The return to desktop PC

[DanceswithUnix]

Ironically, the case and the speakers are giving me the biggest trouble (the release of IvyBridge and new Radeons seem to have made things easy in the performance hardware department). I have no doubts Arc Mini is a wonderful case, but it's still a mini tower. I was hoping to get one of the cube cases, but the only one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg is Silverstone Sugo SG02B. Thoughts?

I have a couple of the Sugo SG02 boxes. My server is in an SG02B and for that it is great (an unstressed machine with no graphics card). The wife's PC is in the more rounded front variant but basically the same. Her PC is pretty loud, the airflow around the CPU is rubbish so it really cranks up the fans when gaming.

[Max Tractor]

Motherboard:
ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M Desktop Motherboard - Intel Z77 Express Chipset £87.38

Hi

I have been thinking of having a play over on the dark side(depends if I can get an 25/600k) and have had a quick look at the asrock, I would be interested to see what you think about the board, I have had 4 asrock 890/chipsets but they have been lacking in the bios support dept, they abandoned the Asrock 890GM PRO3 and the Asrock 890GX Extreme3 was poorly looked after. £87 is that before vat?


cheers

[KaKTy3]

I have a couple of the Sugo SG02 boxes. My server is in an SG02B and for that it is great (an unstressed machine with no graphics card). The wife's PC is in the more rounded front variant but basically the same. Her PC is pretty loud, the airflow around the CPU is rubbish so it really cranks up the fans when gaming.

Thanks for your input. I've concluded that SG02 isn't for me. At the moment, I am still trying to decide between SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E and their Fortress FT03B. Both provide excellent acoustics, ease of use and airflow, although the latter is a bit too expensive for my liking and I am still unsure whether I can deal with the 'outputs at the top of the case' design. Decisions, decisions...

Hi
I have been thinking of having a play over on the dark side(depends if I can get an 25/600k) and have had a quick look at the asrock, I would be interested to see what you think about the board, I have had 4 asrock 890/chipsets but they have been lacking in the bios support dept, they abandoned the Asrock 890GM PRO3 and the Asrock 890GX Extreme3 was poorly looked after. £87 is that before vat?

As I said in my OP, I am pretty out of the loop on the goings on in the PC scene of the last several years, but frantic reading over the last week supports your views: historically, ASRock had some issues with their board and their customer support is a bit lacking still. However, from what I understand, the current generation of the boards is very capable and well-built. The ATX version of this one has good reviews and certainly has everything you'd need in a mid-level enthusiast mATX board. Here's the ATX Z77 roundup. It's very closely tied with Gigabyte's GA-Z77MX-D3H.

The price I've got is including VAT (now £88) from WAE+. I've ordered a few items of them as of late, and all came as advertised. Not sure what their deal is, but they seem to regularly offer spectacular bargains on the components I've been looking for.

Having said all that, I decided to go for Asus P8Z77-M Pro. Essentially, I am paying an extra £12 for a higher quality VRM there (six phase vs. ASRock's four). Same source as Extreme-4 M.

HTH.

[KaKTy3]

How quickly things change

An awesome mITX case just got announced BitFenix Prodigy (review). And that's what I just put pre-order for (expected early July—I can wait). That meant I am back to ASRock for their Z77E-ITX (ordered from Amazon for £117.56).

[Demonwar]

The price I've got is including VAT (now £88) from WAE+. I've ordered a few items of them as of late, and all came as advertised. Not sure what their deal is, but they seem to regularly offer spectacular bargains on the components I've been looking for.

Think you have been lucky. As long as they have the stock it's fine otherwise getting your money back appears to be a minefield. I've looked up reviews the customer services seem dire.

Plus payments over bank transfer? eek run a mile!

[Pob255]

Have you ordered that board form amazon? I ask because Zotac are well worth looking at for mini-ITX not always the cheapest but they are very good quality boards http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zotac...16%29-mini-itx not in stock currently you'd have to contact scan and find out when they'll get some in.

On issue you can run into with the mini-ITX boards is that the cpu socket is very close to both the ram and pci-e slot, this can be a major issue with larger cpu coolers.
This is an issue with all the newer intel socket motherboards

Both kingston and crucial make very low profile ddr3 but it's EEC (server grade) so tends to be more expensive and you'll only get it in 1333mhz
Shame really because they both also used to produce very low profile ram in their DDR2 value ranges.

