M-ITX Gaming build

MitchStringer

MitchStringer

MitchStringer

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8 Feb 2014
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Hi guys, wanted to get your thoughts on this M-ITX gaming setup.

The optimal budget is about £500 But at the moment iit's quite a bit more. So was looking for some ways to make it cheaper without reducing a lot of performance.

Please share your thoughts :-)

Your basket

AMD Kaveri 7850K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) - Retail £139.99

MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £69.95

Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CW) - Blue Light £49.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) Hdd £41.99

OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - £16.99

Case + psu £110

WiFi £20

Fans £20

Kb + mouse £35

Cables £10

Windows 7 £70

Total cost £583.91
 
What case/PSU are you getting? A CM Elite 130 and an XFX ProSeries 450w would come to about £70 for both, a bit of cash saved there.

Then instead of the APU, I'd get an Athlon 760k and then a dedicated graphics card such as an HD 7790 or 7770 if that's a bit much.

Motherboard, any FM2 ITX will do, just get the cheapest going.

Wifi seems a bit much, can get an adapter for £5-10.

That probably gets it below £500, if not, can always downgrade to 4gh of RAM.
 
Thanks tbyeah.

Not sure what case to choose I'm not a big fan of all the cube cases that seem to be popular at the moment which limits my choice I suppose.

The idea with this build was to make it look and work like a Games console, so I stayed away from graphics cards and went for the APU to be able to put it all in a tiny slim case. But I guess going that small just costs more.

I was looking at pci-e (laptop style) WiFi cards to keep everything internal.

It's really annoying when the PS4 is only £350 and trying to match it's size and power is an impossible task.

I was impressed with the A10s benchmark scores does the 7770 stack up to the A10?
 
MitchStringer said:
Thanks tbyeah.

Not sure what case to choose I'm not a big fan of all the cube cases that seem to be popular at the moment which limits my choice I suppose.

The idea with this build was to make it look and work like a Games console, so I stayed away from graphics cards and went for the APU to be able to put it all in a tiny slim case. But I guess going that small just costs more.

I was looking at pci-e (laptop style) WiFi cards to keep everything internal.

It's really annoying when the PS4 is only £350 and trying to match it's size and power is an impossible task.

I was impressed with the A10s benchmark scores does the 7770 stack up to the A10?
Click to expand...

I was wanting that also, but no real GPUs that are under 3 inches tall. I found a gt610 I think it was like 2ish in. tall, but poeple said that card sucked for gaming with. I thought it would be so awsome to have a box one sized pc, but well couldn't do it with a good gpu.
 
An Athlon + half decent dedicated graphics card should eat through the A10 in gaming, if not in CPU performance.

If you can find a 7770/7790 under about 20cm in length (I think most are), then you could get an Elite 110. It's a cube, but it's still pretty tiny and can hold full size components.

Alternatively, the Elite 130 is bigger, but will hold any graphics card you wish.

As for the Wifi, could just get a tiny USB adapter. There are some which only stick out the port by 1-2mm, so they are unnoticeable.
 
I've just bought an Asrock FM2 A88X-ITX+ which seems to be the best featured AMD mini itx board I've ever seen... It seems to have everything, including built in wifi pci-e (which I don't use, so can't comment on its performance). It's expensive, but could serve as a solid base for a system.

APU's seem a nice idea, but from experience I can say they do fall over when you start getting even remotely serious about gaming. This was from using an A8 3870k, but I suspect things haven't improved that much. That said getting faster ram might push the Kaveri to more acceptable fps, but a high end X4 with GPU must surely be a more sensible option, and probably not that more expensive. Though with case size being an issue, I guess compromise is the only other option, which is why I 'love' ITX!
 
I just ordered i3-4130, ASUS H81I ITX motherboard, R9 270, SG05 /w 450w PSU for £400ish. (I already have RAM, HDD, etc sorted)

If you copy what I ordered and add the rest or maybe change something to your preference, you should spend around the same and get better performance (better GPU for sure, CPU's also better for the most part.)

If you want to spend less on GPU, you can go for R7 260X, which isn't bad, this also allows you to go for better CPU.
 
It's definitely my go to SFF case, I'm on my 2nd SG05 build.

On its own, it looks amazing, but if you replace the stock fan with one of Silverstone's Air Penetrator fans (with leds), it looks a lot better, I went with red, the glow from it is beautiful and subtle.
 
Going back to OP's build ... I thought Kaveri APUs needed FM2+. The mobo in the build is FM2

As for memory, you want to try push the budget for 2133 or 2400 RAM as the faster memory will help the graphics cores AFAIK.
 
Agree with what some of the others here have said, you would need an FM2+ board and you really want at least 2133mhz ram if you are going down the APU route.

If you really want to keep it small and slim, this would be my suggestion. I know it's pushing the budget but I've tried to think of the "perfect" system that would meet your needs. The case really hits the small and slim style you are going for, but has enough room to fit everything you want. I've inlcuded a small SSD to act as the boot drive and a 1TB laptop drive for storage (you cant fit a 3.5" hdd if you also have an optical drive) theres a slim laptop style optical drive that will still read / write DVD's as well. The mobo has onboard wireless so there is no need to spec anything extra there, and the RAM is nice and fast which will give a massive boost to the power you get out of that 7850k. This is one thing in this basket that I would probably scrap and get elsewhere. OCUK's selection of SFX power supplys is pretty small, and you can get a 300w SFX psu by Be Quiet from the rainforest site for only £42. This would still give more than enough power and drops the price of the build back to £520ish.



YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Kaveri 7850K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) - Retail £139.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £85.99
1 x SanDisk Pulse 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDP-128G-G25) £67.99
1 x Silverstone Strider SST-ST45SF SFX Series - 450 Watt £66.95
1 x Hitachi GST Travelstar 5K1000 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Hard Drive - (HTS541010A9E680) £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Silverstone Milo ML05B HTPC Case - Black £35.99
1 x Samsung SN-208DB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - OEM £17.99
1 x Arctic F8 Pro PWM Case Fan - 80mm £3.49
Total : £543.97 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
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