Building a portable (itx) mid-spec gaming rig

[pbrain]

hello, i'm considering the following items for a very small, portable rig for general use & casual gaming...

AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU - £96
ASRock FM2A75M-ITX AMD A75 - £74 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-102-AK&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2399)
Adata XPG Xtreme v1.0 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C10 2133MHz - £48 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-017-AD&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387)
In-Win BP671 Mini ITX Case with 200W Power Supply - £47 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-027-IW&groupid=2362&catid=2279&subcat=)

i don't want/need a discreet GPU or optical drive, maybe use a 120Gb SSD + 2Tb HHD

my main concern is to get the most out of this A10 chip, i will be overclocking the CPU & GPU parts, so a decent (and compact) copper cooler is required, but also will the PSU with the case be OK? (200W)

would appreciate thoughts & ideas, cheers

 

[ScrewySqrl]

I'd suggest adding a HD 6670 to this for Dual Graphics (will push close to a 7770 with both cards). Due to Piledriver raising heat and wattage fast as you overclock, the 200W might not be enough. In your ITX case, It might be prudent to go with an H80 or H100 closed loop liquid cooling option.

 

[pbrain]

I don't want another GPU adding, the iGPU will do what I need, I have no problem with reducing texture/effects quality (I have a couple of i7 rigs already, one is built for gaming).
The AMD rig is to be as small as possible, TBH I would have prefered an even smaller ITX case, but then the PSU would have to be an external 12v block & ATX adapter (~160W)
I was hoping the 200W PSU would be Ok for this build, maybe if I change the APU to an A8?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

the 200 will be fine if you don't overclock. if you do, I'd think a 300-400W might be needed

 

[pbrain]

hmm, 200W is the 'biggest' PSU i've found in a tiny case...

couple of years ago I built a similar system around an Intel E5300 OC'd to 4Ghz, Zotac 9300ITX, single-slot 9800GT, 60Gb SSD + 1TB Samsung HDD, which is still happily gaming (even running titles like GTA4, Sleeping Dogs at decent frame rates!) with a 300W PSU.

which would still probably outperform the A10-5800K! I wanted to build another rig at half the size.

PS:Thought, would a standard clock A10-5800k outperform an OC'd A8 or A6?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

the a10, stock, does a decent job at gaming (30 fps):

these are all stock of course.


heres a power consumption chart for an overclocked a10. It *does* stay under 200W, so you can probly get away with the 200w psu ad integrated graphics. I'd still consider the water cooling in an itx box.

 

[pbrain]

wow, cheers for the info! You're probably right with the suggestion of sticking to stock-clock. I'd have to go with a really good CPU (APU?) cooler, i'll try & get a 100% copper type.
The water cooling idea, I think I would have trouble fitting into that small case, i've had the H50 & H60 in the past (H60 in my ITX Sugo case) but they can be awkward, plus I then have to add another fan for the VRM's (my first Z68 itx died due to no cooling of the VRM's, with the replacement I fitted a 60mm fan blowing over them.)

 

[burritobob]

Something to note is that you can probably halve your memory price by switching to 1600mhz or 1333mhz, plus that board won't support (the selected) 2133mhz memory.

I would try and get a smaller discrete gnu, it's going to be much faster than any integrated gpu.

 

[pbrain]

Something to note is that you can probably halve your memory price by switching to 1600mhz or 1333mhz, plus that board won't support (the selected) 2133mhz memory.

I would try and get a smaller discrete gnu, it's going to be much faster than any integrated gpu.

The A10 APU/GPU works better with faster memory, looking around different reviews/overclocking sites i've found testers increasing the RAM speed has got better GPU performance increase than just raising the clocks...
Also, the specs are as follows for the MB...

Memory
- Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology
- 2 x DDR3 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR3 2600+(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1866/1600/1333/1066/800 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 32GB*
- Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 1.3 / 1.2
- Supports AMD Memory Profile (AMP)

I don't want to use another GPU, just want a very compact but usable rig (TBH, i'm a bit of an nvidia fanboy!)