My old socket 939 board finally gave up the ghost this summer so I replaced it with a 775 Core 2 Duo board. It's a m-atx system built for light gaming.
No problem. Have housed everything in a Coolermaster 541 for a few years now and love the case. No big deal, I was going to keep everything as it is but my father-in-law needs a new computer and my current system meets all the specs for everything he needs.
This gives me an opportunity to build a new system for the first time in years. I've been going over it for a few weeks and I can't get past a few questions. My life has changed and I no longer have time to game but may have in a year or so. So I'm looking to build a system that has good integrated graphics, expandability, is dead silent. I'd looked at the m-itx solutions but the price premium seems to be $150 over M-atx at the cost of expandability for the Zotac m-itx board & SGO5 case. Plus a new psu for the case as I want the whole system to be as quiet or quieter than a Nexus at 7V.
So I'm looking at Intel boards with the 9300 chipset, specifically the ASUS P5N7A-VM . Are there any AMD systems that are comparable/better for integrated graphics with decent power consumption? The system is on most of the day. I'd like a 45nm chip and around $200 for the board and chip. I'm currently running cool off of a passive mini-ninja and would like to keep it that way.
The next issue is the case. And this is where I'm stuck. I've got a Seasonic M12 that I'd like to keep so I'm looking at the Antec NSK3480 and swapping the PSU to my FIL's system and replacing the system fan with a Scythe. But it's a short case so I'd need a new short optical drive (any specific drive recommendations?) The other option is to keep my case and put the new system in the NSK. I'm just concerned about how short
As far as drives go, I've got a couple of notebook drives that I was going to but in the silverstone caddy or figuring out a DIY suspension them. Though I've got a SSD in my laptop that may be pulled out for this system instead.
I keep going around this in my head and I'm not getting anywhere. So my requirements are good integrated graphics to be able to drive full screen video at 1680 x 1050.
Need M-atx system advice
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hybrid2d4x4
- Posts: 310
- Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:45 pm
- Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
On the AMD side, the 780/785G chipsets can do everything that the GF9300/9400 can with the exception of 8ch LPCM over HDMI (they are limited to 2ch LPCM, DD, DTS). The performance and power envelope is very similar to the nV chipset, and value favors AMD heavily in this area if the prices at newegg are representative ($45-90 AMD boards VS $110-140 nV). Driving a 1680x1050 display is no problem for any modern chipset.
What does complicate things is your wish to run games in the future. Building a quiet office/casual use computer is easy enough, but to have it run games quietly is a lot more challenging. I'm assuming that you were originally thinking of using a E5x00 or 6x00 dual core given the budget you allocated to the mobo/cpu. If you're serious about leaving the door open for future gaming without replacing the CPU, I'd go for the Athlon II X3 or maybe even the quads. They're harder to cool, obviously, but if your case has good airflow, you might be able to pull it off passive with a minja.
What does complicate things is your wish to run games in the future. Building a quiet office/casual use computer is easy enough, but to have it run games quietly is a lot more challenging. I'm assuming that you were originally thinking of using a E5x00 or 6x00 dual core given the budget you allocated to the mobo/cpu. If you're serious about leaving the door open for future gaming without replacing the CPU, I'd go for the Athlon II X3 or maybe even the quads. They're harder to cool, obviously, but if your case has good airflow, you might be able to pull it off passive with a minja.