New ITX build - Unsure on case

[oceaness]

Just ordered the following parts:

MB: GA-Z77N-WIFI
CPU: i3770K
RAM: CML16GX3M2A1600C10

To update the following parts:

MB: Asus P5Q-Pro
CPU: Q9450
RAM: Cheap own brand DDR2 800mhz(because my original Reaper set died)

And pair with the existing parts:

SSD: Vertex 3
PSU: ATX 750w
GPU: 9800 GTX

Word to jargon ratio: 1.25

Now, needless to say, the case that housed the original ATX board may be a tad roomy for the new Mini-ITX board, and whilst it may be amusing to purchase the largest case you can with a nice window and stick a Mini-ITX board right in the middle of it, it rather defeats the point, and as such I'm looking for the smallest case I can reasonably fit the new bits in, preferably with the existing parts.

I've looked around and have seen that the aptly named Prodigy appears to be probably the most popular choice at the moment, however I believe that really that's still, like many of the ITX cases I've looked at, a tad on the large size unless you need a lot of HDDs. (I have 8.5TB of WD drives that will hopefully be getting pooled on the network for storage, as there seems to be a distinct lack of ITX boards with lots of sata ports, the most I've seen is 6).

My favourite case by far has to be the FT03-Mini.
Unfortunately that wont be able to take the ATX PSU.
And possibly not the 9800 GTX, I've been unable to find an exact length for my specific GPU and I'm not at home so I can't put a monarch sovereign maharajah rule to it.
It also doesn't have the best airflow and no option for increasing it.

I am interested to see what other Mini-ITX cases people recommend.
One other thing to bear in mind is that I would like to install an after-market CPU cooler eventually and overclock this system to see what it's capable of. I understand that this isn't the easiest thing to achieve due to the socket location on the particular board I've chosen and case clearance restraints can make it more difficult.

Final Word to Jargon ratio: 8.27

 

[oceaness]

Some interesting suggestions.

I had looked at the Node 304 and initially I didn't like it, but the design is growing on me the more I look at it. It's strange that overclockers don't stock it as they have 5 other Fractal Design cases.

Is it weird that I like it in white?

Right now I am leaning towards that in white as it takes a standard ATX PSU up to 160mm (need to measure the length of mine) and will have no problem tucking the 9800 GTX or anything bigger that I might get later down the line. Shame it's not out till possibly September in NA so who knows when we'll see it here. I've got time though, I'm in no rush

I can't deny the CM Elite 120 is a good case I just think it's ugly, what with the recessed bezel around the front and the PSU sticking out at the rear.

The SG07/08 are very nice but the price point is just too high for me, having already had to justify £425 to the misses

The PC-Q25 looks nice but the 140mm PSU constraint removes a few too many PSU options compared to the 160mm of the Node 304. I may have to purchase a new PSU unless I'm lucky with the length of my current one.

 

[oceaness]

I've got the Lian Li Q08, nice clean looking case and its on offer this week

YOUR BASKET
1 x Lian Li PC-Q08B USB3.0 Mini-ITX Case - Black £77.88
Total : £88.38 (includes shipping : £8.75).

Hi Spike

The thing that originally attracted me to the FT03-Mini is the lack of front facing elements, the same thing that's drawing me to the Node 304.

If it didn't have the grill and 5.25" drive I'd say it would look pretty nice.

This actually looks quite good on paper but I'm not too keen on the design of the front.

It's volume is also nearly that of the GD05 micro ATX case that Idleman has mentioned and both take up more space than the Node 304 does.

What about this!!!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Grandia GD05 Desktop HTPC Case - Black (SST-GD05B USB3.0) £79.99
Total : £91.09 (includes shipping : £9.25).

You can use these to extend the PSU mount for the PC-Q25:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Lian Li PE-01A Power Supply Mounting Bracket - Silver £11.99
1 x Lian Li PE-01B Power Supply Mounting Bracket - Black £11.99



But then you have the hanging out the back issue from the CM120.

