Small Form Factor Buyers’ Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on May 25, 2011 10:30 AM ESTBudget Intel SFF
The budget Intel SFF is capable of basic computing, but you aren’t going to want to play games more demanding than, say, Farmville on this system. In a similar vein, the inexpensive case, power supply, and fan are not going to be particularly quiet. If the primary use will be online shopping, checking sports scores, emailing, working on basic documents and spreadsheets, and removing red eye from pictures taken with a point and shoot camera, this system will handle those tasks easily without breaking the bank.
| Intel Budget SFF | |||
| Component | Description | Cost | Rebate |
| Case | APEX MI-008 | $50 | |
| CPU | Intel Celeron E3400 | $44 | |
| Motherboard | Intel BOXDG41AN | $72 | |
| Memory | Patriot 2GB PSD32G13332 | $20 | -$7 |
| HDD | Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS | $45 | |
| DVDRW | LITE-ON iHAS124 | $20 | |
| OS | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM | $100 | |
| Total Price | $351 | $344 | |
| Intel Basic SFF Upgrades | |||
| CPU | Intel Core i3-2100 | $125 | |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8H61-I | $85 | |
| Total Price with Upgrades | $445 | $438 | |
While the LGA775 platform won’t see any new budget CPUs—it’s EOL, which makes sense considering
we’re now two cycles away from when it was Intel’s current platform—a more powerful (used) LGA775 chip could be a viable drop-in upgrade as prices on CPUs like the venerable E8400 continue to drop. If you’d rather go with a more up-to-date Intel setup, we’ve included a Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPU and an appropriate motherboard for reference. That combination will substantially increase the system’s computing and graphics capabilities, as well as providing more potential longevity if you want to upgrade the CPU down the road, but it will also increase the price by about $100.
We’re going with a single 2GB DIMM, since that makes it easy to upgrade to 4GB later should that be deemed necessary—you’d just drop in another 2GB DIMM. The APEX case measures 11.8” x 8.7” x 5.1” (Length x Width x Height).
Budget AMD SFF
In a rather bizarre twist, even though AMD is usually associated with budget computing, mini-ITX solutions featuring AMD platforms are not 
nearly so numerous as those featuring Intel CPUs. Of the mini-ITX AM3 boards that we can find, many sport very outdated chipsets (e.g. NVIDIA’s now-defunct 6100/8200 chipset). The recommended motherboard manufacturer, Giada, is a relative newcomer to the North American market, but of the dozen or so Giada boards I’ve used in builds, they’ve all been acceptable and unremarkable for budget-oriented products. (Note: some of you will undoubtedly noticed there is a less expensive AMD-based mini-ITX board available at Newegg. I cannot recommend it because it uses an ancient (six years old!) chipset that will artificially limit the performance of AM3 CPUs, uses more expensive DDR2 instead of cheaper DDR3 memory, and lacks DVI and HDMI outputs.)
Like the budget Intel SFF system, this inexpensive AMD machine is capable of basic computing, and the cheap case and power supply are not going to be as efficient or quiet as higher quality components. I’ve built multiple systems with each of these budget cases, and they’re really a wash—neither is notably superior to the other. While this AMD system’s integrated graphics are superior to the Intel system’s IGP, it’s still not a gaming computer. The Foxconn case recommended with the AMD SFF build measures 14.2” x 11” x 3.8” (LxWxH).
| AMD Budget SFF | |||
| Component | Description | Cost | Rebate |
| Case | Foxconn RM233+FSP150-50GLT | $46 | |
| CPU | AMD Athlon II X2 250 | $61 | |
| Motherboard | Giada MI-R880G-01 | $85 | |
| Memory | Patriot 2GB PSD32G13332 | $20 | |
| HDD | Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS | $45 | |
| DVDRW | LITE-ON iHAS124 | $20 | |
| OS | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM | $100 | |
| Total Price | $377 | $377 | |
We really don’t have any recommend upgrades for the AMD budget SFF. If you want to reduce the price, there’s a $55 Athlon II X2 245 clocked at 2.9GHz; however, that particular CPU is an OEM model so you’d need to buy a separate HSF, which would likely cost far more than the $6 you save by going with an OEM CPU. AMD also has the single-core Sempron CPUs, like the Sempron 145 for $36 (plus shipping), but we’re not willing to go that far in pursuit of cost savings. A better way to reduce cost would be to skip mini-ITX altogether and go with a mATX case and motherboard instead; pricing on mATX boards with the AMD 880G chipset starts at a far more palatable $55.
Recommended Budget SFF
The Intel SFF has two primary advantages over the AMD SFF. First, the cheaper CPU and motherboard contribute to a less expensive system. Second, the E3400 CPU loads at much lower wattage than the Athlon II X2 250 CPU, which is especially important in a cramped SFF chassis. There are “E” suffix AMD Athlon II X2 and X3 CPUs with a 45W TDP, but while these energy efficient chips erase the E3400’s thermal advantage, they are also more expensive than the regular 65W TDP Athlon II X2 250 CPU—and they’re also becoming increasingly difficult to find in retail channels. Furthermore, the average user doesn’t load their CPU very frequently, especially in budget systems like these, and the two CPUs idle at very similarly low wattage (i.e. most of the time, neither will be noticeably hotter or noisier than the other).
The two CPUs trade blows on benchmarks; regular desktop users will likely not be able to tell the difference between them in terms of performance. The total price difference is $30 in favor of Intel (looking at just the CPU and motherboard costs, as the cases are interchangeable), and while we don’t have either of these CPUs in Bench, you can get a reasonable idea of how they stack up by looking at the Athlon II 255 vs. Pentium E5200. (The 255 is clocked at 3.1GHz vs. 3.0GHz, and the E5200 is clocked at 2.5GHz with 2MB cache, compared to 2.6GHz with 1MB cache on the E3400.) Intel generally gets better optimizations for multimedia work, but the AMD CPU is faster in many general-use tasks (which the gaming results help to show, though those are with a discrete GPU installed).
