Finding/building a small, powerful, efficient computer?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m considering buying or building a computer that:
[ul]
[li]Is small (as close to Mac Mini size as possible)[/li][li]Is power-efficient (as far as desktops go… preferably less than 100W average power draw)[/li][li]But still relatively powerful in terms of CPU, max RAM, etc.[/li][li]Either comes with a discrete graphics card or has a slot for one[/li][li]Has a user-upgradable hard drive[/li][/ul]

I want this for using Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and for occasional light gaming; would prefer 8GB of RAM, a Core i5 or i7 CPU, and a graphics card that can handle low-detail 3D gaming.

My current laptop just isn’t cutting it.

The latest Mac Mini almost perfectly fits my criteria, except for a few things that are hard to work around:
[ul]
[li]I want to upgrade it with a solid state drive and Apple’s pricing is ridiculous. It’s possible, but not very easy, to get to the slot myself. Is the “second drive” slot in an easier location?[/li][li]I dislike OSX and not having any version of Windows pre-installed means no upgrade path to Win 7; a full license is prohibitively expensive[/li][li]As far as I can tell, it’s impossible to get USB 3.0 onto it… or am I wrong? (I don’t think Thunderbolt will be very viable)[/li][/ul]

Essentially, I want a PC that’s like the Mac Mini but without the Apple-ness. I looked around and couldn’t really find anything of the sort. Any suggestions?

And I’m comfortable building one myself, if that’s an option, but I haven’t done this in a decade or more and I’m not familiar with the terms these days. How do I look for a small case and motherboard setup? Is “mini-ATX” still relevant or is there something better now?

2

If price isn’t a concern, the thing that immediately leaps to mind is Falcon Northwest’s Fragbox. $1800-2000, though.

More generally, there are plenty of Mini-ATX and Micro-ATX cases, so it should certainly be possible to build one from scratch. NewEgg’s also got a bunch of motherboards in the proper form factors, so you should be able to find what you need. The question is of course if you can fit the necessary components into the box.

3

I ended up going with the Alienware x51, Dell’s just-released small form factor gaming rig. It pretty much fit the bill perfectly. It didn’t exist yet when I last searched for this a few months ago, so I’m really quite happy :slight_smile:

At $699+, it was much more affordable than the Fragbox (thanks for that info!) and uses much less power (< 200 W). Dell’s reasonably good environmental track record was a bonus. And Amazon actually had it in stock, so… well… damn their 1-click button!

4

Looks good. If it’s not too late to cancel, take a look at the Zotac Zbox at the low end and the Shuttle Z68R5 at the high end.