Those are pretty clever but yeah same problem as the CM but that does open up some more options if I decide i'm not bothered about the PSU hanging out.

bare in mind that while the node 304 will fit a 160mm psu but if its modular the gpu is effectively limited or itll foul the modular connecters,

Yes I have considered this, annoyingly my PSU is bang on the 160mm mark + the modular connectors

 

[oceaness]

If you like the look of the Lian-li PC-Q08 but not the front parts why not look at the PC-Q25!

Also the FT03-mini will not fit your current GPU.

That is quite nice. A definite contender.

However I do still feel like all those HDD slots are a waste of space for my needs, as I'm currently in the process of re-purposing my old system into a NAS box, had a look a NAS4Free and FreeNAS but currently playing with Amahi.

I am aware of the GPU length issue. It's a fairly dated card now but it seems I would have to spend a fair amount to replace it with anything better.

The other thing I need to consider with these cases is space for a better CPU cooler, as when I stressed the 3770K it peaked at about 80°C with the stock heatsink and fan with the current case open.

I guess that for a lot of these cases the H60 is probably going to be the best option.

Which brings me around to the possibility of removing the hard disks cages from some of these cases and installing a larger radiator or two instead, but then of course I wouldn't be able to go with the convenience of a closed loop.

 

[oceaness]

Nobody mentioning something else you should know here.
The Gigabyte motherboard has no voltage adjustment, that will limit you to ~4.1-4-2 ghz depending on how far your particular 3770k will go on default voltage.

The Asrock z77-itx board is a much better overclockers board and can be had for a few quid more than the gigabyte if you shop around.

Fear not, I am aware of this, there was another reason why I specifically chose this board.

The system is all up and running in a full size ATX case with the stock cooler at the moment. I'd be unable to overclock if I wanted to.

I would like to see what it can do eventually as it will be transcoding video files sometimes, so every ounce of speed I can squeeze out of it would be good. Obviously as you say I'm not going to go much further than 4.1/4.2 either way, but at the moment the limiting factor is the cooling system and the tight constraints of some of most ITX cases. I'm leaning towards the H60 at the moment.

 

[oceaness]

With out checking I'm sure you could pick up an older model card fairly cheap that would supersede the 9800 GTX on performance and power efficiency if you wanted to shorter card.

I'd definitely like to be able to replace it with a shorter card that's more powerful and more efficient.

Do you have any recommendations or what series I should be looking at?

 

[oceaness]

I'm with Jony27 here, i think the Cooler master Elite 120 would be a good fit for your needs, it'll accommodate a good sized GPU with ventilation, wont break the bank price wise, looks ok and subtle enough to fit in many environments, the PSU should fit (i think 160mm was the sort of limit on size before you had issues, plus it still has an optical drive bay, which some of the others don't have, and i think that it's a little early right now to drop that !

As for cooling you could look towards something like this if you dont want to try the water cooling route

Also interesting, like pointed out before, you went for the slightly overclocking restricted motherboard, although i do like that one, it has lots of useful features, yet paired it with an i7 i3770K variant ....... would have thought the Xeon E3 1230 v2 would have been a better pairing cost wise for similar performance

EDIT:
The new Elite 130 looks good too, if you can wait a little for it's release

I can't deny both the coolermaster cases are excellent both feature and price wise. But personally I'm just not to keen on the styling and that's quite an important part for me as I'm slowly creating a fairly advanced home theatre setup.

Currently planning on this small ITX box being my media centre front-end and gaming machine, hooked up to a 50" plasma and a 21" standard PC LCD. I'm planning to run a linux back-end on my old hardware which will also double as an 8TB expandable storage pooling NAS box for iTunes.

Eventually I'd like to build another low power mini ITX rig just to run as a dedicated front-end, probably in something like the M350 case hidden away somewhere.

