Small Form Factor Help...

[Alpha_Geek]

The time has come to build a new pc and seeing as I am on a budget and I want something portable I am building a SFF pc. My budget is about $600. I pretty much only play WOW so I need it to play it at good graphics resolution and fps. Other than that I just browse the net, listen to music and watch netflix on it. Please feel free to give me any and all advise you can. Oh btw, I am going with Intel and would like a motherboard that will allow me to upgrade when I get more money and will allow me to overclock a little bit. Thanks again.

 

[JWade]

I just built an htpc with the asus p8h61-i with a i3-2120 and its really nice. to stay on the cheap side i coupled it with an evga 240 and it more than does everything i need/want it to do.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Or would I be better off saving up a couple hundred dollars more and building a mid tower computer with a full size atx?

 

[mnewsham]

Or would I be better off saving up a couple hundred dollars more and building a mid tower computer with a full size atx?

You can build a decent low end system with just 600 bucks... no need to save up more money, unless you want more power.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

You can build a decent low end system with just 600 bucks... no need to save up more money, unless you want more power.

Well I would like something that would be upgradeable later on down the road.

 

[mnewsham]

Do you need windows in that 600 bucks?

 

[Skott]

Whichever way you go I'd say save a couple extra hundred if you can and get your budget up to $800. Sounds like you want to play WoW at the highest settings and the latest WoW version now has a bit more demand than the original game cpu and graphics wise I hear. You can build a cheap $500-$600 system but you have to make sacrifices usually. Also if you want the rig more easily upgradeable in the future the $800 is an easier number to work with to this end. SFF rigs can be nice and they can be done cheaply but in some cases a ATX version can be done cheaper because good SFF cases can be a tad more expensive than many good cheap ATX cases. Also AMD has new chips coming out August/September so if you can wait til then that may be ideal since AMD rigs can be done even cheaper than Intel rigs and still do the job just as well.

Either way my advice is try to get that budget up another couple hundred doallars before building. However if you want to go for a $600 now just head over to the General Hardware section, fill out the info request, and ask for help. Plenty of helpful folks there. I suggest there because more people read about builds there than here so you will get more feedback.