Bare bones portable gaming rig?

[RichieLee]

So after reading all your advice, cheers guys, it would seem that a new rig is circa £500...
For that kind of money I think i'd rather throw more money at upgrading my rig and manning up and planning ahead when it comes to any LAN sessions in the future In fact it might serve to help towards a build for my friend who's on a tight budget.

This is however still a very interesting topic, by looking at my spec would you say the motherboard choice is adequate? I'm not too clued up on mobos so any advice you have is appreciated.

PS: Apologies for the really small squint inducing screenshot, looked perfectly legible when I editted the size!

[Pob255]

the H61 is only sata2 so the crucial m4 will not run at full speed, it does still work very well at sata2 speeds.
you could shave a little off by going for a sata2 ssd http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...-write-270mb-s or looking 2nd hand.
if you want to go mATX then that opens up AMD possibilities

swap the 7750 for an 6850 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...2x-dvi-hdmi-dp
the 7750 performs around the same as the 5770/6770, the 6850 is about 30% better performance.

As you're not going for overclocking or massive performance, just a solid gaming platform I'd suggest swapping the case for a fractal design core 1000 and mod a couple of handles into the top which really isn't hard, just drilling a couple of holes in the top and screwing in something like this http://www.diy.com/nav/rooms/kitchen...327?icamp=recs
Want something a bit more funky for a lan http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2304.html

Also you can probably swap over to AMD, there's a lot of good options for AMD on mATX, they just suck for mini-ITX, for ITX you're basically stuck with intel
Ebuyer still have a load of the old athlonII x3 cpu's http://www.ebuyer.com/238326-amd-ath...-adx450wfgmbox not the fastest of cpu's but still a good base for a basic gaming pc.
PS don't forget ram although 4gb is all you really need for a basic gaming system

[KaKTy3]

I second the Core 1000 case.

After all the research and toying with an idea of a cube case, I settled on Fractal Design's offering. It's small, looks very good (IMO) and can take every piece of kit I'd want. All I had to do is to get a modular PSU (Antec High Current Gamer M 620W), get plenty of cable management bits (velcro and cable ties) and find an aftermarket cooler that'll fit (Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Limited Edition). Granted, that'll be my main rig, but very portable, if I need it to be

I also threw £22.73 worth of fans in it (2x 120mm CM SickleFlow and a 92mm Scythe KamaFlow2), for a good measure, but that's entirely optional.

Some inspiring images of Core 1000 here.

[Pob255]

There's only 150 mm heatsink clearance in the core1000 which is too small to fit 120mm fan based tower coolers
The freezer 13 (non-pro version) is only slightly better than the freezer 7 pro, it is a very good 92mm fan based cooler, probably the best 92mm cooler (although the old thermal right Ultima 90 is probably better but that only has socket775 mounting), but for an i3 or an athlonII x3 or similar low heat cpu it's not worth the extra money, goes double for the £32 for the limited edition version http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/316894...5/Product.html the only difference between the normal freezer 13 and the limited edition version is that the limited edition version is nickel plated to make it look better.

All told the freezer 7 pro is a better buy

For a quad core and hot graphics card or two I'd look at something with better cooling than the 1000, eg the miniArc or silverstone TJ08e but that's going to push the price up