As Marine has stated this board has a fairly troublesome layout for any aftermarket air cooler that has a larger footprint than the stock intel one, this generally means you can go high (providing you can rotate the cooler mounting) but you can't go wide, the exact opposite of how most ITX cases are designed . I don't mind water cooling, I used to have an old Asetek loop ages ago for running F@H quietly. I do like the idea of a closed loop like the H60 due to the extra hassle involved installing an open loop.

There is a reason I have chosen the specific MB and CPU combination that I have, we're not allowed to discuss that here though. Had I not had said reason we would be discussing a 4770K build with a better OCing board instead of a 3770K one .

Also the Xeon is locked. Although this board is pretty pants from an OCing perspective I can at least easily bump that up a little bit.

 

[oceaness]

As you're looking at discontinued models it comes down to what the retailers still have stock of, unless you want to consider second hand. So I would just filter by price and work through list beginning at cheapest. Then compare how it performs using something like Anandtech 2012 bench.

I wasn't sure how a 9800 GTX compared to newer cards as it's too old to be included in benchmark comparisons. But looking at an old review of a overclocked 9800 GTX at Techpowerup it looks like a 260 GTX beats it (not checked every benchmark on review). So cards you shortlist that performs better than the 260 GTX when compared via Anandtech bench should be an upgrade if can justify the cost.

Thanks for the advice. I've been using http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html as a rough idea of the performance.

I think I'll be better off in the long run saving up for a 650Ti, 660 or possibly a 660Ti if I can hold off for long enough

Thanks Marine-RX179 i wasn't aware of that issue.

@oceaness, sorry i must have missed your post earlier regarding the styling of the 120 case, i was about to say the 130 might be for you then, but i read your next well detailed reply, lol.
As your not a fan of that styling then i'd probably look to the Node 304, but as i said before i think that one has no optical drive support ??

I did bump into the info for the NCASE M1 mITX aluminium custom case that thing looks brilliant !

The locked processor thing is interesting, because there is a small limited amount of overclocking ability available from the locked processors, albeit not much, but is a good match to the restrictive abilities of the gigabyte board .... google limited overclocking and non-k cpu's, you'll also see a lot of results about how intel specifically shut this down in the haswell chips to ensure the non-k chips could do nothing extra

I get what your saying about the component selection etc

Haha no worries.

Yeah I'm currently leaning towards the Node 304 in white. I'm not fussed about optical drive support, I rarely use the drive I have anyway. I might see I can set up remote access to the drive in the Linux backend.

 

[oceaness]

That would be an interesting idea/concept.
Did you look at that NCASE M1 info ?...... pretty cool huh

I'll probably attempt the remote DVD drive last, as this new build is currently in an ATX case it has a DVD drive in there anyway, though I only connect it when I actually need it.

I also need to chop a dodgy LED off my DIY Ambilight set up and reinforce the new connection.

Yeah I did, it almost seems like how a Mini ITX case should be designed.

I was reading through the thread here and seeing peoples reactions as well.

The various mounting flexibilities are great. It is a shame as someone pointed out however that you can't use a 240mm rad and a ATX PSU, would have made a lovely H100 configuration. But at least it gives you the option of starting the build with an ATX PSU and upgrading to an SFX later and then installing a double rad.

I got my Hauppauge DVB-T card set up in the backend last night. Took a fair while to get that working with Tvheadend, had to force LNA activation and then the muxes it was trying to scan by default for Crystal Palace were way out so it couldn't find anything. Once I gave it one correctly configured mux it's seems to have picked the rest up correctly. Tested it quickly with VLC on my iPhone and was able to stream from the server to my phone and schedule recordings from my phone as well, need to expand this ability over the internet at some point

Next step is to finish copying my existing iTunes library into the Greyhole storage pool. Doing it with hard disks directly connected rather than over the network but it's still taking sometime due to the sheer size of it, I'd guess it's around 4TB

 

[oceaness]

the white one should be available in october.

i emailed them to ask and had this reply

"I cannot say exact since the UK container has not left China yet, but hopefully it will be available in October"


it does look lovely in white

Oh cheers for that info, that's good to know

Fingers crossed.