$700 home studio build

[ganymede]

I'm a musician/composer working entirely out of my home. Up until now, it's been mostly a hobby, but I've recently began moving towards more serious projects (album recording, live performances). Unfortunately, my Asus K50IJ (which has performed remarkably so far) is starting to give out, both in terms of performance and in terms of being almost 5 years old (busted hinge, dead battery, keys wearing out). Unfortunately, current laptops all seem extremely ill-suited to my main requirements:

• Linux-friendly (Ubuntu Studio, to be specific)
• No dedicated GPU: definitely not ATi, but a dedicated GPU in general seems like an overkill.
• Plenty of RAM: i.e. at least 4 GB, preferably more.
• A ton of USB ports: most of my studio gear runs on USB, as well as peripherials, external data storage etc. All the laptops I found so far have 3 or less USB ports.
• Decent build quality: granted, it spends most of its time on my desk, but it must survive live performances and, perhaps more importantly, transportation to and from a live performance .
• No optical drive: I have zero use for them.
• Silent: Sure, 30 years from now when I'm super famous, someone might get a kick out of adding "at 5:34 on Track 3, you can hear a laptop fan spinning up" to my Wikipedia page but otherwise, I'd prefer as little noise as possible.

So I'm wondering if a small form factor PC could be built for around $700 that would be portable and durable enough to pack up a few times a month and driven to rehearsals/performances. More precisely:

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Audio recording, editing, and performing. Occasionally, light graphic design and video editing (promotional materials and such).

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
$650-$700.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
Hungary. Conversion rate is ~230 HUF/USD, so the price range is 150-160k HUF.

4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US, please post a link to the vendor you'll be buying from.
We can't be expected to scour the internet on your behalf, chasing down deals in your specific country... Again, help us, help YOU.
Not a vendor per se, http://www.argep.hu is an up-to-date price comparison site. As a rule of thumb, if it's not listed there, it's not readily available.

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.
Linux with AMD/ATi cards is a living nightmare, so definitely not that.

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
None.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
No overclocking (mostly because it increases cooling requirements, adding to noise).

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using?
My current display is 1680x1050 (but the K50IJ's 1366x768 worked fine as well).

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Over the next week or two.

X. Do you need to purchase any software to go with the system, such as Windows or Blu Ray playback software?
Liiiiiiinuuuuuuux Ahem. No.

Current plan:

• Cooler Master Elite 130: 11.7k
• MSI H87I: 24.9k
• Intel Core i5 4430: 43.6k
• Noctua NH-L9I: 11.5k
• Samsung DDR3 8GB 1600 x2: 35.8k
• Corsair CX430M: 14.3
• Crucial M500 120 GB: 18.0k

Total: 159.8k HUF = $701, maybe a little more after some vendor optimization (trying to consolidate purchases to 2-3 vendors instead of buying every component from a different vendor).

So I guess it's technically possible. Is it any good though?

 

[ganymede]

Here's my first pass at a config. I haven't been able to research it very thoroughly, so maybe I'm way off base, but here goes:

• Cooler Master Elite 130 (miniITX)
• Asus H81I Plus
• Intel Core i5 3470 + Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
• 2x Kingston KHX16C10B1R/8 (8GB DDR3 1600)
• Cooler Master G500 modular 500W

Comes out to $660 (if the stock fans are quiet enough). And no, I'm not a Cooler Master fanboy, it just ended up this way because of practical considerations (e.g. "does the CPU cooler fit inside the case?").

 

[Burpo]

Edit..

 

[nsafreak]

Not a bad build but I wouldn't bother with Ivy Bridge over Haswell unless you're getting a pretty big discount. Looking at prices I would swap the i5 3470 to an i5 4670. I would also drop the Cooler Master PSU, they make decent cases and their fans are ok but the PSUs they have made for them are pretty lousy. I'd go with a SeaSonic M12II 430 watt unit as that will be plenty of power for your build.

 

[mfenn]

The Haswell IGP is well supported under recent versions of Ubuntu, I'd recommend going with 14.04 LTS. LTS for stability and it's an easy sell because 14.04 happens to be the latest version.

i5 4460 44k Ft.
ASRock H97M-ITX/ac 30k Ft.
Samsung DDR3 1600 8GB x2 36k Ft.
Corsair CX430M 14k Ft.
Cooler Master Elite 130 12k Ft.
Noctua NH-L9i 11k Ft.
Total: 147k Ft.

