mini-micro-tiny PC! (suggestion-budget challenge build)

[Ravien]

My friend is looking to get a new PC, as her current one has just had a motherboard failure, and right now she's using an old junked laptop with a dead screen I had laying around. Now, she spends a large poriton of her time watching TV in the back room, only coming into the computer room to check facebook or listen to music or similar things. I was thinking of possibly building her an extremely small pc with enough power that she shouldn't have problems for the next 5-10 years.

Required:
Ability to view 1080p HD video
Wireless
Enough power for heavy javascript (read: Facebook games and Minecraft)
Decent audio
Extremely small form factor (I'm probably going to mount it to her 32" HDTV)

Optional:
Enough power for light gaming (I'm talking last gen, CS:Source/GW1 gaming, nothing big. If we can fit that in though, that would be awesome)

Budget: As low as possible. The goal is to challenge how cheap we can get the build.

Theoretics of near future allowed, with pricing based off current product.

I'm thinking a trinity build would get the most bang for the buck here, if left long enough for a mini-ITX board to come out. We could price it based on current ITX boards.

I'm also thinking that in order to get the smallest size possible, a barebone system might be needed. (you guys are the masters of that though)

In addition, I'm thinking for smallest size, a motherboard with direct power would be the best option. (I'm thinking of an old Zotac ION board here)

Also, this doesn't have to be a custom build. If a prebuilt system would be cheaper and more productive (I'm specfically thinking of Zotac ZBoxes here), reccomend that.

Price of windows irrelevant.

 

[SithSolo1]

No matter what your budget is you can't plan a system that will still be viable that far out. I'd say 2 years would about max with a large budget.

I was actually looking into a tiny trinity build yesterday. Plan about $350 minimum for the budget.

Some of the smaller boxes a VESA mountable. Look at the m350 case and the Antec ISK Vesa.

General budget break down:
Trinity A8/A10 Quad-core - $110-130
Mini-ITX once out - $100-120
4/8GB ram - $25-45
HDD/SSD - $65+
Case & PSU - $90+ (smaller usually costs more)
Internal or External optical drive - $20+

 

[Machupo]

By then, NUC options should be out, mITX will no longer be the final frontier in "real" computers.

 

[Ravien]

By then, NUC options should be out, mITX will no longer be the final frontier in "real" computers.

NUC?

 

[Machupo]

NUC?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6267/intels-next-unit-of-computing-4x4-core-i3-systems-targeted-at-399

 

[Zap]

Pending ITX FM2 boards...

Intel Core i3-3225 (has HD 4000 graphics)
ITX mobo of choice (ASRock H77M-ITX?)
RAM of choice (Samsung 8GB low profile kit is good)
SSD of choice (whatever is not crappy and is on sale, 120GB+)
Antec ISK 110 VESA case/PSU

 

[jamaicanpi]

Extremely small form factor (I'm probably going to mount it to her 32" HDTV)

I don't think this really requires an "extremely small form factor" If you are going to mount it behind the T.V., then you just need a VESA compatible case. In that case, don't waste the money on the Intel NUC, get something comparable to what Zap recommended: (I would splurge on a slightly nicer motherboard (just for durability). For example, if she has a receiver and decent speakers it might make sense to grab Intel's H77 with the ALC898 audio codec)

Pending ITX FM2 boards...

Intel Core i3-3225 (has HD 4000 graphics)
ITX mobo of choice (ASRock H77M-ITX?)
RAM of choice (Samsung 8GB low profile kit is good)
SSD of choice (whatever is not crappy and is on sale, 120GB+)
Antec ISK 110 VESA case/PSU

 

[Ravien]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6267/intels-next-unit-of-computing-4x4-core-i3-systems-targeted-at-399

What's the timeline on these bad boys?

 

[Zap]

get something comparable to what Zap recommended: (I would splurge on a slightly nicer motherboard (just for durability).

You don't think the ASRock H77M-ITX board is durable? It isn't as if it was one of those $50 Foxconn ITX boards.

 

[jamaicanpi]

You don't think the ASRock H77M-ITX board is durable? It isn't as if it was one of those $50 Foxconn ITX boards.

You're right. That's my bias speaking. I think of ASRock as being the best value motherboards, but I still think their quality is just a notch below Asus, Gigabyte and MSI. ASRock in my opinion is very close to the same quality. It's just that the small difference in quality/durability is enough for me not to recommend them for a PC that is being designed to have a lifespan of 5-10 years.

