New ITX build - Unsure on case

[Marine-RX179]

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?

I think the original 9800GTX require two PCI-E 6pin? If you want a decent upgrade and using no more than one PCI-E, then a 2nd hand 6850 at around £50 or a 2nd hand 7850 2GB for around £90-£100 (or new £150) would be good options.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Problem with that cooler is that it would conflict with the PCI-E slot of the Gigabyte m-itx board.

As mentioned by someone above...a all-in-one closed water cooling CPU cooler would be better option.

 

[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.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

I have the exact same setup, a Node 304 with an H60 cooler recommended

Me too funnily enough..

 

[Bane]

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?

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.

 

[Gunslinger]

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

 

[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.

 

[Gunslinger]

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

 

[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

 

[joelk2]

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.

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

 

[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.