Micro PC build

A New PC .. but not for me! :(

My mother-in-law has a tiny (and rightly impressive) Mac Mini as her main computer and has used this for many years with general satisfaction. However, there is only so much processing power you can squeeze into a chassis no bigger than a ready-meal and after 10 years, she now finds it laggy playing games and unable to enjoy the latest releases at high quality.

Wendy's current computer - Mac Mini 1st Generation

As such she has been pining for an upgrade for a while and I offered my services to build one for her. This blog article is just a quick one showing what we did.

Requirements Specification

Being a Systems Engineer, I just felt impulsed to write a requirement spec. Did I write it down? No, but this is what I thought Wendy needed after talking with her about her ideal PC. 

1. It must be compact, full-size towers (ATX) are far too large [REQ01]
2. It must be quiet - hurricanes of fans are not an option [REQ02]
3. It must be power efficient [REQ03]
4. It must be powerful - a slightly subjective requirement! Further discussion revealed:
1. The Graphics Card must be powerful enough to be able to play games at the current level of quality (low graphics)  [REQ04]
2. The Graphics Card should be powerful enough to be able to play games at high quality (desirable requirement) [REQ05]
3. Boot-up time must be less than 1 minute (current experience with the Mac Mini) [REQ06]
4. No particular memory requirements other than it has to be able to play games [REQ07]

Design Ideas

OK so there we have seven requirements, here's my thought process going from requirements to design:

[REQ01] - Compact

She's familiar with the Mac Mini and loves how small it is, so ideally wanted to find a case of similar size. Overall the objective was to minimise the case size. I did stumble across a case that looks very very similar to the Mac Mini case. The problem I had with it straight away was it required a PSU of size "SFX" - what the bugger does that mean? My interpretation : bloody small with very limited options. I didn't like the idea of limited options. So had to continue looking.

[REQ02] - Quiet

I really wanted to try and use all-in-one watercoolers on the CPU to keep it quiet.

[REQ03] - Power Efficient

It must be power efficient

[REQ04] & [REQ05]- Graphics

The Graphics Card must be powerful enough to be able to play games at the current level of quality (low graphics)
The Graphics Card should be powerful enough to be able to play games at high quality (desirable requirement)

I know from experience that even my archaic GTX 260 and GTX 460 cards in my PCs are more than beasty enough for games like the Sims 4. So I had pretty much any choice of modern cards that suited both the space volume restrictions and met the budget.

[REQ06] - Quick

Boot-up time must be less than 1 minute (current experience with the Mac Mini)

[REQ07] - Memory

No particular memory requirements other than it has to be able to play games

We are going to need a bigger boat ... I mean box

So after a few hours on Scan.co.uk and Ebuyer.co.uk buttons were pressed and the debit card burned, a rather impressive two days later parcels arrived!

Unpacking

I have to confess, I left work early (3pm to be precise after being there for just 6 hours!) so that I could come home to start the build. I had been tracking the parcels online using the respective courier services so I knew they had made it.

RAM

First up is the Random Access Memory, or RAM. I've learned that your choice of RAM will be one of the two major features that will limit (or not) your overall performance. RAM is a bit like scrap-paper for doing your homework. If you have an A4 piece of scrap paper then you can write out lots easily, however if you only have a piece of paper the size of a stamp, then you can only write a little at a time and you will spend lots of time rubbing out what you've done so you can then do the next bit. That's much the same scenario for a computer, have a large volume of RAM will enable your computer to make lots of calculations simultaneously.

Now I knew from my motherboard specification that the memory controller supports Dual-Channel memory operations. What on earth is that? In practice this means that it uses two RAM "cards" at the same time for an improved data-throughput. Now I know I want to maximise performance so I want to take advantage of this, so I want to put two RAM "cards" in rather than just one large one. 

The next question is what speed of RAM do I want? Ideally, the faster the better.

Using the scrap-paper analgy again.

Imagine you are using a nice Parker ball-point pen. The pen will glide across the paper no problem so you can just write as fast as your brain can think and your hand can write. This is going to be quick to write out everything to get to the answer.

