SFF mobo

[metallica948]

hey all im lookin at building my mom a comp for her sewing machine but the only thing that she said she really wants is an LCD and the comp to not take up a lot of space so i was gonna build her one with the thermaltake lanbox lite case in piano black finish but its a micro atx or mini itx mobo config. i haven't done any thing with SFF anything so was wondering on a suggestion for mobo/chip combo. i am planning on putting at least a 7600 vid card in it so pcie would be nice. any suggestions would be greatly appreaciated thanx.

Me

[D1337]

"at least a 7600"
why? 6 series are cheaper and will perform basically the same for the uses most moms use their computer for. Email, email, ms office, email,sawing designs?, printing.

Unless she's one of those rare, tech savvy mothers she wont know or see the difference from a 6 series to a 8800 ultra sli'd, except for the price.


I would consider a 6 series, unless you plan on using the box for gaming... which it wouldnt be your moms pc.

[metallica948]

i just looked at pricewatch.com and the 6800 and the 7600 are the same price so i figured use the 7600 cause its considerably newer and will prolly push a bigger rez of a 22" or 24" better then the 6800. but my orignal question still stands on a suggestion for a mobo and cpu.

[.Maleficus.]

Welcome to the forums metallica948.

Have you ever heard of Newegg? They have THE BEST prices for computer parts/tech anywhere. Period. You should be able to find a 6 series considerably lower there than a 7 series.

For a high res monitor, the more RAM on the card, the better. Unless you mom will be doing graphics intensive tasks, the newer cards with higher clock speeds and such probably won't do much good (this is for sewing and internet I'm guessing). Ultimately it's your choice if you want a 7 series or 6 series, but thinking about what it'll be used for, you may want to consider it.

As for the mobo and CPU, do you have a preference of AMD or Intel? If you go AMD, I can't help much there, but AM2 is the newest AMD stuff, and a dual-core X2-3800+ is pretty cheap I believe, and is probably more than enough for what it'll be used for. For Intel, I'd recommend a Pentium D or low end Core 2 Duo. Both have pretty solid prices, and are great performers. Once you decide what kind of system you want (AMD or Intel) we can all help a lot more.

[Mach]

You may want to look at www.logicsupply.com. AOpen has a mini-itx FF mobo that has PCI-E (945) and is fairly open on processor.

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/i945gtt_vfan

I've used via's mini-itx mobo for retormod but too much of a hassle and support is spotty. If I was looking for an upgrade, I'd go with AOpen but that's based on research from awhile ago.

Logicsupply has a whole host of other mini-itx mobos shown. You might want to consider hacking apart a mac mini too.

[metallica948]

i think im gonna go with a amd/nvidia setup. since thats what i have had the most exp with. i haven't really been following intel that much except for the new quad core stuff but my mom don't need all that and this comp is prolly never gonna be hooked up to the internet as my dad is ulta paranoid about the sewing machine getting a virus.