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Building a small PC for air travel

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doubledeluxe

Golden Member
I'm a ways out from actually doing it but I am seriously considering building a small machine that I can take as carry on between countries. I have been looking at ITX and Micro ATX but as far as I can tell the only real difference is no SLI capable ITX boards and they're a bit more expensive? Is that about right?

All I really need is a motherboard that can handle 16GB of memory so two slots is enough, WIFI, and hopefully 4 SATA 6 GB/s ports for some hard drives. I need to figure out a way to maybe just connect a couple hard drives with a SATA cable externally when I need to pull data off of them and just leave a SSD and one mechanical in the box.

I doubt I'd even put a video card in the thing. Just an I5 and call it a day.

Thoughts?
 
Other than (maybe) being more expensive, can you enumerate why an ultrabook or similar laptop wouldn't be the more convenient solution?
What monitor would you be using as a "carry-on item"?
Or alternatively: a Mac Mini, Intel NUC, Gigabyte Brix, Zotac miniPC or something similar sized.
 
vailr said:
Other than (maybe) being more expensive, can you enumerate why an ultrabook or similar laptop wouldn't be the more convenient solution?
What monitor would you be using as a "carry-on item"?
Or alternatively: a Mac Mini, Intel NUC, Gigabyte Brix, Zotac miniPC or something similar sized.
Click to expand...

I agree. I was reading the post expecting the OP to want to game on the go, but was left scratching my head a bit when I got to the no GPU part.
 
The PC is used to do photo processing. Mostly lightroom. Some photoshop. Some stacking software. Thus no real need for a videocard. At least I don't think my limited photoshop use will require one. Have yet to try it with onboard since my current main rig is a 2500K with a videocard. It's a monster tower though and I'm going to probably just give it to a family member when I build a new machine. It's annoyingly big and noisy at this point and a relic from when I used to play a lot of games. I sometimes drag the machine between the office and bedroom and it must weigh 30 lbs.

So when I travel between home and visiting my family it would be nice to have everything with me. I have done the laptop route with multiple external hard drives attaching it to a monitor and whatnot but this kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop. I spend more money, for something slower, that I still have to plug into a monitor. If I was only going home for a couple days a laptop would probably be fine but I generally go home for 5 or 6 weeks.

I kinda feel like rather than having a laptop plus a desktop why not just have one that I can drag with me when I fly home? I still have a 24 inch monitor in the USA. On my next trip home I'm thinking of just leaving it there and buying a new 27 inch to bring back since it's so much cheaper. Not sure if that's practical though with the way they handle my luggage. For regular vacation travel I just drag a really cheap and light Dell laptop with me. Something that doesn't matter if it gets broken or stolen.

Haven't used a mac in years. Those last 3 options I am not familiar with.
 
mfenn said:
I agree. I was reading the post expecting the OP to want to game on the go, but was left scratching my head a bit when I got to the no GPU part.
Click to expand...

Well this is kinda where I got the idea. I was thinking LAN party PC without the need for a videocard.

Worse case scenario is I add a videocard after trying it out.
 
doubledeluxe said:
Haven't used a mac in years. Those last 3 options I am not familiar with.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of options in terms of processing power for mini PCs. At the top in would be a Gigabyte Brix like this one for $600 AR + RAM and storage. That's the top-end Crystalwell-equipped Haswell i7 4770R (not sold individually but would be ~$350). The downside of getting the absolute smallest footprint in a PC like that is that you're not going to be able to add a GPU or a lot of internal storage.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129095

+

i5

+

Any old motherboard

+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236551

+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148821

+

16GB RAM

=

Happy photoshop and lightroom rig.

The GPU thing is a toughie. You could get a Gigabyte Brix with Iris Pro graphics and probably be alright for GPU. Or you could make do with the HD4600. Or you could get a MUCH bigger case and have a discrete GPU. But if you don't game, you don't need a GPU.

I'd go with a smaller machine, personally. When I fly, I want my luggage to be smaller-est.
 
Thanks guys.

What about PSU? I see you guys putting a 430W PSU in some of the less demanding rigs. What about for something like this? Modular I assume.
 
doubledeluxe said:
Thanks guys.

What about PSU? I see you guys putting a 430W PSU in some of the less demanding rigs. What about for something like this? Modular I assume.
Click to expand...

For a tiny rig/case like I pointed out, the PSU is a laptop style external unit.

250W SFX is common for cases that take those. For a case using an ATX rig, 400w+ is about as small as anybody makes a quality PSU. (You can get OEM crap in the 300w range, but you're better off getting a better quality unit.)
 
Desktop i5 has an 88w TDP. Set aside 5w for a SSD, 10w for a HDD, 25w (?) for motherboard, 10w for RAM and you're still under 150w peak usage. An i5 will very rarely come near that 88w number too, so a quality 200w unit should be plenty with room to spare. I don't think I'd pair an i5 with an 80w PSU - you'll want a slightly more beefy external PSU with it.
 
I'm not going home for the holidays since I was just there but after the new years I'll revisit this. Much appreciated. I checked local markets here and got nowhere so this helped a lot in answering my questions.
 
Just to clarify: if you go the "build your own" route, the CPU would be limited (due to Intel's marketing policies) to a higher voltage desktop version. If you go with a Gigabyte Brix or similar, those type devices would come included with a ultra-low power laptop type CPU. Which would be better as far as producing less heat, requiring less fan noise for cooling, etc.

Re: "Haven't used a mac in years." A Mac Mini would also be able to be re-formatted and run Windows, if preferring that over OSX.
 
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Why not grab an off-lease workstation class laptop with 17" high-res screen, 4x RAM slots and 2-3 hard drives?

The HP 8740W workstation is a fine example for only $500.
 
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