£1500 portable gaming PC build

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

I'm thinking of building an gaming PC for use during uni. It needs to be portable as it needs to be carried around in a suitcase, so an micro ATX case is probably the way to go.

Can anyone help me spec a build for around £1500? Thinking of getting an GTX 1080 and i5 -7600K currently. What wattage would I require for the power supply with these components and do I require cooling(since the case is pretty small and the components are fairly intensive)?

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

it would be a fairly large suitcase, biggest one out of those luggage sets of 3's.

Dimension wise I think it's around 70x50x35 cm?

But obviously the pc is not going to take up all of the suitcase I guess.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

Only back for a few minutes, have you considered AMD Ryzen and do you need wifi on the motherboard ?

Yes I have considered the AMD Ryzen 1800 and the 1800X, but I feel like Intel cores are more cost efficient as the AMD cores that has similar performance to the i5 7600K is more expensive.

Also I'm not sure about the whole wifi thing - am I right in assuming that you need a separate wifi card which takes up one of the PCI slots on the motherboard in order to connect to wifi? Or you can buy a motherboard that has wifi embedded? Will the integrated wifi be worse than a separate wifi card?

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

You'll more likely want an ITX build for transportability. Take a look at the Shuttle XPC range. How will you be transporting your monitor and what resolution is it?

I considered an mini ITX case. However, most of them only contain 2 PCI slots and the graphic card will fill up all of those spaces. Also, there seems to be not much of a difference in the dimensions between mATX cases and ITX ones when I looked up on it, other than the ITX trading PCI slots for additional drive bays.

The monitor will be transported with the case. Resolution will probably be 1080p max (kinda overkill with the graphics card), since the screen can't be too big. (22" max I think)

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

Have you considered a laptop? Something like an Alienware can be picked up on the Dell Outlet for around £1500. Keep it whilst your at uni (perhaps even get an external monitor) and then you can always sell it once you dont have to travel around as much and build a desktop.

Yeah I started off thinking about getting a laptop. However I own a laptop currently and the problem I have is that I cannot upgrade the components of the laptop. spending £1500 on something that can't be upgraded sounds like a waste of money for me, and I think laptops won't be as powerful as desktop pc's for the same price and they tend to overheat very easily.
(I've never sold old stuff before so I'm unfamiliar with where to go and stuff xD)

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

This would be my suggestion. With the shape of a case it should lend itself to a suit case quite well I'd have thought. You've got tons of power inside something like this and there's even another 2.5" drive bay empty for more storage if you need it (the motherboard has a m.2 slot on the back for the NVME boot drive).

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 1080 "Founders Edition" 8192MB GDDR5X PCI-Express Graphics Card= £499.99
• 1 x Silverstone Raven RVZ02 Mini-ITX HTPC Case - Black (SST-RVZ02B)= £79.99
• 1 x Silverstone Strider SFX 600W Fully Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply (SST-SX600-G)= £104.99
• 1 x Gigabyte GA-Z270N-Gaming 5 Intel Z270 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Mini-ITX Motherboard= £164.99
• 1 x Team Group Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD416GM2400HC16D= £119.99
• 1 x Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 250GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive= £149.99
• 1 x Seagate Firecuda SSHD 2TB 5400 RPM 2.5" For PC and PS4 (ST2000LX001)= £89.99
• 1 x Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - OEM= £218.99
• 1 x Cryorig C7 Top Flow CPU heatsink= £30.95

Total: £1,472.47
(includes shipping: £12.60)



​

Thanks for the information

I have a few questions: what's the difference between a 'founder's edition' graphic card compared to the normal one? (And the differences between manufacturers making the same graphics card) Also, if I am not going to overclock my system, where should the single air fan be mounted in the case ?(for the CPU or the GPU?)

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

Accident ignore this can't find the delete button

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

I understand, having just graduated from university myself and I too did bring a PC with me and took it home at points it gets very very tiresome. £1500 will get you a GTX1080 and 7700hq which will bench close to if not better than the GTX1080 and i5 you are looking at.
The overheating isn't much of a concern, just use it on a desk and it will be fine. Laptops can be sold anywhere, either locally through Gumtree or something or online, I wouldn't worry about the resell until you need to. Besides, if you are going to be upgrading your desktop, what will you do with the old parts anyway?

I guess you're right about the reselling thing. However I've had a look online and struggled to find laptops of that spec for £1500. Could you give me some recommendations?
(this is just for reference - I'll still most likely be looking for a mini-pc)

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

And that's all you'll likely need.

What sort of components apart from the GPU goes in those PCI slots? I know Ethernet and Wifi cards do, and I'll need connectivity for both of them for my build.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

The founders edition is just a fancy buzz word for it being the standard nVidia cooler. It's made and sold by them directly rather than being made by another company.

