So, an update on the situation. I measured the shelf space. There are two shelves, separated vertically by a thin wooden divider. Their dimensions are 32" wide, 14" deep, 14.5" tall. He would be OK with sawing off part of the wooden divider, which would give about 30" of vertical space, 14" of depth...

4K would be nice, but I realize gaming at 4K on a moderate load system might not be practical. I'm sure he'll be happy with current games at 1080p, or even less. I am worried about heat, though, especially since I expect him to cram the case on a shelf underneath the TiVo and HDMI switch. How do the...

I want to convince a friend, who just got a real house, to get a living room PC. He's open to the idea, but will need some convincing. If it costs too much, then I'm sure he'll turn it down. Right now he's got a study room PC with a Core i3 Sandy Bridge and a GTX 750, which I helped him build years ...

I read that Haswells run hotter than Ivy Bridges. Will a Gaia or Hyper 212 EVO still be good enough for a stock clocked Haswell?

But for me is extremely important, what fanXpert2 will give me is a quieter setup when i do care about noise, let say working (2am) or watching a movie, as it will decrease the fan speeds depending on the conditions, and when i dont mind the extra fan noise, like gaming/listening to music with my h...

I'm not completely sold on Fan Xpert2. I can get a mini ITX H77 motherboard for about $100. A brief look at motherboards on Newegg with Fan Xpert2 shows items costing over $200. I'm not really sure what that extra $100+ gains me, especially since the total cost of my build is breaking the $1000 barr...

This is what I've got in mind: Antec Solo II SeaSonic SSR-450RM Some H77 motherboard with an LGA1155 socket Core i3-3220 Samsung 840 Pro + WD Green 1TB Geforce GTX 650 Ti Blu-Ray drive The case is going on the floor, below a TV. I'll be sitting about 10 feet away from it. Ideally, I would not like t...

Case: Fractal Design's Nodes look nice, and the 304 is definitely cheaper than the GD08B, and the built-in fan controller should be welcome. How do these cases compare with the GD08B? What about the 605? It wouldn't save me money, but it looks nice enough to be considered as an alternative to the GD...

My goal is to build a HTPC that can handle the current generation of PC games at decent settings, 1080p at 2D, and 720p at 3D. This will go with a Panasonic 1080p plasma. It will go on a shelf with about ten inches of vertical space. Case: I'm thinking of a Silverstone Grandia GD08B. It seems like I...

The GD08B does look really nice, but it's pretty expensive too. It's not completely out of my budget, but the lowest I can find it is $145 at Amazon, which would make it a pretty significant chunk of my budget, and doesn't even include a PSU, which I figure adds another $65 if I'm after quality (mor...

I want to build an HTPC that can do some gaming, and I estimate the GTX 650 Ti holds the sweet spot between budget and game performance. But I don't know what kind of case to get. The case will go on a shelf that has about ten inches of vertical space, and plenty of width and depth. A tower turned o...