Is there any way to avoid the big box?

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Nothing wrong with keeping the misses on side at all !!!!

You want one of these if you want really small :)



However my questions are :

1 Where is this PC going to be kept ?
2 How silent do you need this to be ( ie need it to be quiet for media hub stuff but can be noisy when gaming etc )
3 Do you have a target budget ?
4 When you talk about size do you have an idea of the target size you are aiming for ?

There are quite a few options out there for smaller pc building and most look really good to.
 
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Lol. I get a bit annoyed sometimes that I have to go up to the study (small room) to go work on the desktop while and that it's downstairs. For me, I work in IT and it's the main part of my life. But my wife doesn't care too much for tech in the same way as me.

Even wall mounting the TV on the wall seems silly to her and even doesn't understand "why we need such a big TV?!" (it's only 40").
 
Threepwood said:
All these years and your wife has.. never.. been irrational? :p
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You're clearly not married. The wife is ALWAYS the rational one. It's YOU who is being irrational. This is why a £2k gaming rig is an insane waste of money, yet a pair of Jimmy Choos and a matching Hermes Red Birkin is an essential purchase.

Compromise yields nothing. All it gets you is a single 780 Lightning on an FX6350 while she gets a Radley handbag.

Accept no compromises. Chuck your rig in a Corsair 900D and let her just accept you for who you are!! :D
 
Enigma80 said:
Maybe it's in his living room and looks silly? I know my wife wouldn't want the desktop in there.
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This is exactly the case.

She works in interior design.

Although, to be honest, I know what she means - I don't find the big towers aesthetically satisfactory.

A intra-desk build is beyond my ken, and wouldn't pass mustard in the looks department either really.

What I'm hoping to do is to have the PC in one or two boxes on a bookshelf, with the Mac Mini she wants and then have a big monitor on a bracket.

I'm looking at the Mini ITX cases and I'm sure I can find one that'll work.

Stupid noob question - are there any motherboards where the graphics card can be mounted parrallel to the board, and so take up less room?
 
garnett said:
This is exactly the case.

She works in interior design.

Although, to be honest, I know what she means - I don't find the big towers aesthetically satisfactory.

A intra-desk build is beyond my ken, and wouldn't pass mustard in the looks department either really.

What I'm hoping to do is to have the PC in one or two boxes on a bookshelf, with the Mac Mini she wants and then have a big monitor on a bracket.

I'm looking at the Mini ITX cases and I'm sure I can find one that'll work.

Stupid noob question - are there any motherboards where the graphics card can be mounted parrallel to the board, and so take up less room?
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Surely you should be buying a Mac Pro then! :D

Regarding the graphics card you could use a riser card but for a gaming card you may have some issues with cooling.
 
My brother and just helped my sister do house up while she was having an extension done (to the house) and decided to completely rewire it all.

So now she has sockets in the wall in the living room for dvi, hd, and ethernet. TV is on the wall and nothing else is present. However, a pain when changing bluray discs over, but she has a desktop in the study connected to the network and a NAS drive and files are simply played over the network. He'll rip what he can for her and put the orignals away in the loft to save space. Some how, and I can't remember how but he was able to control the tivo box using the remote via an adaptor located next to the TV (tivo box sits in study too).
 
garnett said:
are there any motherboards where the graphics card can be mounted parrallel to the board, and so take up less room?
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You can buy a PCI-e 3.0 extention cable, one side plugs into the graphics card and the other into the motherboard.

These guys used one and it sounds like you would set it up the same way (minus liquid). Heat will prove an issue if you're sticking that card in a box however.

rh2txg.jpg



The cable you need is pictured in the bottom left here:
2145l5e.jpg
 
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Have you considered a laptop... gorgeous graphics in a compact space but the wife would spot it.

If you're happy with ok graphics then you'd definitely be able to hide a tablet, the Surface Pro 2 plays anything released to date:


Next, buy a wireless 360 controller for Windows and you're all set :D
 
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Interesting idea! Not sure I can get my head around performance though - I would still expect an mini-ITX PC to be better bang-for-buck than the tablet. (That, and I think we'd want a fairly big ol' monitor)
 
Oh, I thought you were looking to hide it so it wasn't an eye sore and use the existing TV as the monitor?

So you're going to add a monitor near the TV and expect her to be ok with that but not with a small ITX PC behind it?
 
Hahaha. You're trying to rationalise my wife's thinking. Good luck with that!

No - she doesn't like the big box, but accepts that, so that she can edit our photos she has to tolerate a big monitor.
 
SWMBO lol!

I did a build for my ma and pa using this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-002-AN&groupid=2362&catid=2279

You can bolt it on the back of a monitor too. It is good they like it. However I wouldn't want one, I recommend you choose a nice matx case as the most practical option - that will take a big gfx card, they have great cooling, matx boards are fantastic - much easier to work inside and you have a vast array of normal PC components that will fit in their now and in the future.

Make a white one! Only we will know it was Storm trooper inspired!

Alternatively build what you want and visit here http://www.tiffany.co.uk/

Best of luck, and insist she has small handbags from now on.
 
That's not a bad case for a mini-ITX board actually, he could store the PSU and graphics card separately if he wanted some decent gaming power that's faster than the on-board Core i5 HD4000.

I switched to a mini-ITX motherboard last year and they're so powerful now it's literally no different to full sized rig specs for your above average gamer. I chose a BitFenix Prodigy case for mine to allow for a full sized graphics card and all my HDDs. Running with my new 770 4GB it's near silent thanks to the EVGA ACX cooler.

141sj8n.jpg
 
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Corsair Carbide Air 240 too big?

Micro ATX and mini ITX, should be able to squeeze two graphics cards in, full size PSU, and one or two rads for watercooling?

Corsair Carbide Air 240 @ OCUK
Dimensions 397mm x 260mm x 320mm (L x W x H)

I've got one on Pre-Order. And there's a number of very positive reviews, and I like the dual chamber design.
 
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