Is FlexATX dead? + cost estimation

[Praxis]

I'm considering buying a PC from a coworker. It's a small form factor PC.
Looks like:


Specs:
2.4 GHz Pentium 4
120 GB hard drive
768 MB RAM
1x AGP slot
1x PCI slot (w/Radeon 9250)
TV-out

Definitely older, and the hardware would probably only run $150 in a normal PC casing, but the small form factor makes it more worthwhile. My goal is to build a low end HTPC- fill the hard drive with ripped MPEG-4's (from Handbrake), and actually more importantly, a NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, PS1, and Dreamcast emulator and games and USB controllers, and hook it up to my 54" SDTV via S-video or composite. I was originally going to upgrade the HDD and add an old graphics card with TV-out to an old 2 GHz Celeron Dell Dimension 2400 I have lying around, but my coworker brought up this PC.

Now, it seems it has a Flex ATX motherboard, which from my research is a smaller variant of Micro ATX. Is this machine upgradeable in long term? NewEgg only has one Flex ATX motherboard, and it's open box (but modern- Core 2 Duo, PCIe). I haven't seen any new ones.

So my questions:

* Is Flex ATX dead, or will I be able to upgrade the motherboard in a few years if I want HD playback and better performance?

* What would you consider paying for this machine? Is $250 reasonable?

Thanks for replies.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Specs are a little thin for $250. My old SFF was a lot better and that's what I was asking. $200 tops, $150 if you can get it.

[DaveJB]

FlexATX motherboards can still be found, but they're mostly older second-hand ones. Mini ITX seems to have supplanted it as the option of choice for SFF PCs as has, oddly enough, Micro ATX. If you're worried about being able to replace it should the current mobo go kablooey, then that shouldn't be an issue, but I wouldn't expect to be able to upgrade this thing to dual-core or anything similar. If you want something that would be able to play HD content for example, it'd probably be a better choice to go with a Mini ITX system with a Pentium Dual Core or low-end Core 2.

In all honesty, SFF form factors tend not to be very durable. We had LPX which was very popular through the era of the original Pentium but died as soon as the Pentium II showed up, then NLX, which was a short-lived successor that died off itself when most of the major manufacturers decided to come up with their own weird form factors to use in compact systems. Quite frankly, the fact that Mini ITX and its associated designs have lasted so long is amazing, and probably a testament to VIA's efforts to keep it in the limelight.

[Darth Mall]

i actually just built two media PCs.

For a decent system you shouldn't have to pay more that 400 including case, especially if you have some old parts laying around.

I built a low profile one (the size of an VCR) and a mini one (the height of a receiver).

The low profile one uses an old AMD 3800+ 939, from an old computer, a foxconn micro-atx motherboard, which was about 50$, a low profile HD 3450, with built in hdmi, for $30, 2 gigs of ram I had laying around. The case, which included a power supply was another 40$. I put a 1 TB seagate drive in, which was 100.

My other, more expensive build has a brand new 5200+ X2 AM2 processor, which was $56, a micro-atx motherboard for $45, an old 7800gt video card, 2 gigs of RAM for $20. This one received a 1.5TB drive that was $130. The case was the most expensive part at about 160 dollars, but it is a media pc specific case, and contains front screen, volume knob and built in IR.

This computer, with the right codec (coreavc) can play any movie i throw at it including 1080p videos. For software I originally used X-Box media centre, but its internal video decoder (using ffdshow) can't handle 1080p, even in the more powerful computer, so I ponied up 15$ for coreavc.

I had DVD drives already laying around, but those are no more than $20 nowadays.

I threw together this wishlist together for you. 331 shipped, since everything has free shipping, and it should last you and play everything in 1080p hd. It does assume you have remote etc already,but those are only $20-30

Feel free to ask if you have any questions, I've been working over these two computers for the past week, and online it can be kinda hard to sort through all the stuff.

[Braedley]

Why would you mix a mobo with nVidia graphics onboard (however crappy it is) with a Radeon card? It doesn't make sense. Look for a board with either hybrid crossfire or hybrid SLI if you're going to get one with onboard video. Then the onboard graphics actually do something (assuming the graphics card is compatible).

[Praxis]

Hmm, I'm looking at the cost of building an HTPC now...I can get a Dual-Core Pentium @ 2.5 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Geforce 7200GS, small form factor HTPC case, DVD-RW and this motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813130217

For $300 and build an ultra-compact system. Now I've got to consider this

Will the included 300 watt power supply be able to handle it?

