A quick micro Pc setup.

bornagain

bornagain

bornagain

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Joined
8 Apr 2010
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4
I have built many "large" super rigs over the years with great success, I'm now looking at building a very small rig, mainly for tweaking, listening to music and playing some games now and then @ 1080p.
Graphics wise I'm not looking for all the bells and whistles, just clear clean graphics.
I like the performace of the i7 but if I could get away with an i5 that would be good.

My main question is, how small can this rig be? I haven't a clue about building small rigs.

Any advice would be great. :cool:
 
By small, i guess you mean physical size. There are many small variations though the most popular are ITX and mATX.

mATX boards are 24cm x 24cm where as an ATX board is 30cm x 24cm. Where as ITX, such as this board, is 17cm x 17cm.

You will notice by the board there is a lot of limitations with cutting down on size. Though the main thing is the case/enclosure itself. As these sort of determine the componnets you can and can't use.

For example some ITX case will only accomodate mATX power supplies, which are hard to aquire and not very powerful.
Some case will accomodate full ATX power supplies but not have enough room for a GPU.

The main question we need to ask is? What do you want to put in this rig? Do you want a GPU or will a Llano chip surfice for your needs?

Smaller builds can also get pretty messy. I suggest looking at cases first.

These are some good companies to look at:
Lian Li
Silverstone
Fractal
Antec

Also, it would be worth know what budget you have in mind?
 
To be fair I haven't a budget, thats what I have available nowish, I could easily up my budget, thats not a problem. :)

I want the case to look small and uninteresting, but inside I want it to pack a punch!
 
stulid said:
Have a look here - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18338581 - its a very handy little thing indeed.
Click to expand...

I read that a day ago and it is really handy for this type of build, the Llano especially are brilliant for GPU perforance and if you need to 'step' they can be 'Hybrid Xfired'.

The perfoance of the Top end llano though, gerneral perfoance wise, is about the same as the i3 2100, though the 2100 is better in the most common areas. If you were needing i5 perfoance you will be a bit dissapointed will the llano's offerings.
 
bornagain said:
To be fair I haven't a budget, thats what I have available nowish, I could easily up my budget, thats not a problem. :)
Click to expand...

Does it have to ITX? how a bout a small MATX?

Untitled-68.png
 
Doomedspeed said:
I read that a day ago and it is really handy for this type of build, the Llano especially are brilliant for GPU perforance and if you need to 'step' they can be 'Hybrid Xfired'.

The perfoance of the Top end llano though, gerneral perfoance wise, is about the same as the i3 2100, though the 2100 is better in the most common areas. If you were needing i5 perfoance you will be a bit dissapointed will the llano's offerings.
Click to expand...

Im not disappointed by it, I have a i5 2500K here also, and a Llano won Bit-techs sub £100 shootout - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/31/the-best-100-processor/1

You need to use one to see if your disappointed by it;)
 
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