Zoot
Active member
Figured I'd jump on the APU bandwagon for this, plus it makes a nice (underpowered) addition to this forum. 
This system is not going to be used for anything other than watching movies and skype. With my sister in Australia (like so many others here in Ireland), it's cool to have her come up on the TV screen. And with the television being so useless quite often it's nice to have something to stick on a movie or TV series.
I had hoped for a mini ITX setup but the microATX motherboard and case were really cheap, and the mini ITX would have pushed the budget up a bit more. The only limiting factor with the motherboard is the 4 SATA ports, otherwise I'd have more hard drives in it.
Specs:
APU: AMD A4-5300
Motherboard: MSi FM2-A55M-E33
Memory: 4GB ( 2x2GB ) G-Skill DDR3-1333
Sound & Video: Onboard
CPU Cooler: Akasa Evo 98
Hard Drives: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 7200rpm (x3)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 344 Blue
Power Supply: Corsair VS 350W
I had initally hoped to use the stock cooler for the APU, but it was just too loud and the board insisted on running it at full pelt all the time. The Akasa is overkill but it's got manual fan control and with the fan at the minimum rpm it's nice and quiet. It kept my old Phenom II X4 955 nice and cool so it's more than capable of cooling this tiny APU.
Total cost for this including shipping was €190. The CPU cooler, hard drives, optical drive and media card reader (which looks terrible against the black case) I had lying around from old builds. None of the components are particularly powerful, but given its usage it doesn't matter too much, and I most certainly can't complain, given the price.
My cable management isn't hectic either, (still better than my main rig though :lol: ) but I typically get lazy when it comes to it. The case and the non-modular power supply mounted at the top don't help either.
Pictures:
This system is not going to be used for anything other than watching movies and skype. With my sister in Australia (like so many others here in Ireland), it's cool to have her come up on the TV screen. And with the television being so useless quite often it's nice to have something to stick on a movie or TV series.
I had hoped for a mini ITX setup but the microATX motherboard and case were really cheap, and the mini ITX would have pushed the budget up a bit more. The only limiting factor with the motherboard is the 4 SATA ports, otherwise I'd have more hard drives in it.
Specs:
APU: AMD A4-5300
Motherboard: MSi FM2-A55M-E33
Memory: 4GB ( 2x2GB ) G-Skill DDR3-1333
Sound & Video: Onboard
CPU Cooler: Akasa Evo 98
Hard Drives: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 7200rpm (x3)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 344 Blue
Power Supply: Corsair VS 350W
I had initally hoped to use the stock cooler for the APU, but it was just too loud and the board insisted on running it at full pelt all the time. The Akasa is overkill but it's got manual fan control and with the fan at the minimum rpm it's nice and quiet. It kept my old Phenom II X4 955 nice and cool so it's more than capable of cooling this tiny APU.
Total cost for this including shipping was €190. The CPU cooler, hard drives, optical drive and media card reader (which looks terrible against the black case) I had lying around from old builds. None of the components are particularly powerful, but given its usage it doesn't matter too much, and I most certainly can't complain, given the price.
My cable management isn't hectic either, (still better than my main rig though :lol: ) but I typically get lazy when it comes to it. The case and the non-modular power supply mounted at the top don't help either.
Pictures:
