Hi all

I need some advice on a new SFF build. Having received a rather nice monitor for christmas I'm going to finally get round to upgrading my shuttle St20G5 running an Athlon 3000 S939; its been a while!!!

I use my computer mainly for watching movies, surfing, and very occasional gaming. Am hoping to do the build for around the £450 mark in total, and was wondering if anyone could give me advice on the below setup...

Oh and as my system sits in a small space underneath my bed, it cant be more than 20cm high!

Silverstone GD05 seems to be a good compromise between flexibility and space saving

This motherboard has 6gb/s SATA which I figure I'll need to utilise the below ssd

This seems to be the best performing ssd for under £100...

Some cheap memory for under £50, I can always expand to £8gb later on if I really want to

Wasn't sure what processor would suit my needs best but at least this gives decent price/performance trade-off. What do you think?

I'll need a low profile cooler to fit the case, not sure what one would give the quietest operation though....

Finally, a passively cooled gfx card

Total build not including PSU comes to £400ish

What do you all think to the above setup? Any improvements anyone can reccommend?

Finally, that leaves me with a PSU. There seem to be quite a few modular, silent (ish) running psus out there and I'm having trouble picking the right one. Can anyone help out? The Antec truepower 650 seems like a safe bet, considering my budget cant really stretch to any of the spcr reccommended PSUs

Whilst the above build will have a total of 5 fans, they're all large and low rpm; Id prefer to have as quiet a pc as possible but am limited in funds and time! Can anyone reccommend any alternative components to make my build quieter?

The motherboard you have linked to is an ATX motherboard, while the GD-05 case only accepts microATX (or smaller) motherboards, so you will need to find a new smaller motherboard. Try the Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H instead.

If you only use your PC for watching movies, internet and occaisional light gaming, you might not need a quad core CPU (although this would be a little future proof if you did any video encoding etc). A cheaper dual core might be more suited to your stated needs.

As for a PSU, consider the Corsair VX-450 or Seasonic S12II-330 or -430.

You should also look for a few Zalman Fanmate 2's to control the speed of any included case fans.

Finally, I didn't see an optical drive included in your build, which seems strange for a movie-watching PC (unless everything you intend to watch is on another hard drive/PC somewhere). If you don't need an optical drive, you have more room for a better CPU cooler (eg Scythe Samurai ZZ). Otherwise, the Scythe Shuriken will be fine.

Hope that helps!

Wow I cannot believe I overlooked the motherboard size.....how stupid do I feel!

The Gigabyte mobo you suggested seems perfect, thanks

Cpu - I suppose I could save myself £20 and go for something like This instead

Neither of those PSUs you listed seem to be modular - surely in a SFF build a modular PSU would be better??

Three cores are definitely better than two:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-c ... t1-p2.html

Also speaking from personal experience.

What are you going to game anyway?

Some comments;

I wouldn't recommend getting a 5450. If you don't need much graphics power then i would look towards integrated graphics to save money/heat. The integrated graphics on intels new processors is on a par with that, and may be worth keeping in mind. As above you should elaborate on what gaming you want.

The intel i3 530 is also worth considering; similar price/performance, but less heat.

I'd be tempted to look at a lower power PSU to save a little. Do you need modular?

Look at the sycthe big shuriken for HSF.

Also i'd aim for 2 (HSF/PSU) or 3 fans, you should be able to cool fine with these.

As for retailers, avoid eclipse like the plague, i've also had issues with scan.

To be honest I dont really game at the moment (last game I played for more than a few hours was the original halo!) but I'll probably want to get back into it sooner or later.

I suppose seeing as the Gigabyte mobo above has integrated graphics, I can always use that/stick my old Msi 7600gs in until I feel the need to upgrade??

As for PSU - I think modular is best for this build after reading some reviews on the Silverstone GD04/05 cases. Power wise wouldnt it be better to have a 650w as opposed to, say, something aroun the 450w? That way if I do end up investing in a decent graphics setup I wont need to change my PSU too?!?!

Hi mate, I'm looking at upgrading my old C2D system based around the GD05 as I too have similar size restrictions , but it's a really nice case and has good reviews, and I too overlooked the ATX thing but in my case, I already have an ATX board so I was a tad gutted when I remembered its not mATX . I can however tell you that somebody recommended the CoolerMaster Silent Pro M 500w to me in reply to a thread I created about what PSU to get. It's supposedly practically inaudible and is modular with flat cables specifically to aid airflow in HTPC's so I'm pretty sure it's the one I'm going to go for along with some Enermax Silent fans, I'm not overly confident about the golf ball style ones the case comes with lol. Let us know how it goes !

Those Silverstone fans are better than any expensive (or not) Enermax, IMO.

If you really want to swap them, go for any proven Scythe or Nexus.

Oh ? Hmm Well the Enermax fans I am looking at http://www.enermax.co.uk/tbsilence.html are rated for 42CFM at 11dBA and I do like the fact that they have detachable blades for cleaning, I'm a bit OCD about things like that. I will say that I have just bought a Core i3 540 so I'm ditching the 775 setup now.

