PC advice please: Mini ITX system build for general home/office use

Looking to put together a reliable and reasonably powerful pc for standard home/office use (no gaming) running a 4k monitor for the screen real estate. I built my own gaming pc a few years ago so confident putting it together, but I’m a little out of the loop now so would like to check that I’m not making any glaring errors: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/cvXwjc

I assume the integrated graphics will be fine running the monitor for non gaming purposes? I realise everything else is perhaps overspecced, but my thinking was that in 2-3 years if the cpu isn’t quite cutting it I could drop in a secondhand i5/i7 and overclock it for a bit of a speed boost.

So, any good?
Cheers

i have recently gone from a massive box to this

http://store.hp.com/UkStore/Merch/Product.aspx?sel=WKS&id=1CC49ET&opt=ABU&p=b-hp-z2-mini-workstation

admittedly i got the xeon one with 32gb of ram but hey its warrantied for 5 years and about big enough to lose between the cheeks of your sofa

ps wouldnt piss on ccl if they were on fire

Also not sure RE: 4k using onboard graphics – at least the PSU/case can cope with a GPU if needed later. Otherwise all looks decent/compatible.

I’ve got a CM Elite 110, Corsair VS 550w [non-modular] PSU under my desk right now, I could probably send these out for £50 posted if interested (or collect if you’re nearby)

Have you looked at the Intel NUC’s? I quite fancy building one for home.

NUCs are good if you want something really small. For general office use running Win 7 of Win 10, I guess they would do.

I have a small i5 Dell and a very small HP Elite ‘something’ with a Core i7 vPro that are pretty perfect for home office use. Ok, with Linux, but they work well.

I have a Gigabyte Brix Pro with an i7 cpu, 16 GB RAM, and Iris Pro graphics. I’m very happy with it except that it is unbelievably noisy when the fan spins up, it sounds like an F1 car with the turbo spinning up. I also have an Intel NUC connected to the TV for watching movies. That was a pre-assembled version, not a kit. It came with a Celeron CPU, 32 GB eMMC, 4GB RAM, and Win10 preinstalled. Excellent value for money, and very quiet, but not really up to doing any heavy duty work. I can’t imagine ever going back to a big tower after using a NUC.

Not sure RE: 4k using onboard graphics

That was my first thought too. The latest round of Intel CPUs support 4K video, but what the performance is like I’ve no idea.

I have an inherent dislike of onboard graphics anyway. I was in IT when Intel came up with the idea (they called it UMA – Unified Memory Architecture) and it was monumentally awful, taking memory away from systems that were RAM-starved to start with. Things are better these days but it still makes me twitch.

I have a long memory for stuff like this though, I still struggle with the concept that AMD (ATI) are a performance chipset manufacturer.

If you’re not gaming, that chip should be able to push 4k for applications/video easily.

I still struggle with the concept that AMD (ATI) are a performance chipset manufacturer.

so do AMD… 😀

that chip should be able to push 4k for applications/video easily.

I was trying to verify that and tripped over this:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/110364

Not sure RE: 4k using onboard graphics

My 3.5 year old laptop does fine with 4k with Intel native graphics. Anything newer will be fine! Just don’t expect to render doom at 4k with 200fps 😉

I was trying to verify that and tripped over this:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/110364

It seems it works, but thrashes the CPU if you dont update the driver – Looks like a motherboard chipset driver update should sort it, if I read it correctly –

“This driver is available at your motherboard manufacturer’s website, is not available at the Intel download center right now but the one released you can download it with your motherboard model, hopefully it will be available soon at the Intel website.”

I use an Acer Revo One, tiny, i3, SSD and cheap. I got it for £150 including monitor in Sainsbury’s Monitor only 1920×1080 so don’t know how it would be at 4k. Fine for browsing, office, connecting to to HD telly etc.

It’s fine but get an M2 SSD

Looks like the Intel CPU only supports memory up to DDR4-2400, It could be ok with the faster memory but I’m not sure.

I recently bought a i3 6100 and some Corsair 8GB DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2133MHz (2x4gb) to go with it.

I looked at M2 SSD boards and you can get up to something crazy like 23gbs data transfer but I find a normal SSD plenty fast enough.

I’d say you wouldnt really notice any diffence between an M.2 and a more traditional SSD for general usage.

Ditto for DDR4 performance
http://www.legitreviews.com/ddr4-memory-scaling-intel-z170-finding-the-best-ddr4-memory-kit-speed_170340/4

It’s not just the speed of the M2, it’s much smaller and and less stuff / cables in the small case

skids – Member

It’s not just the speed of the M2, it’s much smaller and and less stuff / cables in the small case

True,

and about the same price, then yeh, go M.2
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/intel-600p-256gb-m.2-2280-pci-e-3.0-x-4-nvme-3d-nand-solid-state-drive-ssdpekkw256g7x1-hd-087-in.html

Thanks for all the replies peoples, I’ve checked out the NUCs and Brixs but they all work out more expensive for a similar spec, and as nice and dinky as they are space isn’t that much of an issue. Looks like 4k with the integrated graphics will be fine as long as I get the drivers sorted, and I’ll definitely swap the Sata SSD for an M.2, didn’t realise that they’d come down in price so much. So generally looks good to go, cheers again.

@mickmcd: Thanks very much for the offer but I’m going to buy it all together on credit, and cheers for the heads up on CCL, I’ll be using Scan then.

No idea about whether the video card can run a 4K monitor, but given that intels chips in the teeny tiny macbook can, I doubt it will be an issue with the right drivers

For balance I’ve used CCL plenty of times with no problems.