Hello ladies and sirs,
This is my first post here and ye... i don't like noise all that much.
0. Case. Initially i started with Zalman t4 micro ITX which is like amazingly cheap (14 GBP) but figured that i might go with slightly more expensive Thermaltake mini ITX just because it has this amazing 200mm fan and i would like my desktop to be as small as possible. I don't own the system and it's my first build so i can't really figure out how loud is it going to be.
1. i5-4460, 84w means its loud, right? Any point of looking into AMD direction or custom cooler is a must in this case? (don't have one atm)
2. Zotac 970m cheap and thus probably loud. Should i look on other 970m modifications? Are GPU coolers actually easy to install and should be considered?
3. 400 w "be quite" PSU — should be relatively quite, right?
4. Everything else doesn't seem to have a fan in it but i have an option to install extra fans on the Case. Should i consider installing it?
The build itself:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£141.19 @ More Computers)
Motherboard: MSI H81I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£50.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£34.53 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£39.62 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£238.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Tower Case (£32.42 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: be quiet! 400W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£39.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £577.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-05 15:03 BST+0100
Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Intel is pretty good on power. The TDP number is the maximum, not a typical load. If you use the box heat sink fan, its not exactly silent. People who want silent usually add the biggest and best heat pipe heat sink that will fit with a large low rpm fan.
Really low budget cases are usually not very easy to silence and small cases usually limit your heat sink choices so its really a balance of several factors.
Really low budget cases are usually not very easy to silence and small cases usually limit your heat sink choices so its really a balance of several factors.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
With Skylake being launched today, I would really leave it just a few weeks. Although right now availability is just for the high end K unlocked CPUs, others will be available shortly.
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quest_for_silence
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Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
lieto wrote:3. 400 w "be quite" PSU — should be relatively quite, right?
400 pounds for CPU and GPU with a 40 pounds PSU? NO.
lieto wrote:4. Everything else doesn't seem to have a fan in it but i have an option to install extra fans on the Case. Should i consider installing it?
For sure.
lieto wrote:CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£141.19 @ More Computers)
It's crippled for a small saving, it's going EOL: wait if you can. And within a small shoebox with that GPU you need a good aftermarket CPU cooler.
lieto wrote:Motherboard: MSI H81I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£50.99 @ Amazon UK)
Pick a more decent, err, recent chipset.
lieto wrote:Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£39.62 @ Amazon UK)
Avoid like the plague, it's just a piece junk for contemporary standards: pick a Crucial one, if you can, and possibly a larger one, space will run out soon.
lieto wrote:Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£238.99 @ Aria PC)
Rather loud with reference to MSI Gaming, ASUS Strix or Palit JetStream: I own it.
lieto wrote:Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Tower Case (£32.42 @ CCL Computers)
Loud front fan, cheap materials.
lieto wrote:Power Supply: be quiet! 400W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£39.98 @ Novatech)
As said, I won't use an old, group regulated unit, with a GTX 970: moreover, it's not that quiet (as any part you listed) at your expected load power draw.
Definitely such a system won't be quiet: probably neither really loud too, but far from SPCR-like "standards".
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Welcome to SPCR.
What's your monitor resolution? If 1080p, you could drop down to the GTX 960 and use the $ savings toward vastly improving the other components.
What's your monitor resolution? If 1080p, you could drop down to the GTX 960 and use the $ savings toward vastly improving the other components.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Reading about Skylake today I saw something interesting, the Braswell i5 with Iris graphics might be a compelling choice for a system that doesn't need huge graphics power.
It's GPU seems to beat AMD's APU graphics power with less TDP and an i5 CPU instead of AMD.
It's an oddball but this might be it's niche.
Of course if the graphics aren't enough, it seems like a poor choice.
It's GPU seems to beat AMD's APU graphics power with less TDP and an i5 CPU instead of AMD.
It's an oddball but this might be it's niche.
Of course if the graphics aren't enough, it seems like a poor choice.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
If you like to game at 720p or only play games at 1080p that are very light on gpu resources, it's a possibility. Very narrow niche.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Idea is 1080p gaming, yes. I have 4 different laptops for work (don't ask me why) so the sole purpose of this desktop is to play games — it won't be turned on 24/7 downloading torrents or anything like this. It won't have any other software installed. It might be used as a smart tv / gaming console later on, so i'd prefer it to be small and not noisy.