Normally I wouldn't recommend it, but it's the best cooler designed to exhaust hot air directly out the case, rather than using lots of fans to just get it away from the card and then lets your cases airflow remove the residual heat. In such a small case a blower style card like this will keep the rest of your components cooler. It's possibly a fraction less powerful, but your talking a single figure percentage at absolute worst case.

In regards to WiFi you wouldn't need to worry about an add in card on my suggested build as the board has it built in already

Ah okay, many thanks

However, I've found another version of the card which was the 'reference blower' for 30 pounds cheaper, and the stats on both of those cards are identical. There's also an EVGA version of the Founder's edition for 30 pounds extra. What's the difference between those 3 cards?

Also is it worth it cutting down the SSD to 120GB and HDD to 1TB, and upgrade the memory to 32GB?

Furthermore is this case okay too for this build?
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/raijintek-metis-windowed-blue-mini-itx-case-ca-008-rt.html
as I didn't find the ultra slim case nice to look at.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

Check out the Dell Outlet, you will find some Alienware laptops. In fact, you also get a 15% discount as a student so that is nice also.

Can't find much laptops with a GTX 1080 graphics card. Even the 1070 ones cost over 1000. Furthermore the laptops all seem to be second hand ones. I don't think I'm going to go for a laptop after all.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

I looked yesterday and there was a few, as it is an outlet you have to keep checking it for new stock. That is fair enough.

What is your plan then? Have a monitor and peripherals at both at uni and home and carry the PC between them?

I see. the keyboard and mouse will definitely be carried around since they do not take up too much space, and possibly the monitor too - if it is small enough.

I'm unsure whether my uni allows me to keep the monitor in my room, as they rent the rooms out for conference during the holidays. However I might be able to store it via a locker service. Also it does require me buying 2 monitors. xD (since I have a laptop currently)

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

I've got a Phanteks ITX and tbh, when I'm back for the hols I'll just leave my gear there. Most people I know have done the same. Its not practical unless you drive

Yeah I guess. But my terms are very short (3 terms of 8 weeks each) so if I left it at my uni I wouldn't have access to it for the majority of the year! xD

Plus with accommodation changes each year gonna have to carry it around anyways :c

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

The reference blowers tend to be a the much older blower cooler and are louder than the founders version. I would spend the extra £30 to be honest.

I wouldnt drop the storage space either. 120GB is tight for an OS drive these days unless you want to micromanage it all the time. 1TB wont go far either by the time you have 10-20 games installed, some modern ones are knocking on for 80GB a game.

32GB of RAM is overkill unless you have some specific need for it. If you can't explain in detail the reason you need 32GB of ram, you probably dont need 32GB of ram.

The other case should be fine, but I can't see how it would fit your suitcase requirement?

Ah thanks for the help

The dimension of that case isn't very big either and it'll comfortably fit inside my suitcase

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

You cant fit a full size gpu in The Raijintek metis case, it has a max gpu length 170mm.

thanks for pointing that out

It seems that there isn't many mini-ITX cases that's slim and can accommodate a full sized GPU after all, I browsed the entire catalogue and found like 3 xD

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

The reference blowers tend to be a the much older blower cooler and are louder than the founders version. I would spend the extra £30 to be honest.

I wouldnt drop the storage space either. 120GB is tight for an OS drive these days unless you want to micromanage it all the time. 1TB wont go far either by the time you have 10-20 games installed, some modern ones are knocking on for 80GB a game.

32GB of RAM is overkill unless you have some specific need for it. If you can't explain in detail the reason you need 32GB of ram, you probably dont need 32GB of ram.

The other case should be fine, but I can't see how it would fit your suitcase requirement?

What about the EVGA one then, am I literally paying £30 extra for the brand whereas the card is identical?

And also the case you suggested said the CPU cooler is limited to 58mm, yet the cooler's dimension was 97mm x 97mm x 47mm. Would it fit in this case?

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

What about something like a Zotac ZBOX-EN1070.

I don't know what you're referring to? It seems to be an built to order computer that's no longer available.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

https://www.gigabyte.com/Mini-PcSystem/GB-GZ1DTi7-1070-NK-rev-10#kf

https://www.gigabyte.com/Mini-PcBarebone/GB-BNi7HG6-1060-rev-10#ov

These two are not what I was looking for. I want a GTX 1080 in order to future proof my pc.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/zbox_e_series

I had a look at the GTX 1080 version and it's way too expensive, at almost £3000 I might just well buy the parts individually and spend no more than £1800 on a customisable build including peripherals and all.

 

[Shui Mo Qing Hua]

Guys as the case contains 2 x 2.5'' bays, is it wise to have one for the SSD and one for the HDD? I'm thinking of getting the two below:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/samsung-250gb-850-evo-ssd-2.5-sata-6gbps-32-layer-3d-v-nand-solid-state-drive-mz-75e250b-eu-hd-191-sa.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...2.5-for-pc-and-ps4-st2000lx001-hd-374-se.html

Would they both be compatible?