What originally started as idle speculation and a bit of research turned into another system build for 2013. I had $325 in spending money set aside, and I was curious to see if one could build an acceptable HTPC and Minecraft server out of such a tight budget. It wasn't going to be easy by any means, but it seemed feasible with a little bit of clever shopping. I had three perfectly good 320GB Western Digital HDD's from 2006 laying around simply collecting dust, and Black Friday deals were approaching, so I had a good head start.
The first step was deciding what to put it all in. I wanted something that would be reasonably easy to work on, but compact at the same time- a micro ATX mid tower seemed like my best option because there were no HTPC cases that really stood out to me as a great deal, and ITX boards tended to be a bit more pricey. I actually considered a number of cases, like the Corsair 350D and the BitFenix Prodigy (mATX version)- The 350D because of how much I like my 650D, and the Prodigy because of the hype surrounding it and how intriguing it looked. Both cases came with rave reviews but I ultimately had to pass them up in favor of something less expensive. After all, they both weighed in at around $80 to $100, which would cut pretty deep into the budget. After reading up on a number of the more budget friendly cases, I decided to use a Cooler Master N200, which seemed to strike a good balance between having the features I was looking for and keeping the cost down.
Next up were the guts of the machine, and the very essential selection of the CPU and motherboard. I considered trying to squeeze a Haswell i3 into the budget, but there was simply no way it was going to happen. During my Black Friday shopping, though, I came across a deal that was just too good to pass up- an AMD FX4130 bundled with 4GB of Kingston HyperX blu DDR3 1600 RAM, all for $106. A price like that made my decision far simpler, and since I hadn't yet built a system with an AMD processor, I figured a little variety would be nice. There was a basic FM3+ motherboard from Asus on sale as well, the M5A78L-M LX3. The only real complaints I could level against it would be the fact that it only has 2 fan headers, and that using a UEFI BIOS has spoiled me. Landing within the budget had to take priority, so those were minor issues that I could easily live with given the $45 price tag.
The last details to sort out were the power supply and a modest video card. I allowed myself a bit of luxury by going for the Corsair CX430M as opposed to the plain CX430. The modular cable system, in my mind, is a must have for any system build, lest the whole thing turn into a colossal cable management nightmare. Even though the CX430 is only "semi modular," it ultimately is a non-issue since you'll always be using the 24-pin and CPU power anyways. In regards to the video card, all I really needed was enough muscle to be able to play full 1080 HD videos- a passively cooled video card would have been nice, but I found a nice Radeon HD6570 from MSI that didn't look like it had too obnoxious of a fan, and despite being a 1GB DDR3 version, was more than enough processing power for decoding 1080p and then some, as well as having an HDMI output.
All told, with some clever shopping I got all the parts necessary for $317 including shipping! (What sorcery, I actually came in under budget!)
So, how well did it turn out? For the price point, I'm very pleased with the results.
The Cooler Master N200 case is a really great budget case. Though I could certainly tell that it was "made to a price point," overall I'm quite happy with it. Features like tool-less drive bays and fancy cable management grommets are nice, but not necessities in my opinion, so their absence was not a negative. Cable management was reasonable, but like many cases the back side panel could have used a fraction of an inch more room to make it less of a pain to fit.
It all went together with a minimal amount of fuss, and it happens to look rather slick on top of that:
Recap:
Cooler Master N200 Case
Asus M5A78L-M LX3 Motherboard
AMD FX4130 CPU
Stock CPU Cooler
4GB Kingston HyperX blu DDR3 1600 RAM
Corsair CX430M Power Supply
MSi Radeon HD6570
2x Western Digital 320GB Hard Drives
