Originally Posted by
scaryjim
Yeah, it's a nice design - the inverted motherboard position kind of appeals to me, it's nice and small, but it's still got enough room to be flexible.
I think case choice more than anything else is a really personal aspect of building a computer: finding the right size and style for your current needs is critical. The Atomic is a really good balance of a small case with some flexibility around component choice: if you go for that I'm sure you won't be unhappy with it!
As to a £30 CPU - if you're even vaguely considering modern games - even at low settings - being able to run more than 2 threads will be critical. For certain games a £30 CPU + £85 GPU will be better, but for the best overall PC experience getting a balanced set up is more important. CPUwise the 7870k is around core i3 performance, and GPUwise it's very similar to £60 AMD GPU: overall it's a much more balanced PC. And if you get to a point where the integrated graphics aren't cutting the mustard, you can either add a £60 R7 240/250 for dual graphics, or invest in a more expensive GPU to use stand-alone, knowing that you've got a good underpinning from a decent quad-core CPU. Long gone are the days when dual-core vs quad-core is a debate at anything other than the absolute low end: if you're spending more £100 on a base unit it should have a 4-thread CPU.