Small form factor gaming PC for wife - Where to start

[deejayburnout]

Peeps

my wife is contemplating selling her PS3 and Xbox and getting a PC for use in the livingroom. She has been impressed with the graphic quality of my PC for gaming. We would also like to play together on games like borderlands / destiny and similar.

not knowing anything about small form factors, where do i start with cases/mobo sizes and small good GPUs.

the only things that are a must are small case size, and graphics as good as PS4. Prefer AMD only for budget.

any pointers.

thanks

[mikeo01]

I take it full 1080P on the TV?

Depends on the amount of eye candy you want. The 270X-285 seems to be the sweet spot for 1080P, in terms of price and performance.

Also depends what you would call "small form factor". I'd call mini-ITX form factor, but then you are limiting yourself heavily on the motherboards, there isn't much out there for ITX as of yet. mATX boards and cases are plentiful.

Mini ITX
I.e we have the Elite 110 fits a standard ATX PSU, which is tiny and will fit this R9 270X ITX chap and probably not bigger (unless you opt for the more expensive MSI GTX 760 ITX).

Otherwise in terms of ITX cases there is SilverStone Sugo is capable cooling wise, and the CM Elite 130 isn't too shabby either. Matter of preference as most ITX cases will get warm either way.

What's the budget? The only ITX for FM2+ is MSI A88XI and whether you will want to fit a A8 7600 (because of 65W power, but I personally wouldn't bother) or an Athlon 760K.

Although with the Athlon 760K I'd really wait for the Athlon 8600K, more CPU grunt.

Some AMD options. I personally would not look at AM3+ as eventually if you find the CPU on the FM2+ to be lagging there is always Excavator in the near future


Intel side of things we have the MSI B85i and take your pick out of expensive CPUs I3-4150. It is a decent choice if you'd go down this path. It just doesn't have the oomph for heavy multitasking, but then again if its solely for gaming it is good compared to its FM2+ rivals.

Micro ATX

Only "small" case popping up on Scan is the SilverStone SG02W. Personally I'd shop around for some Micro ATX cases, the only thing that'll change is the amount of cooling (mounts etc) and that you'll find cheaper motherboards for them

But then mATX starts to get big looking for a living room.

Cooling and noise

One note I think is worth mentioning for mini ITX, get some decent higher pressure fans (doesn't have to have huge CFM, only small case) to exhaust the air. And if possible replace the CPU cooling for the biggest heatsink that can fit, or opt for a lower end AIO water cooling solution (such as Corsair Hydro). As these cases do get slightly toasty.

GPU wise, the Elite 130 I linked above can fit almost any GPU today, whilst the Elite 110 can only fit the dinky ITX GPUs we are starting to see from MSI. The 270X-285 should quite happily run without worry there.

[AETAaAS]

I've recently built a system around the EVGA Hadron Air. When it first came out, it was pretty expensive IIRC but it was a little over a hundred pounds when I bought it from Scan recently. For a nice mITX case with a window, fans and a 500W Gold PSU with cables at the proper length the price is reasonable.

I've put a R9 280X in it (one of the longer cards on the market) and you can fit 92mm class tower CPU coolers. The dual 120mm fans up top keep everything cool and quiet. You might need to get three pin fan cable extensions since the cables are quite short since it goes through an adapter to bring two fans down to one cable. It wasn't compatible with the fans controller on my motherboard so I bought replacement fans anyway.

Mike has gone over most of the hardware and the big questions; how much you gonna spend and when you gonna spend it?

[DanceswithUnix]

If it is going in the living room, you might be better off with an HTPC case than one of the usual shoebox format SFF cases.

Plenty of shoebox format cases that can take a full sized graphics card, but keeping the noise down is hard. By looking like a HiFi component an HTPC case can give you more room inside to play with, which gives the better selection of uATX boards and quieter heatsinks.

[directhex]

http://www.alienware.co.uk/landings/alpha/ ?

[mikeo01]

http://www.alienware.co.uk/landings/alpha/ ?

Only complaint with that is according to sites the GPU is not upgradable, and it is based on a custom designed Maxwell chip, and it doesn't seem like they've released the specs on it yet

[scaryjim]

IMNSHO just about the best case for living room computers is the Antec NSK 1380

http://www.ebuyer.com/140118-antec-n...eRKhoCY7vw_wcB

Unfortunately, it's stupidly expensive, and the custom 350W PSU doesn't (afaik) have any PCIe power cables, so you'd be looking at either using Molex adapters, or sticking to a GTX 750 Ti as your max graphics card.

If you want plenty of component choice you're perhaps looking at some thing like http://www.ebuyer.com/393751-fractal...ca-node-605-bl - but again, stupidly expensive: and if you're looking at AMD for budget reasons you probably don't want to drop £120 on a case. But budget isn't going to get you a case that will blend in nicely with a living room, and just thinking small isn't going to help much either because most mITX cases aren't that small and are quite pricey.

Easiest/cheapest option might be a cheapish mATX tower, tbh: something like a zalman mini T5 http://www.ebuyer.com/663197-zalman-...zalman-mini-t5 (nope, I hadn't heard of it 'til I did a search on ebuyer, but it looks OK) or coolermaster silencio http://www.ebuyer.com/584028-cooler-...-sil-352m-kkn1 would look fairly slick and understated stood next to a TV stand/entertainment unit....

But really, for merging in to a living room you have to pick a case first then fill it with whatever components will fit.

[DanceswithUnix]

If you have a hifi system you could rack one of these up, but it is only half height so limited on graphics cards:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...ov-vision.html

[Ulti]

If you want something that looks a bit more living room like with upgradeability then I would recommend one of the following:

Silverstone Raven RVZ01 or Silverstone ML06. Both use the same internals, Raven is more like a gamer type case so it might go well with you, the ML06 is more like a what you'd have in the living room./ Personally I don't like the cube type cases, even if it might mean that overall volume is smaller, as footprint wise, they take up a large amount of space as they will take up a square type area whereas with the Silverstone RVZ01 or ML06, they're long and flat so you can have them standing up if you have lots of vertical space or have it flat if you have horizontal space but no vertical space.

I had the Silverstone RVZ01 with an i5 3330S cooled by a Thermalright AXP200 Muscle + MSI GTX 750 Ti Gaming along with a Silverstone SFX 300W PSU and for general web browsing and idle tasks, the Silverstone PSU's fan didn't even turn on so the whole system was really quiet and barely audible at load (ofc this is dependent on your cooler and GPU). Really efficient on the power too as it idles at less than 50W and loads at a bit over 100W.

[Jeremy Chan]

What kind of shape of case do you want? Would something like a Fractal Node 304 be of any interest? It's like a flat cube.

[deejayburnout]

Thanks for all the pointers. As it have no experience on this type of system, it's probably best that I show her some systems and she can tell me what case she likes. I think the biggest selling point for her will be how it looks and will it match out living room.

Once she decides ( which will take forever) I can build round her budget. (still undecided.)

[Jeremy Chan]

BitFenix Prodigy is also a cool looking case, but might be a bit too big for you.