Reviews - PC Specialist Vanquish Mini 130

[HEXUS]

£549 for a capable small-form-factor gaming rig.

Read more.

[davidcrofter]

Interesting review. I am thinking of building a similar SFF PC based on the Intel Core i3-4130 and was planning to use the stock heatsink. Is most of the noise generated by the graphics card or is the ref heatsink not up to scratch??

[ali73]

Link to pc does not take you to the pc itself, more a review page... is there an actual product page, or do you need to configure this from scratch.

[Ginettor]

A quite intrigued by these mini cooler master cases, quite well laid out in my opinion.

[peterb]

Link to pc does not take you to the pc itself, more a review page... is there an actual product page, or do you need to configure this from scratch.

The clue is in the thread title - a review

A quite intrigued by these mini cooler master cases, quite well laid out in my opinion.

They are, I have just re-housed a SFF build in a 120 to give me a bit more internal expansion. A very nice case.

PC Specialist look as if they have made good use of the facilities it provides too. Building SFF systems can be a bit fiddly, so if you are looking at a small system, it might be worth taking a closer look.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A VS 450 PSU. Jun Fu and AiSHi capacitors FTW!

Yuck.

A shame as the rest of the system looks OK.

[ali73]

@PeteB

Clue looked like in the title of the link (did you read this?)
"HEXUS Where2Buy £549.00 - PC Specialist"

Where2BUY.. not Where2REVIEW

which looks like a purchasing page (or product page at least), but just a list of review of the various system.

Followed the link just now and this system is sitting on the top level and had a configure button, So I must have gone too soon...

[ali73]

A VS 450 PSU. Jun Fu and AiSHi capacitors FTW!

Yuck.

A shame as the rest of the system looks OK.

Thanks for highlighting that.. I was wondering whether to upgrade to the 650W RM series, in case all the VS series were using cheaper parts. I only need a 500W supply as this seems to be a sweet spot judging by comments.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for highlighting that.. I was wondering whether to upgrade to the 650W RM series, in case all the VS series were using cheaper parts. I only need a 500W supply as this seems to be a sweet spot judging by comments.

The VS 450 and VS 550 share the same awful capacitor brands. The RM is better but 650W is OTT though for such a system.

I have a Xeon E3 1220(basically a Core i5 2400 with more L3 cache),in a mini ITX based system with a GTX660,8GB of DDR3 RAM,an SSD and an HDD,and in the combined test of 3DMark it consumes at most around 205W at the wall and with Tombraider and Skyrim well under that.

I use an XFX PRO 450W.

It seems the company does not offer even the CX series and that would be a better PSU than the VS but won't cost as much as the RM. However,it appears the CX series is being slowly replaced by the VS series in prebuilt PCs.

Edit!!

This is why I started building my own PCs TBH. You should consider building one yourself - start a thread in the hardware forum if you are interested.

Scan also offers Scansure for more novice builders,which is an insuranced policy in case you muck up during a build(which should be hard to do TBH).

[ali73]

This is why I started building my own PCs TBH. You should consider building one yourself - start a thread in the hardware forum if you are interested.

Scan also offers Scansure for more novice builders,which is an insuranced policy in case you muck up during a build(which should be hard to do TBH).

I used to build my own I've just not had the time recently. Last PC I bought had what I needed, and turned out to be cheaper than me buying the same sort of parts.. (last few on a price cut to make way for a new model)

I did buy an Antec ISK310-150 case for a HTPC project a while back..... and just saw the ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ review, and quite fancy the A8-7600 Kaveri APU. Maybe I'll get that built as my project.

[Enverex]

Shame that simply by clicking configure (WITHOUT changing anything) pushes the price up to £620. All I wanted was a GPU upgrade (660 is a tad too weak) but it completely breaks the pricing.

[Tropi]

I'd very much like to see what replacement components it would take to reduce the noise level, effectively and economically

[Enverex]

I built an ITX system using the CM 120 Elite so I have experience with this:

The stock Intel cooler is noisy as hell under load so that has to go. I replaced it with the low profile Noctua HSF setup, that worked. Nothing else really needs to be changed, the case has a 140mm fan on the front that is silent so you just need to get a silent PSU (most are these days, I'm personally using a Corsair HX 430w) and then pick a GPU with a decent quiet fan setup (Forzr, DirectCU, etc).