I didn't include any storage becasue you didn't in your config, so I assumed you had that covered. I picked the Noctua cooler because it comes with a very quiet fan and it will have no clearance issues due to its low profile.

 

[ganymede]

Oh ssssshhhoot... Nope, I haven't in fact got storage covered, I just had about 25 tabs open when I made that post and I forgot to include it. Here's a revision:

• Cooler Master Elite 130: 12k
• Asus H87I Plus: 30k
• Intel Core i5 4430: 45k
• Noctua NH-L9I: 12k
• Kingston DDR3 8GB 1600: 2x21k
• Seasonic M12II-520: 21k
• Crucial M500 240 GB: 30k

Total: 192k

Okay, so, less than ideal, but maybe not hopeless. For one, there is actually no Seasonic 430W available (only in the S series, but those are the budget models, I'm assuming), so maybe I could get another brand there.

I went with the 4430 because even though Intel lists the same recommended price for both, there's about a 15k discount compared to the 4460 (with the only difference in specs being that the 4460 is 0.2 GHz faster). The 212 EVO's dimensions were misreported by the vendor, it would in fact not fit, so I changed it to the Noctua (though not the L9a which is for AMD sockets ). As for storage, I'm planning to save the K50IJ's 250GB HDD for external storage, so I probably could go for a smaller (and cheaper) SSD.

 

[nsafreak]

Even SeaSonic's "budget" model PSUs are perfectly fine keeping in mind that Seasonic builds all of their own PSUs and many other PSU brands have SeaSonic make their top tier PSUs. If you want to go even cheaper you could go with a Corsair CX430M which should be fine for your uses. The SSD doesn't need to be terribly large, just enough for your OS and programs so a 128GB SSD should be fine as well.

 

[mfenn]

Oh ssssshhhoot... Nope, I haven't in fact got storage covered, I just had about 25 tabs open when I made that post and I forgot to include it. Here's a revision:

• Cooler Master Elite 130: 12k
• Asus H87I Plus: 30k
• Intel Core i5 4430: 45k
• Noctua NH-L9I: 12k
• Kingston DDR3 8GB 1600: 2x21k
• Seasonic M12II-520: 21k
• Crucial M500 240 GB: 30k

Total: 192k

Okay, so, less than ideal, but maybe not hopeless. For one, there is actually no Seasonic 430W available (only in the S series, but those are the budget models, I'm assuming), so maybe I could get another brand there.

I went with the 4430 because even though Intel lists the same recommended price for both, there's about a 15k discount compared to the 4460 (with the only difference in specs being that the 4460 is 0.2 GHz faster). The 212 EVO's dimensions were misreported by the vendor, it would in fact not fit, so I changed it to the Noctua (though not the L9a which is for AMD sockets ). As for storage, I'm planning to save the K50IJ's 250GB HDD for external storage, so I probably could go for a smaller (and cheaper) SSD.

So a few points:
- The i5 4460 that I linked is actually about 1k cheaper than the 4430.
- The Kingston RAM is needlessly expensive compared to the Samsung
- The Seasonic PSU is nice but isn't really worth the cost differential over the CX430M given that this machine will draw ~100W max.

 

[ganymede]

Actually, I edited the original post just as you were posting this reply, rendering 2 of those 3 points moot As for the i5, I posted slightly rounded up prices, but even so, the price difference is 0.4k (which is like, coffee for two with a modest tip ). So I guess that decision's going to be made once I figure out the actual vendors.

100W max, huh. Would it be crazy to consider a case with a built-in PSU? I seem to remember seeing a few of those while I was scouring the miniITX offerings, some of those had 200W or even 300W PSUs. Are those ever any good? Most brands I recall aren't exactly confidence-inspiring (M-Tech, LC Power, Spire, Morex, Tacens) but I saw a few Thermaltake and Chieftec ones.

 

[mfenn]

100W max, huh. Would it be crazy to consider a case with a built-in PSU? I seem to remember seeing a few of those while I was scouring the miniITX offerings, some of those had 200W or even 300W PSUs. Are those ever any good? Most brands I recall aren't exactly confidence-inspiring (M-Tech, LC Power, Spire, Morex, Tacens) but I saw a few Thermaltake and Chieftec ones.

All of those brands have bad PSUs, Thermaltake and Cheiftec included. You could pick up a 125W PicoPSU for 18.5k Lt, but that is more expensive than the CX430M and doesn't really get you anything unless you go for a really tiny book-style case.