My first build. Would like to hear from those with experience about my choices.
What's the intended use?
My home desktop machine: MSOffice, webbrowsing etc.
Dev work: programming, compiling etc.
Casual gaming: I sometime game. Wouldn't mind playing Diablo 3 with high settings (my current computer sometimes struggles with D3 on low settings). I would like to be able to play almost anything that's currently around even on lowest settings.
Home theatre: This would be our main device for consuming media in the short to medium term (i.e. watching movies, listening to music etc.)
Potentially do some image processing, maybe even some movie rendering at some point.
Dual booting Linux and Windows.
What I want?
I want it to be small!
Contrary to stereotypes of engineers I do care about aesthetics.
I'm a fan of minimalism. I don't like to add anything I don't need.
I want it to be relatively quiet, and not draw excessive amounts of power (I have friends whose computers are like heaters. No need for a wood burner at their house).
I'd like to have WiFi and bluetooth available.
The proposed build
Chassis
Silverstone Fortress FT03S-Mini
PSU
Silverstone ST45SF-G 450W
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI
CPU
Intel Core i5-3550 3.3Ghz
RAM
2x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Graphics Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 HDMI Dual-DVI 1GB
Optical drive
Silverstone SOD02
HDD
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALX - 1TB 3.5"
SSD
OCZ Agility 4 Series - 128GB 2.5"
I really do like the idea of using the fortress mini. It looks good, and has a very small footprint. I'm not interested in overclocking so I assume I won't need any extra cooling devices. Items such as RAM, HDD and SSD are just ones that were cheap and looked decent. One thing I don't understand though is what it means that each RAM stick contains 2x4GB as opposed to 1x8GB.
So am I being excessive on any front? For example do my combination of components mean that the CPU I've chosen is more powerful than it needs to be (maybe bottlenecks elsewhere will diminish its effectiveness).
What's the intended use?
My home desktop machine: MSOffice, webbrowsing etc.
Dev work: programming, compiling etc.
Casual gaming: I sometime game. Wouldn't mind playing Diablo 3 with high settings (my current computer sometimes struggles with D3 on low settings). I would like to be able to play almost anything that's currently around even on lowest settings.
Home theatre: This would be our main device for consuming media in the short to medium term (i.e. watching movies, listening to music etc.)
Potentially do some image processing, maybe even some movie rendering at some point.
Dual booting Linux and Windows.
What I want?
I want it to be small!
Contrary to stereotypes of engineers I do care about aesthetics.
I'm a fan of minimalism. I don't like to add anything I don't need.
I want it to be relatively quiet, and not draw excessive amounts of power (I have friends whose computers are like heaters. No need for a wood burner at their house).
I'd like to have WiFi and bluetooth available.
The proposed build
Chassis
Silverstone Fortress FT03S-Mini
PSU
Silverstone ST45SF-G 450W
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-H77N-WIFI
CPU
Intel Core i5-3550 3.3Ghz
RAM
2x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Graphics Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 HDMI Dual-DVI 1GB
Optical drive
Silverstone SOD02
HDD
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALX - 1TB 3.5"
SSD
OCZ Agility 4 Series - 128GB 2.5"
I really do like the idea of using the fortress mini. It looks good, and has a very small footprint. I'm not interested in overclocking so I assume I won't need any extra cooling devices. Items such as RAM, HDD and SSD are just ones that were cheap and looked decent. One thing I don't understand though is what it means that each RAM stick contains 2x4GB as opposed to 1x8GB.
So am I being excessive on any front? For example do my combination of components mean that the CPU I've chosen is more powerful than it needs to be (maybe bottlenecks elsewhere will diminish its effectiveness).