Now imagine you are using a quill and ink, every now and then you need to dip the quill back in the ink pot so you can carry on writing - you will eventually get to the answer, but your hardware choice has resulted in it taking much longer compared to the ball-point pen.

Finally how much RAM do I want? MOAR!! Mwahaha. *composes oneself* the operating system, Windows in this case, is going to munch the best part of 2 GB by itself before you start using any applications. Wendy likes to play The Sims, which also burns up a few GB on its own, so we are very easily needing a MINIMUM of 4 GB. Purely because I've not factored in multi-tasking and application means we should double it to 8 GB. You can buy 8 GB memory kits, so it makes sense to go for that. But I know that Wendy won't want to buy a whole new PC for quite a while, so to future proof it I decided to go for the next level up which is 16 GB.

The very last factor is brand. Should that be a factor? I think it should, some brands are better than others. One of my favourite brands for RAM is Corsair.

Corsair XMS3 16 GB RAM Kit

CPU Cooling

Working inside a tiny chassis compared to my usual ATX and XL-ATX cases means that I had to be careful about how large the cooler was. It is important to keep the CPU cool, but I also had an envelope to fit it in. After scrolling through the options I settled on this. It is a very low profile cooler and by a brand that I knew offered good and very quiet performance.

Scythe Kozuti CPU Cooler

Power Supply

Ah the power supply - an area of much contention for PC builders. The PSU is responsible for converting the mains power (230 Volts, changing at 50 Hz of Alternating Current) to what the PC actually needs. Fundamentally this is typically 3.3 V for the CPU, 5-7 V for drives and 12 V for peripherals such as graphics cards.

The main question is how much do I need? There are a few PSU calculators available online that will work out what you need and recommend a PSU size once I had worked out what parts I was planning on using the calculators said I need about 350-400 W. Now I chose a PSU of 550 W. Firstly because whilst a 400 W one was available, the next one was the 500 W. But I also wanted some headroom because I knew I would be upgrading the PC in the future to have more powerful components. I also wanted to factor in that a good PSU will last decades, so to support it I wanted additional power head room.

The next factor is efficiency. The only PSUs you want to even consider will have an efficiency branding known as "80PLUS". This means that they are at least 80% efficient. Now 80% is pretty poor, the other 20% of the energy is lost as heat (by the PSU). That's a lot of energy! Buying a more efficient PSU does cost more, but it can work out that they will save money in the long run.

I knew this was a key feature, so I tried to find the best I could.

Finally, because I was working inside a tiny case, I wanted to have a modular (or at least partially-modular), this again restricted my options further. That's why I've got a PSU that's probably a bit overkill

EVGA Supernova 550 GS Power Supply.

Motherboard

The choice of motherboard was important. I personally believe that the motherboard is one area to truly invest in out of all of the parts (other than the PSU) because its the backbone to your PC. Frustratingly there was actually very little choice when looking at the mini-ATX boards. They were either £70 area, or £300. For a tiny board I think £300 is stupid (an XL-ATX with lots of features I might consider £300 for!), it was also out of budget. MSI is another very good brand so the choice was simple here.

Graphics Card

The graphics card was another key feature of this computer. The size constraints were the driving force here, I had to choose a card that was no bigger than a dual-slot card. It also needed to be quiet, so the large heat-sink was a must.

Once I had limited the scope to cards that would fit, it was then getting the best I could for the money available.

An Nvidia-based GTX 750.

Processor

Storage

Optical Disk Drive

Chassis

The case that I settled on in the end is a Coolermaster CM130.

The Build

First things first ... stripping down the chassis so that I can start getting bits in.

Stripped down case

I was really impressed with installing the Optical Disk Drive. The front cover of the case pops off to let you slide it in the bay. The bay itself is tool-less. 

Tool-less 5.25 inch bay

The SSD gets mounted on the side panel wall (which in itself is removable).

Now its a game of 3D-tetris