Build for SFF gaming rig...

Paul. W

Paul. W

Paul. W

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Joined
29 Dec 2009
Posts
522
Hi all,

Currently an Antec Skeleton owner, running a Q6600 on a full ATX with H50 cooler.

Wanting to downsize now, main reason being is that I seem to be lugging my PC round more and more to various LAN's, friends houses etc. Also the novelty of the Skeleton has wore off now. The dust is quite frankly doing my head in. So wanting to go SFF but re-using most of my existing components as money is a little tight :)

Ill be using the Lian Li PC-Q07B case.

I need help in picking a motherboard though. It needs to be Q6600 compatible, support dual channel RAM, and have a PCI-E x16 slot, for as cheap as possible. Been looking at the Zotac G41 at the moment....is this the safe bet?

Anyone know the max length of graphics card Ill be able to fit in this case? Ill be using a 2.5' drive in the bottom so clearence for that shouldnt be an issue.

Ill most proably have to get rid of the H50 as well.....what cooler would be the best? Seen a Alpenföhn Panorama 'Low Profile' CPU Cooler' being used on another build on here.

Any advice would be apppreciated!
 
Atm i have this:

(case) SG05
(cpu) e2200
(mobo) Zotac 9300-GE
(ram) 2x2gb crucial balistix
(gpu) 4850
(hdd) 1 x Velocitiraptor 74gb 1 x Samsung 1tb

and its the best buy ever.. when im on the move i just stick it in a gym bag and away i go :) .. im going to make to upgrades which will finish it off for me which are: 5770 and Q6600
 
i'll actually be putting my zotac g41 in my q07b at the weekend so i will take some pics for you during the build so you can see what kind of space you have to play with.

the panorama will fit as would the scythe big shuriken but im just using a stock cooler on mine but i have a panorama for another itx build i'm doing and it seems a nice cooler.

what psu are you going to use as i had a 500w ocz stealthxstream in it with my zotac 9300 before and it was a nightmare trying to tidy the cables, this time i'm using the £13 450w psu ocuk have on this week only as it has only 4 cables :)
 
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Pics would be great :) cheers

Ive got a 550 OCZ PSU at the moment, which isnt modular. So cabling is most probably going to be an issue. Not too bothered to begin with, ill try to part-ex it with something else though.

I think at the moment the issue is trying to find a Q6600 board with a PCI-E slot thats under £100!
 
How long have the G41s been out? Didn't see these when searching for my board on my build! I would have much prefered an Intel chipset over the NVidia MCP. :(
 
Yeah looks like they've been out for a bit, struggling to find a review on one though. Although from what I've seen the GF9300 might be the better punt for overclocking. Horses for courses I guess.

Be interested to see if you are/what overclocking results you get OP.
 
My Q6600 runs at 3.4ghz quite happily at the moment. Ill most probably knock it down to 3.2ghz though - I can run that on my current board with only a tiny increase in voltage. Keep the temps a bit cooler when going to ITX.

LemonsMUFC I noticed your running two 3.5' HDD's - how are you managing this whilst also having a proper gfx card in there? Just curious! :)
 
hi there, just finished doing my build so here are some pics as promised :)

the zotac g41 in all its glory :)




as you asked about the panorama i took a few pics of it to compared to a stock cooler :)






the lian li pc-q07 in all its glory :)


the board installed in the case as you can see not a lot of space left and as the board is 17cm squared i think you have about 19cm for your graphics card length to play with and a dual slot should just fit and no more unless you removed the 3.5 caddy which would make it a lot easier, if you wan't to use the front usb ports you would need to buy an extender cable as you can see that the cable is very short and there is no way you could get a gfx card in using just the standard one


even with a psu with just 4 cables there are quite a few to tidy up in such a small case


with a 3.5 hard drive in the caddy not even a chance of getting a dual slot gfx card in :(




once you get the psu in you can tidy it up a bit by routing everything along the edges of the case


and with the psu in this is the space you have to play with


i hope these picks help you :)
 
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i think its a great little board, it runs a lot cooler than the 9300 itx and the northbridge heatsink is a lot smaller so won't have the clearance issues the 9300 has with some heatsinks.

the wifi is nice and quick and gets a good signal (better than the edimax usb dongles i have)

it does only have 1 usb header on the board though so if you wan't to connect more than one extra usb thingie you can't but in the Q07 thats not a problem as it doesn't have anywhere to stick things like card readers or lcd displays that could use them.

one thing i have found out is that you MUST use the gfx drivers from the zotac site as the ones windows tries to download or the ones from intel result in a black screen and you have to go into safe mode and uninstall them then reinstall the zotac ones.

hope this helps :)
 
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Nice build, my only gripe with the Q08 is that the PSU obscures everything. Admittedly the SG05 isn't much better!

Any overclocking on the G41 yet?
 
i haven't tried overclocking it yet.

and yes the psu seems to take up a lot of the real estate in the case. but it does so in my sg03 also.

the Q07 cries out for a custom back plate to fill the hole and a 150w pico psu.
 
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I'm planning the G41-ITX, PC-Q07, Celeron 3300. Do you think a 120W PSU from an old HP Vectra with just 4A capability on on the 12v line would work? I can't find out the power requirement, but I guess it is 50-100W depending on load. Can I just try it and see, or is that risky?
 
just tried some quick overclocking on the g41 and managed to get my e2160 up to 240 fsb which gave me 2160 (up from 1800) mhz funnily enough :)
the board only has 667, 800 and 1066 memory setting so anything above the 240 fsb results in my memory running over 800 so i'm not sure if its the board or my memory stopping me getting higher :(
maybe some 1066 ram would help but i have a feeling its the board to be honest.
 
How do you find the WLAN on the G41 board? I built mine in the room with the router and all was good. Now moved one room away (through two solid walls) and it's lost the signal. My MacBook and even Nokia E72 can still use it fine though. Is the Zotac board deaf?
 
Sorry to hijack the thread (it's kind of related) but I didn't want to create a brand new thread for a simple question. I'm looking for a 400W Mini-ITX PSU, do any exist? I heard Silverstone were releasing one a few months ago but searches have brought nothing up and my Google skills are failing. Any ideas?
 
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