Dirt cheap number cruncher:
Zotac 880G-ITX AM3 Mini ITX motherboard, eBay, $50:
Refurb Phenom II X6 1055T six core processor, eBay, $30-50:
Crucial DDR3 1333 4GB, NewEgg, $30:
SanDisk 240GB SSD, $70:
Mini-ITX chassis, Amazon, $37:
PSU, Amazon, $32:
Around $250 total, run Xubuntu Linux and use Wine for LTSpice etc.
I use this -
Phenom II x4 955 MSI 970A-G43
8GB DDR3 GTS 450 Samsung 830 128GB SSD + Seagate 1TB HDD Tagan 700W PSU (overkill but I got it cheap)Put together several years ago, it's still more than adequate for LTSpice and CircuitMaker 2000, movies and all but the latest 3D games.
Haha, that sounds very similar to my own desktop. It has whatever the top of the line Phenom II was, the X6 1090 I believe, an MSI 870A-G54,
16GB DDR3, a GTX 670, and a 600 watt Corsair PSU.Drives are a 128GB SSD for the OS and four 500GB Seagate Barracudas in RAID 10.
The Phenom II 6 core is yesterday's news but is still pretty nice for what I paid for it, which wasn't much
Several PC PSUs I've encountered are marked 500W & similar, but that turns out to be the model number, they're not really anywhere near 500Watts.
NT
I always go Corsair on PSUs, they seem to be overdesigned and I haven't had one fail so far. A 600 watt unit by them is plenty for a 100W TDP processor, a monster GPU that uses both 6 pin PCI-E power connectors, and five drives
Tagan is a brand with a good reputation. Sure there are plenty of no-name PSUs that can barely deliver two-thirds of their nameplate ratings, have high ripple, poor regulation, etc. Even the big names have their lemons. Sites that specialize in testing PSUs can be very useful.
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