VOGONS


First post, by mr_bigmouth_502

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

... and I would like some help deciding which parts to put into it. 🤣

Anyhow, I have this old 200-round 7.62mm ammo box that I've been thinking of doing something with for a long time, and then the idea hit me "what if I built a computer into this?"

I'm thinking of going with a Mini-ITX board based around the LGA1155 or Socket FM2 architecture, 4-8GB of DDR3, a 160 watt PicoPSU, and a 250GB laptop hard drive (or a decently-sized SSD if I can get one for a good price). I'm forgoing adding an internal optical drive, since I don't use them that often and adding one wouldn't work well with my space/power/cooling constraints, and I'm also forgoing using a normal GPU (shocking!) for the same reasons.

The main thing I'm wondering is, what would give me better onboard graphics, Intel's HD 4000 offered on some of their Ivy Bridge CPUs, or AMD's Radeon HD 7540/7480 offered on their 65w APUs? As well, which one would have lower cooling requirements? Since I'm not much into newer PC games, the most I will probably be playing on this is TF2, the Dolphin Wii/Gamecube emulator, or Carmageddon through DosBox (though that really depends a lot more on CPU power than GPU power 🤣).

Reply 1 of 3, by RichB93

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Dolphin will always struggle on an IGP I'd have thought. Not sure about AMD's solutions but I do rate Intel's Ivy Bridge. My MacBook Air has one of their ultra low power chips and the HD 4000 graphics still play TF2 at respectable settings.

Reply 2 of 3, by mr_bigmouth_502

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

So it looks like I'm going AMD for this, one thing I'm wondering though, how is the performance of an AMD Trinity APU compared to say an older Athlon II x2 @2.9GHz + Radeon HD4650?

The reason why I'm providing those specs in particular is because that's what one of my current boxes has, and I remember that it can run TF2 excellently at 720p, so that's at least the kind of performance I'm shooting for.

Reply 3 of 3, by Pilotgeek

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I can highly back the new AMD APUs. They run cool, and provide great performance at low resolutions (up to 800x600 or so). Girlfriend has an AMD A6 series and it runs Dead Island well.