Reddit mentions of Intel Celeron G1610 2.60GHz LGA 1155 Processor BX80637G1610

I put together a machine just a couple of months ago to replace my little consumer-grade router at home. I look at all of the options (the various ARM families, Atom, etc.) and wound up deciding that the best option was to go for the low end of the current generation of Intel x86 parts.

Here's what I threw together:

| Category | Part Name | Price Paid | Current Price |
|---------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------------|
| Motherboard | GA-H61M-HD2 | $49.99 | $54.99 |
| CPU | Celeron G1610 | $42.99 | $42.99 |
| Memory | 2x2GiB DDR3-1333 DIMMs | $30.78 | -- |
| Power Supply | Solid Gear Mini ITX 180W PSU | $26.78 | $26.78 |

At this point you've spent $150.54 and you have a small (9" by 9" or so) system (minus a hard drive) that will blow any of the more exotic options out of the water... and that runs your favorite OS just fine. It's got a gigabit network adapter onboard, as well as onboard video, which is at least a nice fallback if you have any trouble getting it set up as a server.

I spent $3.77 on a motherboard-header-to-female-USB adapter and $6.99 on a well-reviewed 8 GiB thumb drive and called it quits, since my usage (as a router) doesn't really need any storage.

Then I splurged for a passive CPU cooler; it's made by Supermicro for their 1U servers, installed very easily, and was all of $24.23. Now the only fan around is the tiny one in the PSU!

I added some of these network cards which add two gigabit ports for $30 each, but since it has the onboard gigabit port, you don't need to do that unless you need more than one port.

I had intended to put it in one of these cases, which comes with a questionable PSU, but it showed up broken and I never got around to re-ordering. It sits very happily on a little cardboard tray without a case. (Also, even the smallest cases are much larger than just the board, since they assume you might want to mount hard drives or optical drives.) One of these days I'll bust out the woodworking tools and build a teeny little case for it.

As a tiny little finishing touch, I spent $2 or $3 on a power button (and reset button, power LED, and hard drive LED; they came as a set) from someone on eBay.

By my count, my configuration was a total of $150.54 + $38.00 = $188.54 before the extra network adapters. If you like, add about $20 (for a total of ~$205) to remove the PSU and add a cheap case that comes with a PSU. (You can also skip buying the buttons and LEDs if you do this.)

I don't know how much power the machine itself uses, but the whole power strip (with Roku, Raspberry Pi, DSL gateway, a dual-band wireless access point, and probably some other things) uses about 100 watts.

This is the HTPC build that I put together about 6 months ago which comes in pretty close to the $300 mark at current prices; though I'm confident some of these were on sale when I bought. I have all my media on a separate unraid box which streams to this one.

• M350 Case $43
  
• Celeron G1610 $41
  
• ECS H61H2-TI Thin ITX $75
  
• CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 $46
  
• MyDigitalSSD 60GB MSATA SSD $60
  
  = $265
  
  These are items that I already had but it's only fair to account for them too
  
  
• laptop power supply $8
  
• Logitech k400 keyboard/mouse $24
  
• Media Center remote < $20

The i3 would have slightly less "performance" when comparing PassMark Cpu scores. The i3 3220T has 3825 vs. the top end AMD A10-5800K at 4703. Take these numbers with a grain of salt though. Both have more than enough CPU and GPU power for an HTPC outputting 1080P. The big difference is heat, noise, and power usage. The i3 runs at lower than 35 watts vs. the A10's 100 watts. I would highly recommend the i3 if it were my build unless you want to do a little gaming as well. The A10-5800K would be awesome for casual gaming. The AMD A4 or Intel Celeron series would even have enough power for HTPC use. I have used the Intel Celeron G1610 on 2 builds and for $45 they are a beast for value and suprised me when I first used one.

Ivy Bridge Intel CPU.

That should fair better. You can upgrade to a low-end GPU later without too much CPU bottleneck.

EDIT: Here's a potential build. Do you have an OS? A spare HDD? Any spare parts at all? If so, it'll be a lot easier to make a <$200 build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Celeron G1610 2.6GHz Dual-Core Processor | $34.99 @ Microcenter
Motherboard | MSI B75MA-E33 Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard | $59.98 @ Outlet PC
Memory | Patriot Viper 3 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $23.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Seagate Barracuda 250GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $38.00 @ Compuvest
Case | NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case | $34.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply | Antec Basiq 350W ATX12V Power Supply | $27.89 @ Amazon
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available. | $219.84
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-26 00:44 EDT-0400 |

Prior experience assembling normal computers is certainly helpful.
Also, here's the hardware I used to achieve 3.9 mh/s.

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Computer-Corp-Motherboards-Z77A-G45/dp/B007QWI9TY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396364&sr=8-1&keywords=msi+z77-g45a

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Celeron-2-60GHz-Processor-BX80637G1610/dp/B00B4BJYVU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396383&sr=8-1&keywords=celeron+g1610

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/LEPA-1600-Watts-Crossfire-Certified-G1600-MA/dp/B007W5TV6K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396400&sr=8-1&keywords=lepa+1600

6 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Mini-Displayport-PCI-Express-Graphic-GV-R795WF3-3GD/dp/B007581QHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396424&sr=8-1&keywords=gigabyte+7950

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-120GB-internal-MZ-7TD120BW/dp/B009NHAF06/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396482&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+840

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZDJ42O/?tag=pcpapi-20

2 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-Express-Flexible/dp/B0057M16Q8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396635&sr=8-2&keywords=pci+risers

1 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Powered-Flexible-Extender-Bitcoin-Mining/dp/B00CQB1RIU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396667&sr=8-1&keywords=powered+pci+risers

3 of these
http://www.amazon.com/Powered-Flexible-Extender-Bitcoin-Mining/dp/B00CQBCKPY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375396667&sr=8-2&keywords=powered+pci+risers

1 of these
http://www.lowes.com/pd_328959-80752-142430B-DS_0__?productId=3468765&Ntt=shelves&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dshelves&facetInfo=

2 of these
http://www.lowes.com/pd_95021-1621-3733_0__?productId=1114391&Ntt=box+fan&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dbox%2Bfan&facetInfo=

a shitload of these
http://www.lowes.com/pd_292678-1781-45-518UVL_0__?productId=3201639&Ntt=zip+ties&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dzip%2Bties&facetInfo=

And the lid from the cardboard box the motherboard came in. Makes a perfect motherboard tray.

Edit: Forgot to mention the important bits. Windows 8, catalyst 12.8, cgminier 3.1.1

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
color 02
timeout /t 45
cgminer --scrypt -o coinotron.com:3334 -u user -p pass --no-submit-stale --gpu-fan 80 --gpu-reorder --thread-concurrency 22400 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1125 --gpu-memclock 1250 -w 256 -I 19 -g 1

> This is my CPU: Intel Celeron G1610 2.60GHz LGA 1155 Processor BX80637G1610
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Celeron-2-60GHz-Processor-BX80637G1610/dp/B00B4BJYVU