Small PC

Soldato
Joined
14 May 2007
Posts
2,638
Hello

I'm looking to downsize from a Full Size PC to something smaller for in use in the living room or bedroom. Main use will be playing decent quality films (1080p and occasional 3d) and storing quite a few photos. I have a decent Steam library but tend not to play on it to much.

On a thread in this section someones got a Corsair 250D which looks really neat, something i think would work in terms of looks and size.
I'm rather skint as i've just purchased a house but have no where to put the PC so will have to re-use some of the bits out of there if possible.

Parts i think i maybe able to use:
GPU: MSI GTX 970M 4G Gaming Edition
Memory: Corsair CMY16GX3M2A2400C11R Vengeance Pro Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2400Mhz CL11 XMP
PSU: XFX Pro 850W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze'
SSD: Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gbs Basic
HDD: 3TB WD Red


Parts i don't think i can use;

Doubt my motherboard will fit its a ASRock Z97 Fatal1ty Killer
Also i have a pentium g3258 CPU which i can't use if the mobo doesn't fit.


Can someone confirm if i can use what i think i can and suggestions on CPU and motherboard combinations if i can't use what i have? My memory is ddr3 so may limit me a bit unless the swapping to ddr4 really outweighs it.
Budgets as little as possible really. My 30th is coming up so hoping to get a bit for that so say £200 as i can usually make that a month in overtime.

Cheers
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
14 May 2007
Posts
2,638
How about just grabbing a second hand Z97 ITX board and re-use the CPU?

Yeh that would make sense :) might have a look on ebay, hopefully sell my board and case to fund it.
Would the memory and GPU fit alright?
Thinking about my PSU i may need to change that as looking at it theres a tonne of cables which wont be used. modular is likely to be the way to go.
 
Associate
Joined
27 Mar 2012
Posts
202
Assuming you mean 970 rather than 970m, I can't see any problem.

And I think you can sell your board quite easily. It seems to be a popular board.

If you do decide to change the PSU, it's worth looking into getting a SFX or SFX-L one. You'll have a lot more choices with the case (E.g. Silverstone SG13 at 11.5 litres). With a much smaller footprint too.

The Corsair 250D after all is huuuuuuuuuge case at 28.2 litres.

EDIT - You may have to look at Z87 rather than Z97 for second hand though because Z97 is much rarer.
 
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Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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Assuming you mean 970 rather than 970m

Be nice if they had desktop GPUs around the size of mGPUs, but the specs of desktop GPUs... If the power connector didn't stick up a inch that would help, cards are 4.3x high, why do none riser cases have to be 7+ inches high to fit them?
 
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Associate
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19 Aug 2016
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32
EDIT - You may have to look at Z87 rather than Z97 for second hand though because Z97 is much rarer.

This is what I've been considering as well. So few 2nd hand z97 m-itx boards out there. Suppose that's a good sign for the quality of the boards and relevance of the chipset. It's been keeping me from diving into the NCase/Dan Case re-build game, which is probably also a good thing.
 
Associate
Joined
27 Mar 2012
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202
If you think that's bad, have a look at second hand Z77 ITX boards... Many of them went for HIGHER than the original selling price!!
 
Associate
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I've been trying for weeks to find any 1155 mITX board for my current project (I'm being very tight on cash), there just isn't much around.

Personally unless you need to be able to overclock I wouldn't spend the money on the on the Z series boards.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
14 May 2007
Posts
2,638
I've been trying for weeks to find any 1155 mITX board for my current project (I'm being very tight on cash), there just isn't much around.

Personally unless you need to be able to overclock I wouldn't spend the money on the on the Z series boards.

not overcloked anything since my amd athlon 3400 ha
 
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