Cheap, small, gaming rig for GF, spec check :p

[chrestomanci]

Thanks. As you can see, price is a major concern, so the extra 60 quid for the SUGO and decent PSU is well out of budget unfortunately. It does look a lovely case though.

If I where you I would check with your GF on that, she may be willing to pay extra for asthetics.

I thought the retail cooler fits fine in the Aspire?

It will, but most aftermarket coolers won't

The retail cooler and the Zalaman one I recomended will be about 75mm high, which is the limit defined in the ATX spec. Most aftermarket coolers are much bigger than that.

[kalniel]

Heh well the GF found this thread over the weekend and was tempted to sign up just to post

The Aspire case is good enough for her - she even wanted the windowed version and is looking forward to it glowing blue

We're not bothered about aftermarket coolers, the retail one will be good enough I'm sure.

Having recieved the motherboard, I'm now a bit worried about the southbridge (or is it north?) cooler and clearance - it's right next to the PCI-E slot, and the leadtek 6800GT has a huge chunk of copper on the back side. It's going to be pretty tight. On the plus side, if it does fit, then the air duct will actually partly cool south bridge heatsink as well