Should I build a new PC?

[J T]

40 seconds polling the floppy

Chuckle

[Stephen Coates]

I notice a lot of SFF cases don't seem to have any external drive bays. One would think a cube PC or a pizza box PC would at least have room for a laptop-size CD drive and a card reader.

[Stephen Coates]

These MicroATX cases from In-Win looks really good.
https://www.in-win.com/en/gaming-cha...sub_series=338
But no b***** drive bays!

Fractal Design have some nice ones. I rather like the Node 202. But, again, NO DRIVE BAYS. I suppose we can accept that on such a small case, but even some of the massive ones are missing drive bays.
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/p...eries/node-202

These MicroATX cases from BitFenix looks pretty cool, and they at least have one drive bay.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/bitfe...ca-142-bx.html

Pondering Lian Li's options, they do have one that is a bit smaller than my current one, and has 3 drive bays, but its not much smaller.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lian-...ca-426-ll.html
They have some neat 'slim' cases, but they are stupidly expensive at £300+.

If you fancy something a bit different, you could always go with one of these:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lian-...ca-74i-ll.html

[Stephen Coates]

I've just been pondering a Shuttle XPC. I always used to really like the form factor of these, but I never bought one.

They have models with both a 5.25" drive bay and a 3.5" drive bay, as well as two PCIe slots - one for a graphics card and one for another kind of card.

They do one with the recent H370 chipset for the recent Intel Coffee Lake CPUs. I'm thinking a low end Coffee Lake i3 might be a good option.

Now, can a Coffee Lake CPU make me a cappuccino?

[Harrison]

I quite liked the idea of SFF cases and bought a system when they first appeared years ago. Showing its age, it had an AMD XP 3000+ CPU with 1GB ram and an AGP card. It was quite a nice little system with a completely aluminium case with all side and top panels slide off for easy access.

It was however not a great design as it would overheat. I had to cut fan holes in the side of the case to mount 80mm fans with a custom grill to make it look nice. Helped but not perfect. The AMD XP chips were the issue though because they liked to run hot, idling in the 40s, and in the 60s under load. But with a ceiling max temp of only about 68 -75 degrees.

[Stephen Coates]

I bought a Shuttle XPC SH370R6.

http://www.shuttle.eu/products/mini-...70r6/overview/

Now to choose what hardware to put in it. Looks like the current Core i processors have lower power requirements than my current Core2Quad. I'll be interested to try out the built in Intel graphics, although I expect I will change to a proper graphics card eventually.

[Harrison]

If you are not gaming then thr GPUs built into the Intel i processors are fine. The last couple of laptops we own use them without issue.

My download and home server is also running an i3 and using the built in GPU and it's perfect as Im not using it for gaming, just the desktop and command prompt. Can even run dual monitor setups perfectly well.