MSI ProBox23 barebones
#16
(2014-07-21, 21:39)berut Wrote: From a very small country. Lithuania. Would have bought Antec ISK 110 but it's OOS and they are not getting any in the near future. I was able to find this Streamcom case from germany but it costs almost $130 after shipping which is way too much.

You might be better off going direct from China if shipping from other parts of the EU are too expensive. This one: http://www.minicase.net/product_E-I5.html with the 120W AC adapter would run any Haswell processor up to an i5. You will need a low-profile CPU cooler unless you get a "T" processor which already comes with one. Canyon is the overseas rep and he's a good guy.
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#17
(2014-07-21, 22:43)Dougie Fresh Wrote:
(2014-07-21, 21:39)berut Wrote: From a very small country. Lithuania. Would have bought Antec ISK 110 but it's OOS and they are not getting any in the near future. I was able to find this Streamcom case from germany but it costs almost $130 after shipping which is way too much.

You might be better off going direct from China if shipping from other parts of the EU are too expensive. This one: http://www.minicase.net/product_E-I5.html with the 120W AC adapter would run any Haswell processor up to an i5. You will need a low-profile CPU cooler unless you get a "T" processor which already comes with one. Canyon is the overseas rep and he's a good guy.

Shipping isn't all that expensive it's just $15 or so, it's just very expensive case. I could for sure order from german or uk amazon a case without issues.
And sorry but I feel that E-15 is rather ugly case and very expensive (55 pounds is $94). I really hate to have front USB 2.0 ports. I'd rather have nothing.
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#18
Any updates on this one?

Still got a spare haswell pentium lying around.

Looks like a nice base for a powerful platform!
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#19
What type of Update do you search for?
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#20
Hey,

I bought this box some while ago now and I'm pretty happy with it Smile

Put in an 256GB mSATA SSD and a 1TB spindle drive.

CPU is a Haswell Pentium G3420. Using the cooler it came with.

I'm able to undervolt the CPU to 0.870V. With some additional tweaking this results at 30W maximum load @ Prime95 small FFT! The system stays pretty cool even then.
The BIOS offers fan control and the fan can be set to run very quiet @ 400RPM.

Really like the case design, looks a lot better in real life than on the product pictures IMHO. Build quality is quite good for this price. Comes with a 120W Delta Electronics Power Supply (Efficiency Class V).


It can go down to about 10W idle and C6 state being used. As the Pentium does not support C7, i'm pretty sure it will go even lower when using a i3+ CPU.

This is a really nice budget system. You can throw in some RAM and even a 30eur Celeron CPU and still have a quiet but potent Media Center/Server.


Some impressions:


watch gallery




A note about the BIOS:

They seem to have some 'optimized' BIOS version in the ProBox23. It comes with the MSI H81TI Motherboard, but the BIOS versioning scheme is a bit different from this: http://www.msi.com/support/mb/H81TI.html#down-bios

The BIOS that comes with the ProBox23 does not offer any controls for DRAM or CPU voltage. I upgraded to version 10.3 using the Windows update utility (in-BIOS update did not work) and voila -- voltage control here you come! They probably did this since it's such a small case and they don't want people to overclock in it.

There also seems to be some kind of bug setting the voltages at anything but the default multiplier of the CPU. It seems to simply take the voltage that was set last @ default multiplier. E.g. underclocking to 2GHz with a multiplier of 20, it will ignore whatever manual voltage I set and take the last known voltage set at 32x multi (default). Using offset voltages did not work very well either, so I just lowered the VCore as much as possible at @ 3.2GHz and disabled SpeedStep / Turbo (which is not used anyway with the Pentium). At 0.870V and C6 states being used, this is still very power efficient.
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#21
10 or 12W idle?
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#22
(2014-09-28, 19:56)-DDD- Wrote: 10 or 12W idle?

12W was during initial setup without much optimzation.

Now I'm running:
- CPU Undervolted to 0.870V and multi at 32x (G3420 max speed)
- CPU Cache undervolted to 0.800V and set to 20x multi (2GHz)
- EIST disabled
- C-States enabled
- RAM @ 1.2V
- VCCIN (CPU Input Voltage) @ 1.320V

Running OpenELEC 4.2.1 on it now, idle ~9.6W and with screen off about 0.5W lower.
H264 720p movie playback ~11.5W!
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#23
@freezer2k, does the BIOS support Non-Z Overclock (ie overclock G3258 or K model CPUs?) as I know MSI have done so but mostly don't like to list it anywhere? Also how tall is the CPU cooler space (in case want to find a better/quieter cooler)?
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#24
I've recently built a Probox23 system with an i3-4430(Haswell, 4M Cache, 3.50 GHz), 4GB ram & 500GB hard drive. Running Windows 8.

The case was bought from Preiscompany in Germany via Amazon & shipped to UK for £108. Good service but worth noting the version they stock doesn't have the pci-e wireless receiver/atennas(same as freezer2k's), didn't include the vesa mounting plate & came with a standard rather than a clover leaf power cable - useless with the power supply provided.

I chose the case as I was looking for a compact system with the potential to vesa mount & as my first build a barebones with motherboard & power supply was ideal.

Originally its purpose was just for Kodi, Acestream, browsing & web apps. Last month I decided to connect a 360 control & got several decent games running on the Intel HD Graphics 4600 by allocating 1GB of RAM to VRAM & was pleasantly surprised by the results.

I've also added an external Sound Blaster for 5.1 surround.

(2015-02-28, 18:46)Methanoid Wrote: @freezer2k, does the BIOS support Non-Z Overclock (ie overclock G3258 or K model CPUs?) as I know MSI have done so but mostly don't like to list it anywhere? Also how tall is the CPU cooler space (in case want to find a better/quieter cooler)?

Unfortunately as an amateur builder I am not familiar with Non-Z overclocking so can't answer this. The bios does come with overclock genie if this helps.

With regards to the CPU cooler height, there is very little extra space between the top of the cooler & the case, less than half a centimeter. The fan that came with the i3 won't fit inside.

Temperature wise the i3 tends to run at about 40-45 degrees centigrade average with the included cooler.
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#25
the Box have CIR onboard - http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f25...62724.html
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