New Build, Small Form Factor

[Jim Lovejoy]

I would like to help my daughter build her own computer for college. We were thinking small form factor. New egg has a Apevia micro ATX case on sale. I was also looking at the Shuttle. She is not a power user. Besides schoolwork she would probably like to have media center capabilities maybe a TV tuner in the graphics card, a reasonably fast processor, reliable motherboard but not the latest and greatest.

I started to cruise new egg for motherboards and realized, too many choices. Any suggestions? Anyone out there building SFF PC's. Any recommendations.

Thanks

Jim

[flanzig1]

I would look at the mini or mid tower uATX cases. One reason for suggesting a tower is that more than likely the case will be on the floor of a dorm room. They will be big enough to use a standard ATX PSU and uATX motherboard. For a motherboard, look at the Asus uATX boards in the P5B or P5K series. They will take the whole range of Cor2Duo CPUs.

[Cricket]

Any reason why your daughter doesn't want to take a laptop to college?

Cricket

[Jim Lovejoy]

I suppose the larger case will give us more options, the small form factor cases looked interesting. We will look at the ones suggested.

She has an old laptop that works but we were looking for an into the case experience. There is no practical reason for doing this. I am sure we could buy a system a lot cheaper that would work but I think it will be a fun project. This is my second build. I built a system a few months ago with my 10 year old son which is still working so there is a bit of sibling rivalry involved.

Any way still looking for input, thanks for the responses so far. This is a really great forum.

[maxnik]

i'm using Ultra Micro Fly case - it's pretty good and would take a regular ATX PSU.

[blue60007]

A small case is definitely advisable. If she'll be staying in a dorm, she'll have limited space to put a monster case.