Caroline (mATX, TFX)

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Simon
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Västerås, Sweden
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Caroline (mATX, TFX)

So my mom decided to upgrade her monitor and ended up getting a 3440x1440 screen. She uses her old Asus laptop to dock with her monitor and peripherals, sadly it seems to only be equipped with a HDMI 1.2 port and thus does not have enough bandwidth to drive the new monitor. (Its equipped with a 2nd gen Intel cpu)

So I'm building this machine to fix that issue, getting her a proper PC to use with her new monitor. I have tried to make this PC as cheap as possible while also making sure it can drive the monitor via displayport.

I started by looking at cases. Something cheap but with a small footprint. I recently built in one of the Milo cases and they are pretty great, but ITX boards arent very cheap and Displayport is rare from what I can find. Looking at mATX I found the Milo ML03, it's small but the interior looks pretty aged. I also found an odd case. The Antec VSK-2000-U3 (564 SEK). It's even smaller, supports mATX. The intake is VERY limited, but this machine will be very low TDP so it's not really an issue. It uses TFX PSUs which I have never used before, but it makes the case smaller. Looking at what TFX has to offer I found be quiet!'s gold rated TFX and I went with that (723kr).

I've got a case, I've got a powersupply.
Asrock's B450M Steel Legend is the cheapest board in mATX/miniITX I can get that has Displayport (1053 SEK). It is Displayport 1.2, which will be enough for the monitor. I looked for the rest of the parts and managed to find a returned Athlon 3000G (499 SEK) and Kingston A1000 480gb SSD (785 SEK), so I went with those while also picking up a Noctua 92mm fan as I read the included case fan is loud AF (190 SEK).
Almost all parts are found!
Looked around for ram, which as we know will be nice if its fast for the iGPU. Found a kit of 2x8gb of G.skill Aegis 3000Mhz CL16 (764 SEK). Good enough.

Total cost: 4578 SEK (~436 euro).

We have a lot of tax in Sweden, so if it looks expensive that is why.

I will be trying to overclock the parts, such as trying 4Ghz on the 3000G and testing if the memory kit can run 3200 without much issue. I've read both parts will most of the time do that without much tinkering. The motherboard will be absolutely fine with just a 3000G or even a 3400G but I will note that it is pretty far down on the motherboard tier lists. It has a lot of features but VRM quality is not one of them for this mobo. The heatsinks will help with that and they do actually look substantial with decent surface area.
Check the build updates for OC results. Emoji
Color(s): Black
RGB Lighting? No
Theme: none
Cooling: Air Cooling
Size: Micro-ATX
Type: General Build

Build Updates

Most of the parts are here

Case and powersupply is here, time to build!

Building the PC

Overclocking results

Hardware

CPU
$ 42.00
AMD - Athlon 3000G
Socket: AM4
Cores: 2
Integrated Graphics: Yes
Motherboard
$ 89.99
ASRock - Steel Legend (B450M)
Chipset: B450
CPU Socket: AM4
Size: Micro-ATX
Memory
$ 75.98
G.Skill - Aegis (3000MHz) (2x)
Type: DDR4
Capacity: 8 GB
Storage
$ 168.68
Kingston - A1000
Form Factor: M.2
Interface: M.2 (M)
Capacity: 480 GB
PSU
be quiet! - BN229
Wattage: 300
Form Factor: TFX
Efficiency: 80+ Gold
Case
$ 73.23
Antec - VSK2000 U3
Type: Micro-ATX
Side Panel: Solid
Case Fan
$ 18.95
Noctua - NF-A9 PWM
Size: 92 mm
Cooling
$ 17.50
AMD - Wraith Stealth
Type: Air Cooler
Cooling
$ 19.99
EKWB - EK-M.2 NVMe Heatsink - Nickel
Type: M.2 Heatsink
Size (WxHxD): 80 mm
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