Can anyone beat this ITX build for 1000€?

Hey all,

Long time, no see - haven't posted for a while but I've been back lurking for the past month or so to see what's new in the world of computers. (Not much, as it turns out!)

I'm coming from an i5 2500K build which I'd happily have kept, but I've recently moved to Paris and it couldn't come with me. Space and money are both tight here, so I'm looking at a budget mini ITX setup.

I've never built ITX before, and I was quite keen to go for the OcUK prebuilt one (which isn't too much more expensive than the individual components), but apparently they don't ship full systems to France. I don't have any tools or cables here, so I can't rely on my cupboard full of miscellany to get me out of trouble if I forget to include something. I'll need to be sure to buy everything I need. (Full disclosure: I haven't decided for sure whether to buy from OcUK or a European retailer, but given the £/€ ratio right now, OcUK's prices are actually pretty favourable, and I've been a loyal OcUKer for a long time. And also, their customer service is sure to be in English - my French/German aren't great...)

I want a computer for occasional 1080p gaming (think Fallout 4, maybe the new Mass Effect) but I don't game that much any more and don't really follow new releases very closely, so I'll mostly be replaying older titles. And while it's not the reason I'm building it, I'll almost certainly want to use it from time to time for work (I'm a research scientist) to run small-scale numerical simulations, since my Macbook Air struggles and my office PC is a standard workstation that's not too powerful.

I figured in an ITX case, there won't be too much overclocking headroom so I've gone for a regular locked Kaby Lake CPU. The 7500 seemed like the best compromise between power and price. Graphics, I've gone with a GTX 1050Ti - not entirely sure if it'll fit, but there's a mini version for £10 more if necessary. I'd like to bump that up to a 3Gb 1060, but for all the gaming I'll be doing I think the 1050Ti is sufficient. The stock CPU cooler might be sufficient, but I'm hoping an aftermarket one would be quieter/cooler - would welcome some thoughts on whether that's worthwhile, and whether it'll fit. I can trim a few pennies by dropping the hard drive to 2Tb, but it's only £15 less and doesn't seem worth it to lose an entire Tb of storage. I'd have liked a Z170/270 motherboard but they're a lot more expensive, and I assume that H110 will support Kaby (with a BIOS flash?) since it seems to be the board OcUK use in their prebuilt system, which they offer with Kaby Lake.

I'll need a copy of Win10 and a screen, but I'll get the screen in France. I'll get Windows wherever it's cheaper when I come to buy. I'll also need cables (and EU plugs!), thermal paste, a screwdriver etc etc to actually put the thing together. The budget has wiggle room if there's anything here that's a compromise too far.

• 1 x Intel Core i5-7500 3.40GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £199.99
• 1 x Asus H110I Plus Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ITX Motherboard= £64.99
• 1 x Team Group Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD416GM2400HC16D= £94.99
• 1 x Samsung 120GB 750 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive= £53.99
• 1 x Seagate 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST3000DM001)= £86.99
• 1 x Raijintek Metis - Blue Mini ITX Case= £45.95
• 1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 1050Ti OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £139.99
• 1 x Super Flower Golden Green HX 450W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black= £55.99
• 1 x Alpenföhn Silvretta CPU-Cooler - 92mm= £17.99

which is 895.50€ at the current exchange rate, plus 130€ for a screen and around 110€ for Windows, already putting me ~140€ over my budget but I think I can live with that.

I know that Ryzen is on the horizon and while that looks exciting for a lot of reasons, I'm not sure that for my purposes it'll offer much in the way of price or real-world performance benefits, given my budget and space constraints, and frankly I don't really want to go another few months without a PC, given that we've still no real info on Ryzen release dates/prices as far as I know? (And I suppose it having an ITX motherboard at launch is unlikely?)

I'd appreciate your thoughts - particularly in terms of space in an ITX case and if there's anything I've added that plain won't fit. It's essentially just OcUK's Titan Khukuri, so I think it should all work, but I figured it was worth asking before I commit.

Thanks in advance!

Looks like a solid build tbh. About Ryzen, it will release with mini-itx boards (in fact, they have already been announced at CES) and should be here quite shortly (very very likely March), though I wouldn't expect to fit a better setup within your budget anyway so perhaps a moot point. You'll be fine with the Intel stock cooler tho, tbh.

