Fractal Array - R2 - Bit of advice

[themistry]

Hi all,

loving the Fractal Array R2, I've been looking for a small quite case for some time.

EDIT: Here is the case

I've been out of the loop for an age, so looking for advice on the sort of machine I could build using this case, but keeping it relatively quite.

A few things i'm working to;

- I'd like this thing to be fairly quite/silent.
- I have 2x Dell u2410 monitors and want to run these at full till with new games)
- I'm looking for at least 16gb memory as I do a lot of virtualisation.
- I only want a single large SSD, as my storage is taken care of through a NAS device.

What sort of CPU, mainboard and GFX Cards should I looking at assuming I want to keep costs reasonable (but no upper budget). Any and all advice greatly appreciated!

Thanks
TM

 

[ng93]

TBH I think you should look at a different case.

The Array is designed to be a NAS, having 7 internet drive bays, no external drive bays, basic cooling (just enough for a low power processor, integrated graphics and a few hard drives) and only a 300W power supply (which iirc is proprietary).

Granted it does look nice, and you could sort out all the above problems through modding, but it would be a hell of a lot of work.

Also there are very few (if any) mini-itx motherboards which can take 8GB dimms (you'd need these as mini-tx motherboards can only fit 2 memory slots). And 8GB dimms are expensive (£60 for a basic 1066Mhz, I can't even find any 1333Mhz or 1600Mhz).

You'd honestly be much better getting a micro atx case like the silverstone ft03 (link) or a little lian li e.g. v354 (link).

Not only will these cases provide better cooling then pretty much any mini-itx case, they can also fit full size graphics cards and psu's (granted there are a couple of mini-itx cases which can also do this, but there so big you may aswell go micro-atx.

 

[ng93]

What i'd buy, have probably forgotten something lol but should give you a rough idea

Asus Maximus IV Gene (Z68)
FT03
i5 2500K
The 2x4GB Corsair XMS3 which is on this week only (obviously get two sets if you want 16GB)
GPU - anything from a 6950 up depending how much you want to spend, 2GB ram may be useful for multi-monitor gaming, i'd also imagine getting one which vents most of the air out the back would help temps in a small case

Also are you sure about gaming on two screens, having the bevel right in the middle of the action would really annoy me.

edit: if you're doing a lot of virtualisation then maybe get the 2600K, but again depends on how much you want to spend.

 

[Legion]

The case supports M-itx motherboards!
It's also primarily designed as a server case and while it could be used to house a little gaming rig with a few mods,do you want to have to mod it to get it to run cool and quiet enough?
All M-itx motherboards only have 2 dimm slots.
Only a handfull of M-itx boards actually support 8gb dimms.
8gb dimms are prohibitively expensive to say the least,2x8gb kits are ~£250 for quite low specced speed and timings.

A decent 4x4gb kit on the otherhand comes in at well under half that price.
Personally if I needed 16gb I'd be looking at M-atx which has 4 dimm slots and would be much cheaper and easier to fill with decent quality ram.


Dual screen gaming tends to be pretty crap tbh,unless you are ofc a FSX fanatic.

 

[Guardsmon]

wow thats a lot of replies in a short space of time Go down the V354 route and give me a PM if you do... I might possible have a spare

No seriously 16GB on a m-itx is pointless as you'll be running at 10666.
Personally I'd stick to the i5 - many people advise to turn off hyperthreading in large virtual enviroments and share the cores - we certainly do.

What graphical work are you looking to do? Cause a GT 440 will run your two monitors happily enough, but you're not going to be doing huge photoshop renderings and hi end gaming on that

 

[themistry]

Hey guys,

thanks so much for your replies. It looks like a bigger case would be required.

Thats a shame, I was hoping for a tiny power house!

Kind regards
TM