i have built many computers, but never build a mini cube case one. my current project requires a very budget pc, but yet, of course, a good performer. this is what i have chosen:

Antec ARIA Aluminum MicroATX Cube Case with 300W Power Supply, Model "LS-968(ARIA)" -RETAIL

Kingston ValueRAM 184 Pin 256MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail

ASUS "A7V8X-MX SE" KM400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL

AMD Athlon XP 2000

total is about $265. the mobo has onboard audio, video, and nic and i can hopefully acquire a monitor and hard drive.

the case doesn't look like it has much cooling, but all the reviews say it cools fine.

so anybody have any hints/tips on this? i'm not afraid of building it, i'm just afraid of it being to hot, anybody personally build one of these?

Go for it

Check out the ASUS A7N266-VM mobo also if you're not looking to overclock. I think Newegg stopped selling it, but it can be found at other resellers. I've built several systems with that board and they've all been very stable.

EDIT: I haven't built any of these systems using the cube cases, but I don't anticipate there being too many issues with a decent heatsink/fan combo.

yeah that's another thing, i was going to buy everything and then wait on buying the hs/f until i see how much room i'm going to have. my ideal hs/f is an slk700 or later version of slk. but those are big heatsinks.

thanks for input, i'll check out that mobo

I built a "media PC" for my folks a couple of months ago. I used the Chaintech 7NIF2 board because it has an onboard video out, and used the Antec Minuet desktop (as in not tower/cube) case because it was supposed to fit into their TV cabinet. The 7NIF2 has onboard Geforce4 MX graphics, which was important since I wanted to let my sister play 3D games on the thing with decent graphics. The KM400 onboard stuff from VIA is great for a business PC, but expect it to totally suck at 3D. I also used an XP2000, but put in 512 MB RAM (with 64 shared by the nForce graphics). You might want to put in this much if you are installing XP and plan to use the PC for doing any sort of serious multitasking (i.e., a couple of browser windows, Word and Powerpoint, Paint Shop Pro, etc. all open together at any given time).

yeah, normally i would put in 512, but since this is on a serious budjet i'll stick to 256 for now. but probably upgrade later.

thanks for your description of things, it helps give me an idea of what to expect.