My current PC is having a few ongoing issues, along with sporadic head-scratchers that have me worried it will not hold up much longer. It is a powerful machine, but not having it 100% (or at least close to 100%!) reliable bothers me... I am trying to start a photography and video business on the side, but I don't feel confident right now charging people for a service I don't know if I'll be able to perform. I don't want to lose access to their data in the middle of a job. At the same time, money is tight, and I won't be able to fix my current machine without a serious investment: I have very specific problems, as I'm running an OS X/W7 dual boot PC, with a finicky OS X set up made to work with exactly the hardware I currently have installed. My mobo seems to be going bad (it is an Asus P6T deluxe v2; two PCI Express slots no longer work, there is a bad DIMM slot that randomly causes the machine to crash, there is a nonfunctional USB port, ditto on the ethernet...). Without investing a lot of time or money into building a new machine with the same functions, I am out of luck in fixing that core problem. That's not feasible right now. So I'm trying to figure out a cheap way (~$300 or less) to build a simple back up machine, probably utilizing Linux, just so I have a way to access my files in case something goes wrong with the main box. I am looking at AMD APUs for value, but I don't have any experience with them. I'm also planning on a micro-ATX build. Is there anything I should know before going in? Here are the parts I have picked out so far:
Rosewill Micro-ATX mini tower
Corsair 430w psu
MSI FM2-A75MA-E35
AMD A8-5500
Kingston HyperX 8GB RAM
That's pretty much it... I have an Intel 80GB SSD from around 3 years ago as a boot drive in my current PC, but I'd probably buy a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro, put that in my main machine, and use the old SSD in the new build. Anything else would be attached as external storage.
I might be able to get away with only 4GB of RAM, but I'm looking at 8 for doing basic video/photo editing, and also the possibility of converting this machine into a media center or NAS server in the future. I don't need a ton of power, but I want something snappy.
As an aside, I'm trying to build something compact. Smaller the better. I was checking out mini-ITX boards but it seems that compactness comes with a price premium. Any suggestions there? Even a sleeker case would be great, if I'm keeping this build as-is. But anyway, that one is more a "nice to have," it obviously isn't necessary to the functioning of the PC.
I can install an OS with a flash drive, so I'm not worried about a disc drive. I can add one later if it's needed.
Thanks for any input in advance.
Rosewill Micro-ATX mini tower
Corsair 430w psu
MSI FM2-A75MA-E35
AMD A8-5500
Kingston HyperX 8GB RAM
That's pretty much it... I have an Intel 80GB SSD from around 3 years ago as a boot drive in my current PC, but I'd probably buy a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro, put that in my main machine, and use the old SSD in the new build. Anything else would be attached as external storage.
I might be able to get away with only 4GB of RAM, but I'm looking at 8 for doing basic video/photo editing, and also the possibility of converting this machine into a media center or NAS server in the future. I don't need a ton of power, but I want something snappy.
As an aside, I'm trying to build something compact. Smaller the better. I was checking out mini-ITX boards but it seems that compactness comes with a price premium. Any suggestions there? Even a sleeker case would be great, if I'm keeping this build as-is. But anyway, that one is more a "nice to have," it obviously isn't necessary to the functioning of the PC.
I can install an OS with a flash drive, so I'm not worried about a disc drive. I can add one later if it's needed.
Thanks for any input in advance.
In the meantime we need to build you a cheap little back up rig.
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