

I got the first HP Mini ITX motherboard combo working well. Below is a summary where I was talking to a few of the guys on toughbook talk about it.

Finally got the first one brought up to life.

The socket is socket M not Socket P so you are stuck with Socket M CPU. The best ones are T2500, T2600, T2700 and T7200, T7400, T7600. I have a T2500 in the machine right now, and will have the T7200 by next week some time. The T2500 is around 8 bucks, T2600 is around 25 bucks, and T7200 is around 20 bucks right now. These are your best bang for the buck CPU's. The other higher processor are 50 bucks plus.

I have one 2gb stick of ram in it. I have one 2gb stick of ram it didn't want to boot with so I still need to do some work on it. So the tally for ram right now is one ddr 2gb 6400 speed and one 512 ddr2 5300 speed ram.

The best thing I have found so far is the problem with the ATI 5XXX cards not working with this motherboard must of been just with that series of cards as several people tried but it wouldn't work. I though I was going to drop my spare 250 GTS. But I am upgrading my Voodoo Hexx desktop right now also to drop a first gen i7 in it from the dual core 2.6 opertron. So I had a single slot XFX ATI 6570 1gb ddr3 video card lying around. I put in a 40gb Intel x25 SSD, loaded windows 7, installed my programs. Then when I was sure the base was working, dropped the 6570 in the machine. It works!


Working on some bench marks right now!



BELOW IS THE ORIGINAL POST I MADE. These boards and cpu's are still cheap.


Well as you can see I have been playing in the mini pc world again. I ran across this and decided to build two more mini desktops. One is for the oldest boy for a lan box gaming machine, the other is one I was thinking of putting together and just leaving at work. Some of you could put this together as a cheap machine because of what spare parts you have lying around. This build uses laptop DDR 2 ram and mobile core 2 duo CPU. This is the basis of the build, a HP slimline motherboard. These are CHEAP right now on the bay.




HP Calcite GL8E Motherboard less than 20 bucks shipped
http://www.ebay.com/itm/130482328974?ss ... 1439.l2649

I purchases three different core 2 duo mobile cpu's to test out
2.0
2.2
2.5 For 12 bucks shipped, the others were even cheaper.

Official paper work says up too 2gb or ram, but it has a 945 chipset and other that have done the same builds have confirmed 4gb works.

Heat sink you have two options.
1: http://www.ebay.com/itm/370716284630?ss ... 1439.l2649
That is the one I got but there are TONS of other ones, they are for the OLD Socket 370 Intel. The cpu holder has the clips that will work with that, looks like a AM2/3 hold down.

2: http://www.ebay.com/itm/140896140058?ss ... 1438.l2649
This is the type that have the wire spring retaining clips.

The motherboard is set up for both.

The motherboard has a slimline only power supply, but you can get a adapter and use any ATX power supply you may have laying around.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/160713651057?ss ... 1439.l2649
8 bucks shipped.

Why would you want something like this, and for gaming/performance. This motherboard has a full PCI x 16 slot for a video card. I will be trying several I have out on this chassis just to see what kind of numbers I can push.

This is the only downfall I have read about it is this.

"The only other quirk is it only works with ATI/AMD Radeon cards up to 4XXX HD series.

It works with all Nvidia cards."

Those hp mini itx boards are utter crap. Had an x2 based hp slimline s3100n i got for free to examine. Even with a known good power feed it refused to post with no visibly blown caps or other damage. A quick trip to google revealed they overheat and eventually do not boot. Maybe a different case will get them to run cool enough where it is a non issue.


http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware/HP-Pavilion-s3100n-slimline-won-t-boot-up/td-p/22282

I just did 2 hrs of Skyrim on Medium to High settings and it has played fine. The CPU did get into the lower 60's deg, I think I need to redo the thermal paste, or put a larger heat sink. The Motherboard never got over 50 DEG, Video card worked fine also. On High/High settings I did have a little pixel distortion but it played fine for that 10 minutes like it. Slightly turning the setting down and keeping the resolution at 1600 x 1200 it still worked fine. This is one I didn't want to dump a lot of money into, something to build and leave at work just carrying the hard drive back and forth with me.

For your mini itx needs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997042

Just purchased a supermicro m28sab for the omen. The icy dock got too many bad reviews.

I still need a case for the little beast and it's 2 siblings. They are getting different video cards, and I am looking at the mini power supplies as well.

Picked up 2 ipass reverse breakout cables after realizing that the supermicro did not come with them. Running this off onboard sata for now since a SAS controller is not in the budget. (Using sata drives with it anyway). Now for those 8x samsung evo 1tb's...

www.ebay.com/itm/131164781389

Although somewhat dated it would make for a powerful budget desktop that can run many modern games.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321368115684?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

I picked that up last week to update a thermaltake lan box I had. It had a msi 965 motherboard with a pentium d 3.2, I decided to update it some. Drop in a newer video card, core 2 duo as the motherboard was rated for it and more ram. It always was picky on ram and didn't like over 2 sticks in it. Then when I upgraded to the 2.8 core 2 duo it wouldn't boot at all. So I ripped it all out and dropped that quad and motherboard in there. Running very good right now.

Nice. I just bought what was advertised as a duo for that money for a customer. It is in fact a pentium d upon closer inspection. Needless to say I am not happy. I will make it work but the guy is getting a negative for lying. Board is a core 2 capable board and its coming with 2x2gb sticks.

You should keep an eye on this www.ebay.com/itm/201074075130

The 4gb (2 plus 2) ram for the first Rage came into today. Got it installed. So I have 8gb of DDR 3 now. I should be good. Been working on another M11x that I have came in that I plan on over clocking. All that is left to do now is replace the busted screen.

Got my SAS controller www.ebay.com/itm/121319675507

Supermicro hotswap rack was out of stock though so order got canceled. Will have to work on that.

Controller is only sata 2 but it will meet my needs for now.

I have less than a week till I get home from work. I got the second m11x in. Getting 8gb ram and x25 160gd SSD. The new screen is in as well. Still case looking for my mitx projects. Doing up two of those HP motherboards one with the 6570 the other a 650 ti. I want to get a 750 ti with it using only 60 watts you could power it with a pico power supply. I also ordered the new AMD AM1 quad core to test run.