fairly small desktop (not tower) system. Would consider buying or building.

[plugwash]

I live in the UK.

My mum wants a new computer and she would prefer a desktop to a tower.

Her current machine has a SSD (retrofitted by me, partly to improve performance) and I wouldn't want to give her a downgrade on that. The main reason for replacing the computer is stability, it crashes randomly and we haven't been able to put a precise finger on why.

The machine is used to run a web browser, office and a few other things but nothing is particularly intensive. Current machine is an old dell dimension. probably a late P4 (possiblly a pentium D) though I don't have the exact specs to hand,

I will consider either buying or building.

Specs:
reasonably modern dual core intel processor (intel for cool queit running).
SSD boot drive, 128GB should be more than enough
Ability to accommodate a 3.5 inch hard drive if more storage turns out to be needed.
Reasonable amount of front USB
Media card reader.
Full-sized optical drive (not a laptop drive).
Smallish desktop (sit under the monitor) form factor. Not looking for super tiny.
Ability to support two screens, one DVI, one VGA.
Windows 7 pro (need XP mode for a handful of win16 apps)
Probablly 8GB of ram.

The dell optiplex desktops would mostly fit the bill. However while a SSD option is listed it's highly overpriced and it won't actually let me select it on the dell UK small buisness site (it claims that the "cables and brackets" are wrong but then won't actually let me change those). Furthermore it seems even if I could and did order that option that the case can't (officially at least) support both a 2.5 inch and a 3.5 inch drive at the same time.

 

[Zap]

How big of storage drive do you envision her ever having? Why I ask is because 3.5" drives have been at 4TB, going on 5TB. 2.5" drives (albeit thicker) are at 2TB.

Why a full sized optical drive?

One potential case would be the Silverstone Milo ML03B. It can hold multiple 2.5" and 3.5" drives plus a desktop optical drive. It uses normal ATX PSUs (albeit can't be very long, modular may not work) and micro ATX motherboards. It has two USB 3.0 front ports. It isn't very deep, which matches LCD monitors better than most "desktop" style cases.

For performance, you can go with any current micro ATX motherboard which fits your CPU choice and has USB 3.0 headers, plus the requisite video outputs. From your description, you can do well with either an AMD A6 APU or Intel Haswell dual core.

 

[plugwash]

Why a full sized optical drive?

Robusness and ease of replacement when it inevitablly dies.

One potential case would be the Silverstone Milo ML03B. It can hold multiple 2.5" and 3.5" drives plus a desktop optical drive. It uses normal ATX PSUs (albeit can't be very long, modular may not work) and micro ATX motherboards. It has two USB 3.0 front ports. It isn't very deep, which matches LCD monitors better than most "desktop" style cases.

Unfortunately it has nowhere to put a media card reader. Which is a pity because other than that it looks like it would fit the bill nicely.

 

[plugwash]

How big of storage drive do you envision her ever having? Why I ask is because 3.5" drives have been at 4TB, going on 5TB. 2.5" drives (albeit thicker) are at 2TB.

Indeed, that may be a sensible compromise.

 

[450]

Mac Mini.

 

[plugwash]

Antec minuet 350 seems like a possibility. Would mean compromising on having both a 3.5 inch and a 2.5 inch drive though.

 

[plugwash]

I ended up going with the minuet 350, some notes on how the build went.

The minuet 350 uses the screwholes on the bottom of the 3.5 inch front facing drive, unfortunately the media card reader I picked (an akasa AK-ICR-16) had no screwholes in the bottom, I managed to mount it with one screw in the side of the media card reader gripping the side of a peice of metal and a cable tie to make sure it couldn't slide backwards but not an ideal setup.

When I got the case I discovered there was an undocumented 2.5 bay under the media card reader. This meant I didn't have to use the adaptor I bought and means I can fit a 3.5 inch HDD later if I want. On the other hand the undocumented 2.5 inch bay was really tricky to fit the drive to as there was no easy way to support it while screwing it in. Had to get my brother to hold the drive cage up in the air so the drive would be held in the right place by gravity while I screwed the SSD in from underneath. Maybe this is why the bay is undocumented...................

Antec's website doesn't specify whether the front ports are usb 2 or usb 3. I had assumed this meant they would be USB2, especially as the minuet 350 seems to be an older case but when I got the case I found the ports could be hooked up as either 2.0 or 3.0 (I ended up hooking them up as USB2 because I had USB 3 ports on the media card reader and the motherboard I used only had one USB3 header)

Windows 7 pro (new OEM copy) refused to activate online but activated fine on the phone.

Most of the old win16 games I tried ran fine with XP mode but tetris for windows had some graphical issues which made it ugly as hell (still playable though)

cables were a pain, little space to stuff them and if I tied them up I'd make it impossible to remove the drive cage without untying them first.

Everything I read online and the box the case came in said 80 plus (original) but the PSU itself was marked as bronze (bronze is better than original so this isn't a problem, just a surprise).

I don't know if it was the particular atx plate that came with the motherboard or the geometry of the case that caused it but I found it took quite a lot of pressure to get the motherboard to stay in the right place against the springyness of the ATX plate so I could screw it in. The screwholes also weren't the easiest to start and I ened up getting my brother to hold the board in place while I screwed it in.