Small Form Factor Gaming PC?

[avalanche0316]

Hey guys,
I was thinking about building a SFF gaming PC for my dorm room. I have been trying to look up information on these kinds of small pc's but nothing seems current. I was wondering if anyone knew whats going on with SFF PC's these days. Are they not practical to get good gaming performance? I are they too expensive to be worth while? Is cooling to much of an issue? Let me know if you guys have read anything on this. Thanks!

 

[hunter315]

What do you consider small? Pick a case that is about the size and shape you want. You can get good gaming from them you just wont have too much in the way of upgrade options if you go for mATX or ITX. But there are some small cases out there that will take a full ATX board.

 

[Onus]

The short answer is, it is very possible to build a nice gaming system in a SFF or microATX case. Look at the last round of System Builder Marathon articles. They focused on microATX builds. I think we all had nits to pick over some of the component choices, but there's a lot of good information in those articles.

Edit: ...and in the discussions that followed them. We're STILL WAITING to see who won the three systems...

 

[batuchka]

Well i do up shoebox/mATX gamers rather often so for something able to do 1920 x 1080 gaming perhaps this would be close to what u looking for i hope hehe

Where i'm at i work with SG-02F a lot too Actually a P2X3 works just as well and runs cooler in these boxes at load too hehe

 

[Solitaire]

Well i do up shoebox/mATX gamers rather often so for something able to do 1920 x 1080 gaming perhaps this would be close to what u looking for i hope hehe
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q205/batuchka/FCGnoLCD.jpg
Where i'm at i work with SG-02F a lot too Actually a P2X3 works just as well and runs cooler in these boxes at load too hehe

One problem with that: the Rogue is less of a shoebox and more of a filing cabinet! Its bigger than many midi towers!

And that's the problem with mATX gaming: nothing wrong with the hardware, the enclosures are the issue. If they're not compact models (which are useless for gaming owing to low-profile expansion slots and custom low-output PSUs) they're usually pretty gigantic; nowhere near as small as you'd expect much less need. Even the Sugo SG03/04 are pretty hefty and they're about as small as a non-slimline mATX system gets!

Then there's mITX. They are flippin' small. But they've got other issues...