I'm mentioning this as something to be aware of, it's hard to say if any cooler will or will not fit depending on the motherboard, ram used and cooler orientation and fan placement.
Cooler might fit one way but not the other, might have to swap the side the fan goes on, etc

If the worst come to the worst and the cooler will not fit, you can always use the stock cooler while you look for an alternative.
This is one area where water cooling and the all-in-one water coolers come in because they normally use no more space around the cpu socket than the stock cooler does, down side it'll cost more
eg http://www.scan.co.uk/products/antec...us-new-version

[KaKTy3]

Think you have been lucky. As long as they have the stock it's fine otherwise getting your money back appears to be a minefield. I've looked up reviews the customer services seem dire.

Plus payments over bank transfer? eek run a mile!

****ty customer service typically comes with low prices, as that's the only real cost they can save on in an online retail business. I only ever shop with a credit card and my bank (first direct) has always been helpful in resolving any purchase-related issues in the past, so I am not too worried.

Have you ordered that board form amazon? I ask because Zotac are well worth looking at for mini-ITX not always the cheapest but they are very good quality boards http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zotac...16%29-mini-itx not in stock currently you'd have to contact scan and find out when they'll get some in.

Put an order through for the board already. That was the last one in stock and seeing the pricing elsewhere, I thought I'd just go ahead and get it. Plus the reviews are generally very favourable. Also, ZOTAC mobos seem to be getting a bad rep over at the US forums, at least based on cursory look, mostly on the back of support being dropped for older models too quickly (a common issue, I am sure).

On issue you can run into with the mini-ITX boards is that the cpu socket is very close to both the ram and pci-e slot, this can be a major issue with larger cpu coolers.
This is an issue with all the newer intel socket motherboards

Both kingston and crucial make very low profile ddr3 but it's EEC (server grade) so tends to be more expensive and you'll only get it in 1333mhz
Shame really because they both also used to produce very low profile ram in their DDR2 value ranges.

Ordered Xigmatek Gaia, which is 159 mm tall. This size seems to be ok in quite a few of smaller case builds I've seen around, so hopefully not an issue. The RAM heatsinks have gotten ridiculous since the last time I looked at them I am thinking of getting Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9 (1600 CL9 1.5v), which they call 'Low Profile', but in fact it's just a normal sized DIMM without the fancy heatsink.

And thank you for the tips, it's very helpful and I am sure there will be something I forgot despite all the research, so keep them coming! Btw, your laptop mod is amazing, really impressive stuff.

In a related note, I have splashed on a small oak desk earlier today (a shopping frenzy + massive sale over at Oak Furniture Land + Quidco), so water cooling is definitely out of bounds for now )

[Ulti]

You really don't need £1000 to play those games! I'm pretty much the same type of gamer as you, LoL, possibly D3 and I used to play MMORPGs/RPGs (not stuff like Mass Effect though, more classic ones) and my PC won't ever cost more than £500 now! I guess you do have to add in the cost of your monitor etc though. But seeing as you've bought several parts already I guess it's too late to respec now. OTOH you also have a very futureproof computer and by the look of things, you seem to not upgrade for a long time.

Both kingston and crucial make very low profile ddr3 but it's EEC (server grade) so tends to be more expensive and you'll only get it in 1333mhz
Shame really because they both also used to produce very low profile ram in their DDR2 value ranges

That wasn't actually true. They did make standard low profile DDR3 RAM that I've still got now but for some reason I can't find it anywhere. IIRC correctly though, almost all the listings show picture of full size modules when they're actually the low profile modules.

Just checked my email and found that it was indeed this one: http://www.kikatek.com/product_info....ucts_id=114704

This was the one I bought and it's the super low profile ones. They don't overclock too well though, on 1.5V I can only get 1400Mhz 8-8-8-24 timings with command rate 1. They can't do 1600Mhz CL9 on 1.65V at all IIRC.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OcUK sell this 1600MHZ Samsung low profile DDR3:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-017-SA

[Ulti]

The Samsung one is legendary for overclocking, but it's over 50% more expensive. In absolute terms, about £25 more including delivery is quite expensive. (£36 for the Kingston ones, £54+£7 delivery IIRC = ~£61, that's actually more than 75% more expensive!) If only it wasn't OcUK that sold them, they price it so high because demand is high for it and they're the only ones selling it in the UK -> Monopoly. If it was Scan I can see them selling it at £40. If only Scan did sell them for £40, I would jump on them myself just to see if/how much performance gains I would gain through overclocking the RAM.

It's odd though, I bought some cheap PNY 1.5V 1333Mhz DDR3 CL9 RAM off Play.com for £20 (£10 for 4GB) total which are regular sized and they run so much hotter than my Kingston 1.5V 1333Mhz CL9 ones, both at exactly the same timings, speeds, settings etc. Not sure why that is. The PNY RAM packaging was appalling though, the sticks were just put in a thin cardboard sleeve and Play.com simply put them in a jiffy bag. Luckily it was fine though. Bought some cheap heatspreaders from China for £1.58 for a pair so that should help with the temps a bit, then I'll stick them in my parent's PC, even though they don't need 8GB RAM but I only bought it to see if they would overclock (they don't overclock at all!)