Sorry for being so direct: not even by mistake any 120mm fan on Earth may give you in any situation 42CFM at 11dbA, as physics laws cannot be overcome with so little efforts.

Please, don't trust those figures as specs, as they are likely marketing hypes, and because, to be fair, Enermax doesn't declare -, in their facts sheets - that it gives 42CFM AT 11dBA, but just it gives 42CFM AND (so, more probably that not, read as OR) 11dBA (likely the noise at the starting voltage, around 280rpm).
Facts sheets are often made this way, in order to suggest but not to state firmly.

Moreover the particular modular metal/plastic frame (that which is not solid it is prone to vibrate/resonate) and the brittle transparent plastic of blades - while allegedly they reduce turbulence noise - are likely to amplify vibrations, when the fan is screwed to a metal case and then to a filter (as in a GD05). On the contray it is very valuable that Enermax bearing should be much more long lasting.

Have you given a look to SPCR test of that Silverstone dimpled fan, haven't you?


If you aestethically like those Enermax, please do it, buy them: moreover they should be very cheap.

But if in case do it for the sake of modding, not for the sake of silence or cooling, as Silverstone fans are far more than adequate at any purposes and with an excellent tonal quality. Last but not least, they are a proven design, with measured figures, not declared ones.
Swapping them IME the best you might obtain is that almost nothing changes (sonically).

Just as a side note, more probably that not current Silverstone lineup offers the best (sonically) stock fans available, better than Fractal ones, and IMVHO better than any shiny Enermax: moreover, even if the Enermax should be cheap, if you own a GD05 you've already paid for them.

Thanks Luca, I haven't found any reviews of the fans as I can't seem to find a model number anywhere. I will have a look on the main SPCR site and see what I can find, Thanks for your advice

IIRC it should be a custom variant of these Globefan (.pdf file).


You have to look right at the Silverstone GD05 review.

Thanks, I found it myself eventually anyway I guess the best way to tell is for me to hear them for myself. My ageing antec tricool fans in my gaming rig could do with replacing, so if it turns out that the enermax are better then I'm not really losing out, I can put the silverstone fans in there.

Unfortunately my new build has been haulted as I got given a faulty PSU (went Antec truepower 650w in the end) but I can testament to the fact that the silverstone fans that come with the Silverstone case are pretty damm quiet.

I went for the Silverstone Grandia GD04 in the end - better fascia and it was the same price!

Sorry to hear about your duff PSU. I've just got a Coolermaster Silent Pro 500w modular for £53 courtesy of a one day deal on Scan, it's normally £67! The problem I have with the GD-04 is actually the fascia lol, I want to use a Silverstone TS-03 slim optical drive adapter that has a built in 2.5" hot swap bay so I wouldn't be able to use that. My build has slowly progressed from getting a case and PSU, to the whole shebang First off was the balls up where I forgot the old P5n32e-sli is a full ATX board, d'oh! so then I figured well if I'm changing the mobo anyway, I might as well come a bit more up to date, I generally build with futureproofing in mind to a certain degree, so I decided to get a core i3 and new mobo, which of course means new ram.

So far I've spent:
£68 Core i3 540 (another bargain)
£53 PSU
£25 passive GPU cooler Zalman VNF-100 (had an 8800GT already)
£30 Samsung F3 1TB (got one of these in my desktop and I like it )
£7 Gelid GC extreme thermal compound

Yet to buy:
£59 Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2
£71 Silverstone Grandia GD-05
£42 4gb Corsair XMS3

And that's it hopefully @ £355! I will probably get the TS-03 adapter next pay day but that's £30
Luckily I've got a Ninja Mini, and also I could've used the onboard GPU if I wanted to if I didnt already have the 8800GT but I do game sometimes so fancy the extra oomph. Hope all goes well with your build and keep us up to date

Sounds like you're building an extremely similar system to me! I also got my psu on scans one day deal (just before the VAT rise too...win!) and got confirmation from them today that they're sending a replacement.

Why aren't you going SSD? I can tell you more once I have my rig setup, but from pretty much any review of the crucial C300, sounds like a very worthwile investment for the main bulk of your OS/other commonly used programs. I've also got a Samsung 1tb but may (depending on noise) transfer out to an external bay

What CPU cooler are you using? Before my dodgy PSU halted progress, I attached a scythe big shuriken to my rig and its too wide on an mATX to allow installation of RAM in the first two slots of the mobo!!

I'd love to go SSD but need to stay under the missus radar as much as possible ! Cooler wise I'm using a Scythe Ninja Mini

Well I finally got the replacement PSU and put it all together last night. Unfortunately I cannot make any reasonable judgement as to how quiet the system is because everything is being drowned out by a rather noisy stock HSF! Will need to replace with something better pretty soon.

SSD wise - I haven't even run any tests yet but can already tell it was £100 well spent. windows 7 loads in less than 15 seconds! One problem that I think is a bit of a design fault with the case though, is that there's only one way to mount both a 3.5" drive and a 2.5" ssd in the hdd bays, and it squashes the cables in VERY tightly against the side of the case!

Cool, glad you're all up and running! My stuff is arriving on Monday, can't wait I might post some pics of the build once it's done