Building an AMD A8-3870K Llano APU System For Under $300

The SSD and Slim ATX Case

For this build we needed to use a slim microATX case, so the Rosewill R379-M was given the nod to house the components. This case measures in at 17.0″ x 12.8″ x 3.9″ and is made with thick 0.8mm SGCC Steel. Inside there are 3 drive bays and 4 low-profile expansion slots. Up top you’ll find a single 80mm 3-pin case fan and down on the front panel you’ll see two USB 2.0 ports along with audio ports.

Inside there is a 300W power supply that acts as a second exhaust fan. A spring loaded door covers the 3.5″ drive slot, and the CD slot is next to that. The drive cage pulls completely, so if you don’t need it you can simply remove it from the case.

The two parts that we haven’t talked about yet for this build are the SSD and optical drive. We went with the lowest cost SATA DVD burner that we could find, so not too much to say there. When it comes to the SSD we did a bit research and found that OCZ had the best deal on a 60GB SATA II 3Gbps SSD and it was be ideal drive to upgrade the old IDE 80GB drive in the prior system. The OCZ Vertex Plus R2 uses an Indilinx controller and has a peak sequential read speed of 180MB/s and a write speed of 80MB/s. Pretty impressive speeds considering that this SSD runs just $29.99 shipped after a $20 rebate. At that price you are paying $0.50 per GB, which is great!

Here is a shot of everything installed and wired up into the Rosewill R379-M MicroATX case. There was plenty of room for all the wiring and everything was super simple to assemble. The entire PC took under 15 minutes to build from start to finish and we were not rushing. There was not a place to mount the SSD, but we were able to use one of the many holes in the mounting plate and the 2.5″ drive was able to be secured. The eject button for the optical drive wasn’t the best and was the biggest gripe that we had with this chassis.