Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Taken together, the objective requirements narrowed the field from hundreds
of cases to a handful. Applying Barbara's subjective attractiveness require-
ment narrowed the candidates to only one case, the Antec Mini P180.
The Mini P180 ships sans power supply, which means we can install any power
supply that fits our needs and budget. We wanted a reliable, high-quality power
supply rated at 450W to 550W, with high energy efficiency, active power-factor
correction, and low noise. We'd budgeted $65 to $85 for the power supply. We
found several units that met those requirements, including the Antec Earth-
Watts EA-500D Green, the Corsair CMPSU-450VX and CMPSU-550VX, and the
Seasonic SS-500ET. Any of those models would be an excellent choice, but our
familiarity and comfort level with Antec power supplies led us to choose the
Antec EarthWatts EA-500D Green.
Motherboard
Intel DH55TC
(
http://www.intel.com
)
Intel motherboards set the standards by which we judge all other mother-
boards for construction quality, stability, and reliability. For our mainstream
system, we chose the rock-solid Intel DH55TC, which is a Socket LGA 1156
board that's based on Intel's mainstream H55 chipset. In fact, we liked this
board so much that we ended up also using it for our media center system.
(As Barbara commented, you know you're a True Geek when you have a list of
favorite motherboards.)
It's not that the DH55TC has more features or better performance than its
competition. In this class of motherboards, feature sets are similar and per-
formance differences from board to board are too small to matter. It's that the
DH55TC Just Works. For example, unlike some competing boards, the DH55TC
works flawlessly with the integrated video that actually resides on the Core i5
processor. And although an attractive motherboard isn't necessarily a good
one, this motherboard exhibits Intel's traditional high construction quality and
close attention to fit and finish. That gives us some confidence that the things
we can't see were also done right.
We settled on the DH55TC by our usual process of elimination. We needed a
μATX (or Mini-ITX) board to fit the Antec Mini P180 case. We'd already decided
to use an Intel Core i5 processor, so we needed a Socket LGA 1156 board. Al-
though we plan to install only a 4 GB memory kit initially, we'd like at least two
spare memory slots to allow easy future expansion, and we'd like the mother-
board to support at least 8 GB of memory.
In terms of I/O ports, we need at least one 1000BaseT Ethernet port to connect
to our network. Barbara has lots of USB devices, so we wanted at least six or
eight USB ports. We needed at least one eSATA port—preferably front-panel
for Barbara's external hard drives—and two would be better. Although we in-
tend to use integrated video, we wanted at least one PCI Express x16 2.x slot in
case we later decide to install a standalone video adapter. Finally, we wanted a
board that cost less than $100.