Cheers, Poneros - I haven't really been keeping up to date on Ryzen, didn't realise there would be ITX boards at launch. Still, as you say, since I'm going for a budget non-overclocked build I'm not expecting the release of Ryzen to do much for me, and I'd prefer to have something sooner than March.

As far as the stock cooler is concerned, I figured maybe the stock one would struggle in a confined ITX case, but if it's not an issue then I'll drop the £20 cooler and lower the cost even further.

Be aware geting a h110 and not a b250/h270 chipset motherboard with a Kaby Lake may need a bios update for the cpu to be recognised.

Thanks - I figured that might be the case, but if OcUK use the same board in their prebuild, I guess there must be a suitable BIOS out there. I'm not too fazed by the prospect of a BIOS flash - unless you mean I'd need another pre-Kaby socket 1151 CPU to boot even as far the BIOS, that is? In which case I'd be a little stuck. But otherwise, I've done BIOS flashes before so if it's just business as usual then I can handle that.

You cant flash/update a bios without a cpu installed So you would need a skylake cpu unless im mistaken, Check with overclockers.

Ah. Well, if I can't flash the BIOS to a Kaby-compatible one with a Kaby Lake CPU installed, that's a problem. I'd been assuming it'd still boot far enough with a Kaby CPU to do the update, but I've never had to flash a BIOS on a brand new build before so I guess I didn't think that through. I'll check with OcUK - cheers for flagging this. Might be that I'll just have to go Skylake instead, which would be an easier pill to swallow if the prices had dropped after the release of Kaby...

Could always ask overclockers to flash the bios, see how much it would cost.

Yeah, I was wondering if they'd be willing to do that for me - would certainly make things easier if so! I'll drop them a message and ask - worst they can say is 'no', after all.

If they do say no, I'll either have to go Skylake, upgrade the motherboard to something natively compatible with Kaby Lake or go for a pre-built PC from a non-OcUK European company, since OcUK can't deliver pre-builds outside the UK...all things considered, going for Skylake is probably going to be the cheapest option, if a somewhat galling one given that Skylake prices haven't fallen since the launch of Kaby. But hey, that's just business.

Good luck with your build my friend, let us know how you get on.

I have done a handful of ITX setups recently... Dotn truly know why if I am honest, but it started off with me simply wanting to chuck a bsaic setup into the Mozart as the second PC, and then it turned into a Hackintosh setup and also my main Linux PC.

The Hackintosh is an I5 in an Asrock H77 Mobo with ATI 7770 GFX and is running OSX 10.10.8 thats housed in a GlobalWin 120 Case
The Linux setup, also in a GlobalWin but the 130 this one, and AIO cooled, but its an AMD A10 6800 with 16GB and on a Gigabyte Mobo, again with ATI 7770 GFX and its running MiNT 17.3

Both these 2 setups, are booting from 120GB SSDs with a Seagate 2TB in the Linuxand a 1.5TB in the Hackintosh, plus I have 3 other ITX bundles of various spec, all Core2Duo though, but all of these cost me about £400 for it all, but thats cos its all second hand.

I rarely buy new these days, with teh exception of when I fancy splashing out on my latest toy and eventhen its just the Mobo,CPU and maybe RAM.

I'm totally open to going second hand, if any suitable bits pop up for sale, but I haven't seen anything so far and I'd prefer to get myself a computer sooner rather than later. I've been particularly hoping I might nab a second hand screen, but no such luck yet. I will continue to keep an eye out, though.

Turns out OcUK can't update the BIOS for me before shipping - understandable, it was a bit of an ask. Oh well - looks like I've got a compromise to find. The voice of reason says try to pick up a second hand Skylake or pre-Skylake CPU, but the voice of "I want shiny toys now" says go for a motherboard with native Kaby support. Guess I'll just see what I can find.

(The voice of my wallet says that if I want to eat next month, I should probably listen to reason...)

Could buy a cheap celeron used and sell it on after flashing the bios. There's one on the MM.

I'd be tempted to pick up a second hand CPU off the MM and scour the bay for a board. Using a combo of new and used parts, I got an RX480 in to my recent ~£400 mITX build (no OS, peripherals, drives, as I had those already).

Depends what you're after really. If it's mainly gaming then investing in a pricey Kaby Lake i5 is probably the worst way to proceed on a tight budget. A cheaper CPU with an RX480 or GTX 1060 will perform significantly better.