Anyways, I'm getting off topic!

[Pob255]

I was sure there used to be a value version of the ddr3 very low profile, just couldn't find it (we have a load of pc's at work which I'm pretty sure use it but only the 2gb sticks, so I wasn't sure if it was the value stuff or not.

I'd not worry in the slightest about overclocking ram it really doesn't have much effect these days, when ram was a lot slower it had more effect and then we had fsb overclocking so you didn't want ram that would hold back your overclock.
But now having ram that runs faster than 1333mhz really doesn't do much for a system, the main reason that 1600mhz ram is popular is because it cheaper esp for the higher density ram.

[Ulti]

Well for the iGPU there are noticeable performance gains, but I guess for the OP that's a moot point. I'm going to post my builds after exams and also buy some better ram and see how much performance gains there are myself.

[Pob255]

Ordered Xigmatek Gaia, which is 159 mm tall. This size seems to be ok in quite a few of smaller case builds I've seen around, so hopefully not an issue. The RAM heatsinks have gotten ridiculous since the last time I looked at them I am thinking of getting Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9 (1600 CL9 1.5v), which they call 'Low Profile', but in fact it's just a normal sized DIMM without the fancy heatsink.

And thank you for the tips, it's very helpful and I am sure there will be something I forgot despite all the research, so keep them coming! Btw, your laptop mod is amazing, really impressive stuff.

In a related note, I have splashed on a small oak desk earlier today (a shopping frenzy + massive sale over at Oak Furniture Land + Quidco), so water cooling is definitely out of bounds for now )

It's not the overall height of the cooler that's the issue, overall cooler height is an issue for cases and that bitfenix is fine
the issue is the space around the socket, a 120mm fan based tower cooler sticks out sideways, the proximity of the pci-e slot means that you'll probably have to mount toe cooler pointing to the side not to the rear, however this can bring the overhanging base of the fins into conflict with the ram, i the ram is too tall and/or the cooler fins start too low.
However without testing or measuring the individual parts together it's very hard to say if it'll work or not.

That why I'm just trying to warn you that they might be incompatible, without having any of these components physically ourselves we cannot guaranty one way or the other.
It should probably fit with standard ram and be very unlikely to have issues with very low profile ram

I suggested one of the all-in-one water cooler because they are very easy to use, no more than an air cooler really and they do minimise the area required around the cpu socket. it's a very easy to use possible solution if and only if that cooler doesn't fit, they are pretty much leak proof and robust, as long as you don't attack it with a knife or swing it around to use like some type of medieval flail weapon you'll be fine.
Worrying about your wooden desk is frankly silly, there';s not a great amount of water in these things and damage to your hardware from leaks is far more dangerous and costly. (again nothing you should have to worry about with an all-in-one)

[KaKTy3]

Worrying about your wooden desk is frankly silly, there';s not a great amount of water in these things and damage to your hardware from leaks is far more dangerous and costly. (again nothing you should have to worry about with an all-in-one)

It was meant to be read as 'splashed out', i.e. spent too much dosh But I see it's not that much more expensive, so I will consider it, if the air cooler I got won't fit. Thx again.

[Pob255]

you can always run on the stock cooler for now if there's issues and upgrade later, might be a bit noisier, esp in this weather, and I'd not do any overclocking, but it will work.
aftermarket coolers just tend to be better and quieter esp on the higher end cpu's

[KaKTy3]

Cheers, Pob.

Meanwhile, I've had another change of heart yesterday. Now that I've convinced the missus to get a small desk, which is deeper than the area I was going to put the case originally, I can go for a slightly larger enclosure. Fractal Design's Arc Mini is the one I like the look of the most, but it's still a tad too long for my liking (as peripherals and cabling at the back add to the total depth). I see that Silverstone have another play on Temjin TJ08-E, namely the Precision PS07, which has a different front cover and two 120mm front fans instead of a 180mm fan. Otherwise, it's the same size at Temjin and costs some £27 less (if I buy from Scan with a free delivery ). It'll probably need a 120mm exhaust fan—any tips for a no frills quiet (18 dBa?) option?

I also took advantage of Dabs's 'Sunny25' code (£25 off £399 spend) and ordered a retail version of i5-3570k, Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 mATX board, two 4Gb low profile sticks of Corsair Vengeance, internal LG combo drive and Belkin's eight plug concealed surge protector. Good times

Cancelled both the BitFenix pre-order and mITX board.