Build for SFF gaming rig...

[Paul. W]

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!

 

[Paul. W]

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!

 

[Paul. W]

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!