Frugal Gaming.... Is There Such A Thing?

About a week ago, my brother sent me some parts. Basically, it was centered around an Asrock Mini-ITX motherboard of the Sandy-Bridge generation. Along with it came an "S" spec i5 processor, attendant cooling and other misc parts. As the much as I LOVE computer parts, I don't really need another machine. Granted, this board is technically more advanced than the one in my bedroom HTPC and could replace that, but why? That machine does exactly everything I need it to do, and does so quietly, because it's low-powered and therefore runs "cool"! So, what to do with this relatively capable board?

Most of you are aware that I have a young son. He's not quite a teenager, but he's close enough. Right now, he plays Minecraft and loves all things 3DS, but soon enough, he'll get into "real" gaming. This year, for Christmas, we got him a Steam account and bought the Kerbal rocket building program. I'm sure he's pretty quickly want to play other PC oriented games as well. As of right now, his ThinkPad T500 is fine for what he wants to do. However, being the Nerd-Dad that I am, I'm already ahead of him on where he headed..... and that won't be anything where his ThinkPad would be very good. 

As I was helping my student rebuild her old Alienware, I started thinking that one of those might be a good candidate for my son as well. However, he just doesn't have that much space in his room. A few years ago, we reworked his room and built a large loft, so there's a space underneath that's his little "boy-cave". It's nice, but it's only the size of a "queen" bed under there. Right now, he has a cabinet, that holds a TV, his a GameCube (!), XBox, and a bunch of Legos. There's some seating and it's where he "hangs out".

You can probably see where this is going. Mini-ITX board, small hang-out area..... Mini-Gaming Computer! Although that Asrock board only has an H61 chipset, we certainly won't be over-clocking or anything close to that. We are talking an 11-year-old, after all! So; here's what I'm thinking on this. I'm going to use an actual stand-alone GPU so it will have some decent graphics ability. Maybe something long the lines of an Radeon HD 7770 or an nVidia 460; whatever I can get the best deal on. A re-tasked SSD, 320Gb mechanical drive and call it good. 

We're done then; right? Not so much! What does an 11-year-old want his "gaming rig" to look like? If you're my son, then, anything green will be good. As soon as I saw the Azza CSAZ-103 case, I knew that it would be the case for the boy! As it turned out, it's inexpensive, and pretty much designed as a case that replicates a gaming console to some degree. Perfect! As soon as I land a suitable graphics card, we'll start building.