Small build but still okay for recent games?

niko86 · 11 Feb 2013 at 12:29

I'm very out of touch as to what is good these days, so I need some help.

My PC is being relegated from our spare room to the living room. And its going to have to shrink to something that can go under the TV or behind it, and become almost silent (or at least as quiet as an older slim PS3) to be acceptable to my wife

I've looked at the sizes of the mini-itx cases and they still seem huge,

~30cm wide x ~20cm high x ~40cm deep

Seems the norm, anything smaller and they seem to need special PSU's and can't take a graphics card.

Being able to play recent-ish games moderately acceptable on a 1080p samsung TV over HDMI is what I need the PC to handle.

Can mine and my wife's expectations be met for about £600?

EDIT: I am liking the look of a Streamcom case and maybe going with a passive cooled gpu. Is there enough performance in passive gpu's for acceptable mid performance in games?

niko86 · 11 Feb 2013 at 14:56

Quddy said:
I'm going to build a similar system around the F7C Evo. Was thinking about using the F8C Evo as it offers passive cpu cooling but would probably cause the gpu to overheat.

Looking at the F7C it does look as big without the hazards of being passively cooled.

The money saved over the F8 I may buy some silent cooling fans.

Mind sharing your planned build?

niko86 · 11 Feb 2013 at 15:56

Yeah I've got pretty much the same build in mind, only difference is going for the i3-3225 3.30GHz 55w as far as I can tell the gpu pulls ~42w on max load so no need to scrimp too much on cpu performance for power savings. As the other components shouldnt pull more than 50w ... at least i hope not!

My biggest worry is pushing 1080p graphics when running games, although could drop down to 720p like consoles do.

niko86 · 12 Feb 2013 at 14:00

Quddy said:
Good point about the power. Not really sure what the total would be. Lots of unknowns such as the motherboard power usage, hdd, ssd, ram, and usb peripherals... they all add up! Should be ok though.

The Streacom site gives a builder guide and going by their rough figures everything else doesn't take up as much as cpu or gpu so should be fine.

Wondering about using AMD A10-5700 uses 65w and along with its better inbuilt graphics could they be run together with the 7750? Or would the inbuilt one gimp the dedicated card?

EDIT - says the A10 can:

"-Hybrid Crossfire Capable with HD 6670"

Does that mean only a 6670 would work?