[Praxis]

I threw together this wishlist together for you. 331 shipped, since everything has free shipping, and it should last you and play everything in 1080p hd. It does assume you have remote etc already,but those are only $20-30

Feel free to ask if you have any questions, I've been working over these two computers for the past week, and online it can be kinda hard to sort through all the stuff.

Thanks! Dang, that's a nice setup. Here's what I'd picked out:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Publi ... er=9576072


I might take your setup, with a different GPU and smaller hard drive. I'm not going to be using 1080p for now, as I don't own an HDTV, so I need one with S-video out. However, I will be running a Dreamcast emulator on it, so performance is still important, and I can always stick a bigger drive in there when I get an HDTV.

[Darth Mall]

Why would you mix a mobo with nVidia graphics onboard (however crappy it is) with a Radeon card? It doesn't make sense. Look for a board with either hybrid crossfire or hybrid SLI if you're going to get one with onboard video. Then the onboard graphics actually do something (assuming the graphics card is compatible).

I've never heard of either, and from a quick look, there doesn't seem to be much of a need for it, since it is primarily for 3D performance. Also most of the grunt needed for this is in the processor, not the GPU. It also looks like you need a fairly new GPU, when a $30 older card works perfectly well.

As for the nvidia integrated graphics and the ATI card, you can't get a micro-atx AM2 board without the built in graphics, and it would cost more to get one with built in HDMI than it would to get the cheaper card and a cheap GPU.

[Braedley]

Fair enough, I wasn't really thinking from the micro-ATX POV. However, call it superstition or what have you, but I'm still not one to mix nVidia chipsets with ATI graphics. I know, I know, the issues that plagued that combo in the past have disappeared, but it still doesn't feel right to put them together. Most of this stems from what my brothers went through when they tried it years ago, then failed miserably.

[Darth Mall]

I threw together this wishlist together for you. 331 shipped, since everything has free shipping, and it should last you and play everything in 1080p hd. It does assume you have remote etc already,but those are only $20-30

Feel free to ask if you have any questions, I've been working over these two computers for the past week, and online it can be kinda hard to sort through all the stuff.

Thanks! Dang, that's a nice setup. Here's what I'd picked out:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Publi ... er=9576072


I might take your setup, with a different GPU and smaller hard drive. I'm not going to be using 1080p for now, as I don't own an HDTV, so I need one with S-video out. However, I will be running a Dreamcast emulator on it, so performance is still important, and I can always stick a bigger drive in there when I get an HDTV.

Looks to be a good setup. Personally I would spend the extra on the space, since you would be getting over 5 times the space for about 3 times the price.

Looking at that video card I can't be sure that it is a low profile, which you would need for your case, or the one I showed you. You should also be able to find a s-video/hdtv one, or if not, at least make sure it has a dvi port, because then you can get an adaptor for later use.

For software I would reccomend mediaportal. You can download it here.I am currently running on RC4, but supposedly version 1 will be out before christmas.

Mediaportal uses whatever codecs you install on your computer. I installed the divx codec, AC3 filter, and for HD playback, which you say you won't need, CoreAVC. That combo has played any media I have thrown at it.

Mediaportal also supports lots of different plugins. Since you want to play emulators, the my emulators plugin might suit you. I haven't tried it though, so I'm not sure how well it works, but it looks to just link to your installed emulators.

If you plan on using it for tv shows, I use the MP TVSeries plugin. It doesnt work out the box with the default skin, but hack has been working perfectly fine for me. You can also download another skin which supports it, or if you are really adventurous create your own skin.

For movies if you label them name (year), you can set the program up to scan and create a library of what you have. Alternately you can just browse by your own folder organisation.

Hopefully I covered everything there.

Fair enough, I wasn't really thinking from the micro-ATX POV. However, call it superstition or what have you, but I'm still not one to mix nVidia chipsets with ATI graphics. I know, I know, the issues that plagued that combo in the past have disappeared, but it still doesn't feel right to put them together. Most of this stems from what my brothers went through when they tried it years ago, then failed miserably.

Until this I had never mixed ATI and NVIDIA. But it seems to be working out perfectly, so I guess its not as much an issue as it used to be.

[Praxis]

Excellent information there, I'll definitely use that.
What do you think of this setup?
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Publi ... er=8284685

[Darth Mall]

Excellent information there, I'll definitely use that.
What do you think of this setup?
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Publi ... er=8284685

Looks good, but mind that the CPU is OEM and doesn't come with a cooler.

I use a remote with mine, similar to this one. My case has a built in IR receiver, but supposedly you can use LIRC with the provided receiver.