Mid-range MicroATX

[virtuo]

I have just found out I won a Fractal Arc Mini R2 chassis here on Hexus, and that I have to review it. My original plan was to just move my current sloth of a machine in to a new house, but that's a full ATX build and won't fit.

My new plan is to put together a replacement desktop on a budget. I did have another "review my build" thread, that was a bit more high-end and less budget sensitive, but the cash for that build ended up going on a new bathroom (nearly finished!) and car.


So, my budget being as small as possible without going to an upgrade dead-end, I've gone for the following:



CPU: i5 4670k £160
I was considering a lower end i5, but the £40 saving would leave me with something slower and not overclockable. So this is my only real extravagance. Don't think I need to go full i7 for my use case.

Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 £17
not the cheapest, but still reasonably priced and I presume fair quality. The case has good radiator support so if/when I overclock, I'll upgrade to some water cooled shenanigans. I might even just use the stock cooler to start off with.

Motherboard: Asus H87M-E £63
Pretty cheap, supports 32GB ram for future upgrade potential and has USB3, 6xSATA 6Gbps. It's not the absolute cheapest I could find, but I've used Asus boards before and had no issues.

RAM: Kingston Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory £55
Cheapest I could see. There was a warning about it needing 1.65v and Haswell only offically goes to 1.5v

SSD: Sandisk Ultra Plus 128GB £56
Cheap and decent reviews, I have a lot of mechanical drives from my existing build that I will be bringing over, so only need this for OS (Win 7) and a few games/apps.

Graphics Not sure?
I'd like something fairly new and not huge, but capable of running everything currently out at 1080p at medium-ish settings. Don't want to go much over £100 here (if possible). Any suggestions? Seen a gigabyte R9 270 (2gb gddr5 950mhz) for £130 ish. I could make do with the integrated GPU for a few months if I really had to (or have a 4670 lying around).

PSU: Not sure
I have an Antec TruPower 650w that's about 5-6 years old that I might use - it's from a full ATX system so might not fit in the new case - will have to check that out. If I need to get something else, I'm guessing a 400-450w supply would be alright?


Current price looking in the region of £350 without GFX and PSU. Should be able to sell my old system bits for about 50-100, and have got someone on the hook for a spare microserver for 150. Will trawl eBay and the classifieds for even more savings, nothing has to be brand new, should be able to save 10-20% on used bits.

Any suggestions for further savings without sacrificing too much performance or upgradeability?


Hard Drives, OS, Keyboard, mouse and Bluray drive will be coming from my old machine.

The main uses for this system will be x264 video encoding, emulation and 1080p gaming (although absolute highest graphics settings aren't vital to me).



I've got a PCPartpicker list going, but it'll probably change (or get randomly overwritten like they seem to do on that site): http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Virtuo/saved/4iXi

[Bluecube]

A fellow winner in the same boat as me! I'm waiting to see what the case looks like and how big it is in Real Life before I decide what I'm doing.

Back on topic, everything you've mentioned seems to fit the bill. I get the impression that full ATX supplies are supported as I've not seen anything mentioned about PSU size restrictions. If you're going to overclock and want a fairly meaty GPU then you may want to look at a new PSU about the 500W mark. The only other thing I can suggest is that you look at watercooling for the CPU. This would help with a good OC while keeping the temps down. You can get decent all in one watercooling solutions for around the £70 mark.

[tamzzy]

why get a 4670k with a h87 board? that just wastes the overclocking ability of a "K" chip
heatsink-wise, a cooler-master 212 is the best budget cooler
for ram, haswell scales quite nicely with ram speed, from anandtech's review, 2133mhz c9 is the best price: performance ram
for ssd, i'd probably say either the 120gb samsung evo (or if you want to spend a bit more, the 240gb crucial m500)
the r9 270 is a nice choice and you can keep your psu, good quality unit and should last (and will fit the arc mini)

ps: i won too! =D

[virtuo]

If I can push to a new PSU then I will, hopefully get a quieter one than what I have and still have a fully working backup machine.

tamzzy, thanks for the motherboard points. I chose that board because it was cheap and "compatible" with the chip - didn't know I couldn't overclock with it - what should I be looking for? The RAM again was selected for compatibility (again the motherboard only went up to DDR3 1600, so will have a look for something faster once I've decided on the board).

