Just thought I may move my PC into the living room

Combat squirrel · 28 May 2012 at 23:02

As title, I have a reasonable pc, and just thought I only ever use it for photo editing (where it IS lagging somewhat)..... (6 core AMD 1055t at 4ghz, 16gb ram, 6970 2gb - LR4 is sloowww)

And I was going to sell it, get ivy etc, then I just realised, I could turn it into a gaming pc, keep the 6970 in it - get a cheap card for my 'work' pc and use an ivy at 4.5ghz (which I actually need for photo/video editing - I could put that in a small form factor pc)

So id end up with a SFF ivy at 4.5ghz with as much ram as possible with a cheap graphics card with my SSD and 4 hard drives I use for photo/video edit

Then just put my 4ghz AMD with 6970 in the living room to use on my 50" plasma (buy one of those 240gb SSD drives to put games on).

Have I got that right in my head or am I missing something, and is it a good idea? lol

Anyone else done this ?

shadow_boxer · 28 May 2012 at 23:18

Seems reasonable if you don't mind a full tower in the living room. My personal preference would be to have a low power SFF system in the living room with a proper HTPC case although it wouldn't have the grunt of a full tower like yours.

Do you think you'd get a significant worthwhile boost in performance going from a Hex-core @4GHz to IB (i7-3770K)@4.5GHz with photoshop? Could maybe buy more RAM for your current system?

Combat squirrel · 28 May 2012 at 23:42

shadow_boxer said:
Seems reasonable if you don't mind a full tower in the living room. My personal preference would be to have a low power SFF system in the living room with a proper HTPC case although it wouldn't have the grunt of a full tower like yours.

Do you think you'd get a significant worthwhile boost in performance going from a Hex-core @4GHz to IB (i7-3770K)@4.5GHz with photoshop? Could maybe buy more RAM for your current system?

True, I guess I could put the graphics card in a case where a long double width card would go, kind of want to keep the graphics because its plenty of power for the games I play, and im playing at 2560x1600 now, so 1080p is a walk in the park, I suppose I could sell the 6970 and get a single slot card ?......... and just get an i3/i5 processor and clock as high as it will go on stock volts ?.....thing is in a SFF the PSU's are always wimpy

(im saying this as I just bought a SFF case with p67 mainboard, 8gb ram, only missing a hard drive and processor/graphics card...so would be ideal for front room, it could also double up as a HTPC.....I wonder if I could start games from XBMC ??)

and yeah my main rig is that hex core, it feels sluggish, and I Have 16gb ram should b plenty ?

Many options are on the table here.

Combat squirrel · 29 May 2012 at 11:03

Any input from anyone who may of put there PC in the front room ?

cereal3 · 29 May 2012 at 21:40

Any input from anyone who may of put there PC in the front room ?

I'm in the process of building a PC in a PS3 case for some gaming on the telly, though it is a lot less powerful than the one you are suggesting. I've gamed on the components to test it and it works good, worth getting a wireless 360 controller though IMO

Combat squirrel · 30 May 2012 at 00:25

cereal3 said:
I'm in the process of building a PC in a PS3 case for some gaming on the telly, though it is a lot less powerful than the one you are suggesting. I've gamed on the components to test it and it works good, worth getting a wireless 360 controller though IMO

Interesting, what are the specs? Do you have a build log?

ChrisLandin · 10 Jun 2012 at 09:11

Hi mate. I was in the same sort of boat as you. Once the misses announced she was pregnant my old gaming pc had to go.

I already had a htpc however linked up to my plasma in the front room, but whilst it could play games ok at 1080p ( 2gb 5850 ) I felt that I wanted to combine the 2 pc's to get the whole htpc gaming machine performance.

So after googling numerous cases I plumbed for the Antec Fusion Max ( unfortunately now discontinued ). This case is the big brother to my previous htpc case the fusion remote ( very good htpc case imo ).

So my advice is that if you are ok with just having the one pc find a case you like that can take the best components you want to put in it.

I've never looked back. My system plays games, renders video and pictures, streams to my Xbox is a music machine and I'm even looking into xbmc as I think it looks kinda cool.

My spec if your interested is

I5 2500k 4.0 ghz
Asus gene-z z68
16 gb dominator ram
Soon to be 7970
Intel 80 gb ssd ( boot drive)
2 x Samsung F 1's 1tb
1 x Seagate 1.5tb
LG bluray drive
Hexus 850w psu
Corsair H50

It all runs nice and cool and imo is a very tidy machine for day to day tasks, gaming and editing.