Building a Mini Computer at a Mini Price

I have been excited by the idea of Mini ITX computers recently. These motherboards usually have everything built on them with the exception of drives and memory. So put one of these in a case, add some drives and a stick of memory and viola, you have a great little computer. (hopefully cheap too).

Mini ITX motherboards start at around $60 for older models and go up to about $200 for some graphics beef. However I have really liked Intel's newest offering (Released 12/09). The Intel D510MO Mini ITX. This latest motherboard boasts a 64bit Dual core hyper-threaded 1.6ghz CPU. It's not the fastest but it draws under 20watts of power and is passively cooled, meaning no fans are needed. The price of this board is supposed to be around $75 but this early in the release, the cheapest I could get one is $79 + $9 shipping from mini-box.com. Mini-Box also sells one of the smallest ITX cases too, the M350.

With this design it's possible to build a decent computer with no moving parts. I however decided I would spend a little less and opted for a 250GB WD Blue hard drive and a Rosewill Mini ITX case. Solid State drives are still a little pricey.

Since my purpose is for a low power linux server with nice upgrade options, I skipped the DVD drive. I have an external DVD I can use to load the OS and after that all upgrades and new software is installed online.

I managed to build the entire computer for $220. Though I know some of these prices may fluctuate and it could cost up to $260 for the same computer depending on the day of the week.

Here is my parts list (shipping included) as well as possible upgrade options for those who want them:
Intel D510MO Motherboard/CPU $90
Rosewill Mini ITX Case $40
Crucial 2GB DDR2 800 $40
Western Digital 250GB Blue SATA drive $45
Ubuntu Linux 9.10 - FREE!

Total $215

Optional Upgrades:
Internal Mini PCI Express Wireless $15
Wireless Antena - Get the antena and pigtail cable from the bottom of the wireless card page. about $10
Slim Internal DVD Reader/Writer $45
Broadcom HD Mini PCI-E decoder Card $25 on ebay.
m350 Case and powersupply $79