If you can, go with

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March 19, 2012 at 8:12 pm #6989
Aaron Ledger

    If you can, go with Intel-branded board. They are stable and have an Intel network interface. Many people often overlook this and get a board with a Realtek NIC which can end up causing headaches for many users. If you want Micro-ATX, you should consider their H67 or H61 boards. If you want to go cheap and don’t need more than client functionality or hardware-based transcoding, you can get away with something like a SandyBridge-based Pentium or even Celeron.

    4GB RAM is acceptable for most cases.

    Save a few bucks and get the 380W version of the EarthWatts power supply. You save initially and a bit more on your monthly power bill. Even 380W is overkill for your system. More is not better with power supplies (unless you truly do need it e.g. running a monster gaming GPU).

    40GB will work for the SSD, but consider 60GB because it gives a bit more flexibility. You can potentially run into issues installing service packs with smaller SSD sizes depending on what applications you install.