- Dec 21, 2009
- 4,072
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- 23,160
Hey all,
I'm assembling an ITX gaming rig for my brother's birthday, and I figured it would be helpful to individuals within and outside of the community to post the progress (AKA troubles and hardships) of assembling a powerful PC in such a small form factor. I will also post some benchmarks at the end (specifically Furmark's Burn Test and a CPU burn test) to get some temperature numbers, which are probably the most important.
Usage
Since usage determines many build requirements, I feel that it is important to know the usage of this one.
This build will be primarily gaming, with little other use. My brother has a school-supplied laptop as well as a MacBook, which he uses for all of his school work. He can't play any of his favorite games since they require a GPU (namely ArmA II and some expansions).
He already has a 1080p display, mouse, and keyboard, so those were not included in the build.
Hardware
After much deliberation, here is what I have chosen and purchased:
CPU - Intel i3-2120 ($100 - used, from HardForum)
Motherboard - ASRock B75M-ITX ($89.99 - Newegg)
GPU - MSI Hawk GTX 560Ti (owned) + Accelero Twin Turbo II cooler ($40 - new, HardForum)
PSU - Seasonic M2II 520W ($59.99 - Newegg)
RAM - 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 (owned)
Storage - Intel 330 180GB SSD ($150 - new, HardForum)
Case - Lian Li PC-Q08R ($119.99 - Newegg)
Also throwing in an Asus BD-ROM drive, and legitimate copies of CyberLink PowerDVD 11 Ultra ($30) and OEM W7 Home Premium SP1 x64 ($80).
Total: $669.95 + S&H + price of parts not purchased. So this build wasn't necessarily the cheapest, but it'll be one of the smallest
Notes
It took me about a week and a half to pick a case. Here's my thread where many great suggestions were deliberated: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/336972-28-mitx-gaming-case
The GPU/cooler will be the trickiest challenge; the GPU was in my signature build and watercooled. I don't have the original cooler, so I went to look for a good aircooler online. The only problem is that the coolers are almost all triple slot coolers, even smaller models like the Accelero Mono Plus. I found the Twin Turbo II for cheap and went for it. We'll see how that pans out.
The i3 + 560Ti combo is what I had for about 4 months and it games very well, contrary to popular opinion.
The PSU was a great deal. The Seasonic M2II is a modular PSU, which is going to reduce clutter significantly. It was also cheaper than many other 500W PSUs I could find, yet it is THE name brand.
Since this is going to be almost entirely gaming-only, I figured a dedicated SSD was the way to go. I was going to go with the $200 Crucial M4 256GB, but I saw the 180GB Intel drive on the forums and thought it would be a good savings.
I had a BD-ROM drive laying around from a previous build, so I'm going to throw that in with the Cyberlink software so my brother can watch movies. For anyone who is curious, Cyberlink is one of the best playback softwares I have used to watch movies on my PC. I had the PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D for my previous 3D setup, and it worked amazingly well, and (most importantly) was very intuitive and simple to use.
I'm assembling an ITX gaming rig for my brother's birthday, and I figured it would be helpful to individuals within and outside of the community to post the progress (AKA troubles and hardships) of assembling a powerful PC in such a small form factor. I will also post some benchmarks at the end (specifically Furmark's Burn Test and a CPU burn test) to get some temperature numbers, which are probably the most important.
Usage
Since usage determines many build requirements, I feel that it is important to know the usage of this one.
This build will be primarily gaming, with little other use. My brother has a school-supplied laptop as well as a MacBook, which he uses for all of his school work. He can't play any of his favorite games since they require a GPU (namely ArmA II and some expansions).
He already has a 1080p display, mouse, and keyboard, so those were not included in the build.
Hardware
After much deliberation, here is what I have chosen and purchased:
CPU - Intel i3-2120 ($100 - used, from HardForum)
Motherboard - ASRock B75M-ITX ($89.99 - Newegg)
GPU - MSI Hawk GTX 560Ti (owned) + Accelero Twin Turbo II cooler ($40 - new, HardForum)
PSU - Seasonic M2II 520W ($59.99 - Newegg)
RAM - 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 (owned)
Storage - Intel 330 180GB SSD ($150 - new, HardForum)
Case - Lian Li PC-Q08R ($119.99 - Newegg)
Also throwing in an Asus BD-ROM drive, and legitimate copies of CyberLink PowerDVD 11 Ultra ($30) and OEM W7 Home Premium SP1 x64 ($80).
Total: $669.95 + S&H + price of parts not purchased. So this build wasn't necessarily the cheapest, but it'll be one of the smallest
Notes
It took me about a week and a half to pick a case. Here's my thread where many great suggestions were deliberated: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/336972-28-mitx-gaming-case
The GPU/cooler will be the trickiest challenge; the GPU was in my signature build and watercooled. I don't have the original cooler, so I went to look for a good aircooler online. The only problem is that the coolers are almost all triple slot coolers, even smaller models like the Accelero Mono Plus. I found the Twin Turbo II for cheap and went for it. We'll see how that pans out.
The i3 + 560Ti combo is what I had for about 4 months and it games very well, contrary to popular opinion.
The PSU was a great deal. The Seasonic M2II is a modular PSU, which is going to reduce clutter significantly. It was also cheaper than many other 500W PSUs I could find, yet it is THE name brand.
Since this is going to be almost entirely gaming-only, I figured a dedicated SSD was the way to go. I was going to go with the $200 Crucial M4 256GB, but I saw the 180GB Intel drive on the forums and thought it would be a good savings.
I had a BD-ROM drive laying around from a previous build, so I'm going to throw that in with the Cyberlink software so my brother can watch movies. For anyone who is curious, Cyberlink is one of the best playback softwares I have used to watch movies on my PC. I had the PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D for my previous 3D setup, and it worked amazingly well, and (most importantly) was very intuitive and simple to use.
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