If you have to buy right now, we give a slight edge to Intel’s old platform, but remember that the impending release of AMD’s Llano platform could shake things up at the budget end. We’ll have to wait for mini-ITX Llano boards to hit retail channels, and then we’ll see how expensive they are. That could take several months, so waiting for a budget Llano-based system is an individual decision.
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chaoticlusts - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
you could have a look on the freenas forums and such if your curious, I've built a freenas box though it's not small cause I wanted to be able to put a lot of HDD's in there (got 8 atm)requirements vary drastically depending on what your doing with it, if your running a RAID setup then there's bugger all requirements really...but if your going with FreeNAS you really should be running ZFS in which case you need a little bit of cpu power (though still a low budget celeron or similar is fine, just don't reuse and old single core that might be pushing it) actually in the end you can get bottom range components for basically everything the couple of bits you should *not* skimp on is PSU (never skimp on that) get a decent amount of RAM (4-8GB) doesn't need to be fast though just a decent quantity and obviously get the case your happy with..
FreeNAS can be a bit of a headache to find your way around if your not used to FreeBSD or similar but once you learn it's damn easy and saves you *tons* of money over a dedicated NAS box (not to mention ZFS is far superior to standard RAID) I think my box cost me about 300-400 total not including HDDs....a 8 drive dedicated NAS would probably cost a few grand normally without HDD's...
course this does all depend on how much storage you need..like people pointed out...if you only need a little a NAS might be overkill :)
2korda2 - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
+1 on that.Been looking at Synology 411 series, but not sure the J-series is enough. '+' costs a lot more.
JFish222 - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link
I have to agree. I would love to see this discussed.While there are a number of inexpensive NAS appliances out there, there is only so much you can do at the lower price points(based around arm cores).
Having advnaced media streaming/transcoding, wan side access (even providing vpn support) etc are where custom boxes pay off.
Expecially if you want more than 2 HD's or want to push hardware RAID 5 (cheap adaptec cards on ebay "raid adaptec sata" < $20)
The only issues become time and effort. Would never knock an off the shelf system, but I'm far to interested in going beyond what an ARM core can offer at a price point I'm able to afford.
Though I'm still researching, projects like Amahi are attempting to make this even more of a "user friendly" process.
chrone - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
really love this SFF part, unfortunately there's very limit component choice sold here in indonesia. :(StanFL - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I built a WHS box based on the Apex case used in the Budget SFF. Dual core Atom mini ITX board with four SATA ports. By foregoing an optical drive, I shoehorned three 3.5" hard drives in it. I can add a fourth hd if necessary with a Esata bracket occupying the lone expansion slot. It's a nice little low power box thats been running 24/7 for nearly a year now.EddyKilowatt - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Same here, WHS on Atom mobo (from Intel) in the Apex case. 18 watts at idle. Just two 1 TB green drives for me though... so far they're about half full.I didn't expect full benchmarks on each build in this article, but a couple of basic numbers and an idle/loaded power reading from a Kill-A-Watt would've been nice. Great article anyway, though, keep 'em coming.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I have a sempron 140 running at 800 MHz @ 1.1V. The cheapo $20 motherboard I am using will not let me take the volts any lower... But anyway the point is this thing surfs the web and plays youtube videos just fine. It has no fan. I took the fan off the stock hsf. I ran rthdribl all day long and the core temp reads just 68. lol. The main cpu thermal sensor reads 52.dagamer34 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I recently built a SFF HTPC and this was my setup:Case: Thermaltake Element Q case w/ 220W PSU: $70 from Micro Center
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100: $99 from Micro Center
Motherboard: Gigabyte H67-USB3-B3: $110
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3: $70 from Amazon
Memory: 4GB Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz RAM (CMX4GX3M1A1333C9): $41 from Amazon
SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 60GB: $110 from Micro Center
HDD: old 120GB HD from Apple MacBook Pro
AMS Dual SATA Enclosure (DS-112SSBK): $20 from Newegg
Antec Veris Elite IR Receiver: $59 from Amazon
OS: TechNet Subscription
I got a separate video card because of all the post-processing that the card can do, as well as correctly outputting 23.976 fps video.
I'd also argue that any serious HTPC needs to have the cost of an IR dongle included. No one should be using a mouse and keyboard.
StormyParis - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I really think the review would be a lot more informative if you did two things:1- differentiate by function: Netttop, NAS, HTPC, Gaming. You're kinda doing it now, but still not fully.
2- include ready-made PCs, and give more choices for components.
Case in point: I recently replaced my micro-ATX rig with 2 mini-itx ones:
- a NAS/ HTPC, in an ElementQ case with an aftermarket PSU. This allows 3x3.5" HDs, one can be a DVD/BR instead, in the size of a shoe box.
- a VESA-mounted Nettop in an M350 case. (T-3410 would have been much cheaper)
Both with the Asus passive E-350 motherboard, which is surprisingly adept in the nettop: it drives 2 screens, one can run full-screen SD video while I play Civ4 on the other.
I think you're going overboard with the CPU power, too, except for the gaming rig.
vnangia - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Wouldn't something like the PC-Q08 be a better choice for a NAS? That plus either the Zotac H55/H67 or DTX D510 gives you the ability to put in six drives easily stock, and possibly eight with a cheap addon card and a 5.25-3.5 adapter.