$1600 Mini Gaming PC
I’m back, this time with a smaller mini-ITX gaming machine. And, in following the naming convention of the first machine, which I called Big Build, I’d like to introduce “Mini Build”. Yes, the creativity runs strong in someone else’s veins, not mine.
Working on this quarter’s System Builders Marathon (SBM) was quite an experience. The biggest lesson learned from my first machine was to allocate a lot more time for this project. Piecing together the system isn't the hard part. It’s the testing that can take a while.
As I mentioned before, Thomas and I were handed a budget of $3200 each for this quarter’s System Builder Marathon, which we took to build a pair of $1600 PCs. Thomas was asked to focus on CPU-driven builds, while my machines were more graphics-heavy.
Working with mini-ITX is always challenging and if you don’t do the right research, you’ll end up sending back plenty of return items because you misjudged a measurement somewhere. I know this especially since most of my previous builds were small form factor machines I built at home. Fortunately, I learned and didn’t have return anything this time. Actually…I did return something, but I’ll save that for the Component Installation section below.
Here’s what I used for my Mini Build:
- Platform Cost: $1402
- Total Hardware Cost: $1495
- Complete System Price: $1595
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