Budget £900 Mini-ITX help spec me a machine

Demetrius

Demetrius

Demetrius

Associate
Joined
16 Apr 2013
Posts
45
Location
Finchley Central
Background
I am getting back into gaming.

The games I am likely to be playing are Age of Empires 2 De/CSGO.

I am starting from scratch and will need to to get everything gfx, SSD. The reason for ITX is because I have a lack of space. I have a Microsoft surface laptop for my day to day work. I can currently run AOE DE2 from my laptop but it isn't ideal and I worry about the heat.

Options high-end
I am tempted by the NZXT H1 Mini-ITX Case because it looks so nice, however, I am wondering if the NZXT would just be overkill for my current gaming and throw the whole thing out of balance.

Option 2 do the bare minimum to get by
I was also contemplating a super budget build with an A300 deskmini with an AMD CPU3200G/3400G.
https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini A300 Series/
 
It does seem like the Nzxt H1 seems like overkill for AOE2 and CS:GO. Your basically paying £300 for case, Psu and AIO cooler.

Your fist choice would, what type of form factor you want an ITX build. You have Cube shaped ITX case (example Silverstone Sugo series). Desktop/HTPC style ITX cases (ex Fractal Design Node). And then you have the BIG ITX cases (Nzxt H200). All have there pros and cons and all around £60-£100

The Asrock A300 deskmini is also an option. But you're gonna hit a brick wall as soon as you want to play any games more demanding than CS:GO
 
 
Thank you both!

@Burnt_Custard I appreciate the probing questions. I think part of my issue is the lack of clarity I have around gaming. I could quite happily only play CSGO and AOE2 DE. I have an Xbox and really I only require it for this game. My second issue is space and one friend did mention about why not a gaming laptop then? I guess the issue with a gaming laptop is potentially it will age quicker than a PC and only a few parts can be upgraded. The potential heat issue in both a laptop and ITX could end up throttling the gfx card. I liked the idea of the NZHT as it is being touted as easy to build in, however, it doesn't seem cost-effective.
I guess I am more in the design phase of what do I want a PC.

@Grimley Thank you very much that all look fantastic. The motherboard would limit me to the 3000 series however I sincerely doubt I would be upgrading the machine any time soon. I am probably not going to purchase anything just yet as I really need to consider what I want from a machine. I am worried I am going to set myself for a big headache building a SFF which could be difficult to work in.
 
/\/\/\ that is a worry. My fingers arent as nimble as they used to be when I first started dabbling in Computers many years ago. My eyesight doesnt help either.
 
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