That said, I would love to see some real up-to-date numbers on failure rate.

 

[P4B]

yes starting with a cheap mobo you would want to stay away from the $40-$70 range at the bottom. those are for ppl building junkboxs and reselling cheap but for profit.the $80- $100 mobos are good enough for friends and family.

 

[Zap]

It's just that the small difference in quality/durability is enough for me not to recommend them for a PC that is being designed to have a lifespan of 5-10 years.

LOL, different strokes for different folk.

I would NEVER design a PC built to operate for 10 years.

I'd say the predominate point of failure with motherboards in the past has been capacitors. Just buy a board with all solid caps and you've probably gotten rid of 80% of the long term failures.

 

[Ravien]

LOL, different strokes for different folk.

I would NEVER design a PC built to operate for 10 years.

I'd say the predominate point of failure with motherboards in the past has been capacitors. Just buy a board with all solid caps and you've probably gotten rid of 80% of the long term failures.

I know many companies talk about Japanese capacitors, but what companies advertise solid caps?

Also, It's not meant to operate everything for the next 10 years. It's just meant to last a long time, and make it work for her for web browsing, listening to internet radio, java/flash apps (curse facebook) and such. Her current computer died, as I believe I stated above, and that PC was a turn of the century winXP P4 HP unit. So about 10 years is how long it lasted her. Granted, I reinstalled XP on it a few times to speed it up, and eventually put windows 7 on it for the same reason, but it lasted 10 years. Or very close. I'm looking at the same objective here.

 

[Zap]

I know many companies talk about Japanese capacitors, but what companies advertise solid caps?

Used to be advertised more, back when everyone was having their 2-4 year old motherboards die from bad caps. These days? Well, MSI advertises "military class" as if it meant something.

It isn't a sure thing because there are fakes, but normally you can just look at a pic of the motherboard to spot solid caps. For instance this cheap board has a mix of solid and normal electrolytic capacitors. The solid ones have the blue and red colors. The electrolytic have the K stamped in them to help vent in case of problem. Solid caps don't need that because they won't explode. Supposedly.

Electrolytic Capacitor

Typical basic electrolytics are rated to work at temperatures up to 85 °C, and are rated for a worst-case life of about 2000 hours[ (a year is about 9000 hours)

Polymer Capacitor (AKA "solid")

Some types have longer life than wet electrolytics, e.g. 50,000 hours life at 85 °C.

The thing is that temperature also makes a huge difference. If the system has good ventilation, then it will probably last longer. For instance (from what I gather reading up on it) solid caps expected lifespan seems to fall off a cliff at higher temperatures, while electrolytic can outright fail due to drying up. Also, capacitance plummets below room temperatures so they don't do their job as well. The last thing is that power ripple can greatly shorten the life of capacitors, hence the need for using PSUs that aren't crappy. See my bolded parts below.

Standard inexpensive consumer-grade electrolytic capacitors are rated for 85 °C maximum working temperature. Life in the operational environment is dictated by the Law of Arrhenius, which dictates that the capacitor life is a function of temperature and DC voltage. As a rule of thumb, the life doubles for each 10 °C lower operating temperature. In our example, it reaches 15 years at 45 °C (for caps rated at 105 °C). The operating temperature however is not just the ambient temperature. Ripple currents can increase it significantly. The actual operating temperature is a complex function of ambient temperature, air speed, ripple current frequency and amplitude, and also affected by material thermal resistance and the surface area of the can case. In general, high amplitude ripple currents shorten the life expectancy, whereas low frequency ripple is more detrimental than high frequency. The EIA IS-749 is a standard for testing electrolytic capacitor life.

Ignoring their example using a 105°C cap and using the more typical 85°C, a 2000 hour cap becomes a 4000 hour cap at 75°C. Continuing, if you are able to keep case temperatures at 45°C, you will have an expected operational life of 32000 hours. It isn't so simple in the real world though, because especially on a motherboard designed to handle potentially higher wattage CPUs or overclocking, there's probably some extra capacity built in. That, along with the fact that capacitors degrade means a system potentially can operate well beyond the "expected lifetime" of the capacitor.

Why not go all solid everywhere? Higher cost, and they don't seem as great where larger caps are needed (for example, in PSUs).

tl;dr - Just understand that anything which uses capacitors will have a finite life span. You can "increase" that life span by making sure case ventilation is good, and by buying parts with solid caps.