Congratulations both

[tamzzy]

should be looking for a z87 board instead
tbh, rather than getting a new psu, spend the money on the parts that you can actually upgrade.
the psu is more of a sidegrade than upgrade lol

[Pob255]

If you're planning on going liquid cooling later for overclocking then you might as well not bother with an after market cooler now, just stick with the stock cooler.

edit: and as others have said you'll need a z87 motherboard if you want to overclock and your current psu should be fine and will fit, the ture power 650w is atx standard 140mm deep

[virtuo]

Yeah I figured it'd be a decent saving on the cooling as I won't be overclocking right away.

Motherboard I'm looking at the ASRock Z87M Extreme4 - seems good for the money once the BIOS has been updated. Found a decent price for a Samsung 840 EVO 120 Gb, so will go for that as well. The crucial M500 seems to get slated for write speeds.

The only reason I'd consider a PSU is that I will still have a fully working system spare if I don't pull the power supply out of it. But for the time being it isn't critical to have 2 working machines.

[Pob255]

Ahh well getting an additional psu isn't a bad idea then, if only to have a spare just incase.
something decent in the 450-500w range will not be too expensive, something like the xfx 450w

[MrJim]

I'd get this RAM for just a few quid more:

http://www.cclonline.com/product/146...8VkpS1ot2ainsQ

or

http://www.cclonline.com/product/144...v5vh3SLpLQikqg

[tamzzy]

The crucial M500 seems to get slated for write speeds.

at 240gb and above, you wont notice a difference lol. i'd agree though if you got the 120gb m500 (the write speed sucks)

[virtuo]

Cheers for all the input so far. Just ordered the CPU - £158 for a new 4670k (off eBleh). Going to do a bit more reading on the motherboard and grab that and the other bits in the next day or so. Glad my review will be an actual build rather than "how much lego will it hold".

Edit: Picked up some used 2x4gb Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz for £65 delivered - think that was a good catch

[virtuo]

Alright, bits ordered, I've deviated a fair bit from my original post based on advice here and some web trawling. Once I'd decided on a part, I've scavenged around exclusively for the best price, with the exception of the RAM which was an impulse eBay purchase as it was about half of retail.

So here's the final build (prices include delivery, which was mostly free):

Case: Fractal Arc Mini R2 Courtesy of Hexus/Fractal - thank you!
CPU: Intel i5 4570K £158.47
Motherboard: Asus GRYPHON Z87 £85.98
Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 2x4Gb 2133Mhz £63.31
SSD: Samsung EVO 840 120Gb 58.59
PSU: Corsair CXM 500W 80+ Bronze Modular 45.98
GPU: Sapphire r270X Dual-X OC 99.12

Cooling: Stock (Will upgrade to an AIO water cooler in the future) Free

Total: £511.45

Not a bad setup - I'll be cramming in my existing BDR and mechanical disks. I went for the Gryphon after reading some reviews, seemed to be the best thing after a Gene VI or a Sniper, and about £50 less. GPU will have to wait - will probably pick something mid-range next month. I also went for a PSU, thought it'd be good to have another working system at the end of it all. But does mean I'll have to get another Win7 license - anyone know of somewhere cheap and legit for a Win7 pro/ultimate key?

Think the last delivery is scheduled for Wed/Thurs next week, hopefully the Arc Mini will be here by then !

[wolfsSpirit]

the R9 270 needs at least a 600-650W PSU , make sure you have enough connection , i wasted 60 buck for a PSU only to find out i had to buy a modular one because of the lack of connections , missed a 2nd connection for my R9 videocard , wich needs 2 , most non modular PSU's have only 1 videocard connection.
I5 is comparable to I7 , just make sure you buy the K version so you can OC it if you desire so
SSD make sure you have a 6gb sata drive , i got an SSD 3gb and it's my bottleneck in my system.

[tamzzy]

Lol. 650w psu for a r9 270? Thats way overkill. Im running a 7990 on a 650w psu

[MrJim]

Lol. 650w psu for a r9 270? Thats way overkill. Im running a 7990 on a 650w psu

Definitely, I ran a R9 290 on a 660W PSU without issue. More like 500-550W for a 270, IMO.

[wolfsSpirit]

yeah i just rechecked the W for an 270x and you are right