Tom's Hardware of Finland

I mean, I’ve still seen some rather large “small” mATX cases (I was disappointed in seeing the Corsair Air 240 in person after grabbing the measurements, probably in part to have separate areas for mobo and PSU), but if we’re talking trying to track down a motherboard of an older chipset and not wanting to pay through the nose for it, it’s always a viable alternative. I’ve started looking at it since it’s far less pricey on current platforms or they just don’t have an ITX option available (Intel is pricey and AMD (lol) has no ITX option for FX procs and pricey ones for their APUs).

Also,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007627%20600009028%20600491547

Well, one’s in stock

Yeah, I did notice that got back in stock today, as well as on Amazon. Thanks for keeping a lookout! That’s what I’m getting now. I’ve considered mATX but all of the cases looked much larger than what I can get with mITX so I think I’m just going to go for the Cooler Master Elite 130. That Pink Silverstone honestly doesn’t look bad itself but I can get the CM130 at Microcenter. It seems popular enough around the internet so I don’t think it will cause me too much trouble. I’ve found I like to take my PC to my parent’s house and local game meetups so my main focus is weight and portability.

Browsing motherboard websites sure makes the market look like it’s dominated by snake oil.

mITX is the worst. I could quickly tell this thing was never going to turn on and sure enough it doesn’t. I don’t feel like trouble shooting through all this mess of wiiiiirrrrrrrreeeeeesssssssss.

Wait, are you not using a modular PSU? That sounds like a quick trip to a bad time.

If it sounds like I’m mocking you in your time of despair, trust me, I fail at cable management even in my mid-tower ATX case. I understand completely.

so from what I’ve gathered digging around for half an hour, mini-ITX boards for AMD FX83x0 CPUs are hard to come by, hum-hum.

i see why, because trying to fit any cooling towers/fans into a m-ITX case seems like a wonderfully long and arduous adventure. Not that this doesn’t bring out the CHALLENGE EVERYTHING™ spirit, if I’m honest, but I start to see why I should probably not go down that route …

I’m more disappointed that no one has gone “Maybe we could make a case that’s big enough to fit ATX parts, but falls under the purview of ‘slim’!” Mostly because I have a bunch of extra stuff in ATX that I would love to sit next to my TV/travel around but the majority of options are in the “desk destroyer” category.

Anyway, after seeing this dumb build, my thirst is greater than ever:

I also found out while working on my secondary machine yesterday that the CPU hitting 100 degrees C is a bad thing (you will be missed Intel stock cooler) and that I forgot how rage-inducing the socket 775 heatsink mounting scheme was (seriously, fucking push pins).

I actually have a titan X in an SG-05. it involved some tin snips.

it’s a pretty damn good case design (I’m assuming the SG-13 doesn’t change much). been using the stock Intel cooler with a 2500k @4.1 for a few years now. got a BD-RW, an HD, and an SSD in there too.

no pc cases are ever how I want them. I guess there’s not a lot of people who want like 8 hdds, have no use for any optical drives but also don’t have much use for a giant atx motherboard and want the case as slim as possible

Clearly we need to learn to CAD and machine our own damn cases

pretty sure you just want an ITX case on top of like a four-bay NAS

This only holds 6 drives, but otherwise sounds like something you might look into: http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16811352027

I have one that currently houses my file server

NOW That’s What I Call Cable Management 4

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Yeah, unless for some reason you like massive towers, just get a slim case for the thinking bits of the computer and something like this filled with multi-tb drives for storage.

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that nas stuff would be nice but seems cheaper to just have an unnecessarily large case instead. also wouldn’t you be stuck with usb speeds with one of those things. that fractal case could work but I kind of don’t like the cube look. I guess they probably have to be like that to still fit a regular sized power supply in there with everything else though.

USB3 is never gonna bottleneck a spinning disk

May I use this thread to ask for advice on which CPU and mobo are the go to choices at this point in time? What are the key features and numbers to look for when making a decision? Looking to stay in a 500 dollar range for both but can spare a bit more. Mostly aiming for gaming and entertainment hub usage that will last awhile so I can just throw in a new GPU or SSD at a later date.

if it were me:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/451887/Core_i5-6500_32GHz_LGA_1151_Boxed_Processor

http://www.microcenter.com/product/452378/Z170M-ITX-AC_LGA_1151_mITX_Intel_Motherboard

I would spend the extra 30 bucks for the 6500K because even though you can OC unlocked processors on Z170 boards via BCLK tuning, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be a microcode patch to eliminate the exploit. But I would want to overclock, so that’s me.

Speaking of which, gonna have to hunt down DD2-1066 memory to break 3.1 Ghz on this Q8300, which I will do or kill it trying (I’ve been having a bunch of fun with the older system the past few days).

which is likely to be the cheaper and gruntier this year coming, one of the new wave of gfx cards with the billions more transistors or a pair of current top enders?

the new wave of gfx cards will basically cut the process node in half after four years at 28nm which is pretty unprecedented but it’s not clear how quickly the mid-end cards will trickle out or at what prices

meanwhile if you’re trying to buy something that at least handily beats the current console generation I wouldn’t go any lower than a 970, and those have only gotten more expensive (=$ a PS4 all by itself in most countries, and I know you want to play bloodborne) in the year and change they’ve been on the market

see my earlier comment about being sort of down on PC gaming lately. I mean hell I got a titan x for free (to do non-gaming stuff) and I’m still really glad I got (for example) just cause 3 on PS4 because

  • suspend/resume mid-game
  • not having to dual boot into windows which is a pain in the ass
  • console version is vastly better optimized (none of the weird bugs that lead to the game getting tarred with “Mixed” feedback on steam, and no need to get twice as powerful hardware for only marginally better performance than on console

I feel like I keep saying this but at this point it could be another year before you can get a 4GB card that feels like a real upgrade on first-gen DX11 GPUs for <$250. and meanwhile most of the developers who are making games that require something more than Intel graphics seem to be losing patience with PC APIs/hardware relative to console.

I’ve bought a couple 750 Tis for people because those things are very very reasonable in terms of price:performance if you get the 2GB version and you just need something more than onboard graphics (and because I fit one in one of these which was fun), but otherwise…

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