With this in mind my thinking was like this:
1. CPU — the difference i am seeing between worst i3 and best i7 in most benchmarks is like 5fps, so I went with lower end i5 as it seems to pack the most bang for the buck. Can you advocate any other CPU from a gaming perspective? I ll probably wait for sky lake though, i am expecting it to be expensive but at least current gen might get cheaper.
2. gPU — biggest increase in fps according to all benchmarks so i got the best GPU i could. MSI frozr got 20gbp more expensive in a day but i am still considering it.
3. SSD — agree, probably will go for crucial, i am not going to have more than a few games there.
4. Thermaltake v1 — are you sure its loud? 200mm front fan is claimed to run lower than 15db (which isn't much right?), It looks good and is portable — are there better options around this price?
5. MOBO — why would i want to spend more on a mobo? Will it increase my fps? What's the minimum viable mobo you would choose and why?
6. PSU — am i really at risk with a bronze PSU? What would be the quitter option?
I appreciate all the comments but it would be great if you could mention some alternatives.
I understand that such questions must be really annoying for someone who is into it but i would really love to understand where are my money going.
[edit] that's not to say that i don't want to spend a single penny more and don't care about noise or cooling — else why would i come here — i just want to understand what am i paying for. As far as noise is concerned i need to get CPU cooler + possibly better gPU and less noisy PSU, right?
Cheers
With this in mind my thinking was like this:
1. CPU — the difference i am seeing between worst i3 and best i7 in most benchmarks is like 5fps, so I went with lower end i5 as it seems to pack the most bang for the buck. Can you advocate any other CPU from a gaming perspective? I ll probably wait for sky lake though, i am expecting it to be expensive but at least current gen might get cheaper.
2. gPU — biggest increase in fps according to all benchmarks so i got the best GPU i could. MSI frozr got 20gbp more expensive in a day but i am still considering it.
3. SSD — agree, probably will go for crucial, i am not going to have more than a few games there.
4. Thermaltake v1 — are you sure its loud? 200mm front fan is claimed to run lower than 15db (which isn't much right?), It looks good and is portable — are there better options around this price?
5. MOBO — why would i want to spend more on a mobo? Will it increase my fps? What's the minimum viable mobo you would choose and why?
6. PSU — am i really at risk with a bronze PSU? What would be the quitter option?
I appreciate all the comments but it would be great if you could mention some alternatives.
I understand that such questions must be really annoying for someone who is into it but i would really love to understand where are my money going.
[edit] that's not to say that i don't want to spend a single penny more and don't care about noise or cooling — else why would i come here — i just want to understand what am i paying for. As far as noise is concerned i need to get CPU cooler + possibly better gPU and less noisy PSU, right?
Cheers
Last edited by lieto on Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Here's my quick stab at a revised build, minus the case (I'm no mITX expert) and cpu cooler.
For my gaming builds, I use the case and PSU for years (5-6), so I really want something that will hold up/ I'll enjoy. For CPU and mobo, I buy the top end i5 overclockable part. I don't bother with overclocking until the games seem to benefit from it (2-3 years out). CPU tends to last me 4 years or so. At 1080p and my style of games (mostly WoW, WoW-like, and some strategy games), I find a $200 card lasts me 2 years, a $300 card lasts three years..I tend to buy the $200 card because architectures are on a two year cycle and I get the biggest benefit in fps, new features, lower power use, etc..
CPU: Typical games do fine with 2 physical cores, some make use of 4. Few make effective use of hyperthreading. Most perform linearly with clock rate, though. Hence this higher clocked i5. If you really wanted to go cheap, go for the Haswell Pentium anniversary part. If you multitask (games + watch a movie + chat + browsers, etc), you might prefer the i5.
Mobo: The primary reasons to go with the 9 series boards are, improved UEFI and s/w, better fan controls, they fixed the poor dpc latency that haunted the 8 series boards, other new features. I grabbed the lowest cost MSI board on partpicker.
RAM: similar price CAS 9 instead of your CAS 10.
SSD: You could go with 120GB if you only have a few games. The primary benefit of 240GB (other than space) is the 120GB drives don't populate all of the controller's read/write channels, so lesser performance. I like the Samsung 850 Evo. The Crucial MX200 is fine, too.
Video card: reasoning is above.
PSU: more efficient, less heat, quieter.
For my gaming builds, I use the case and PSU for years (5-6), so I really want something that will hold up/ I'll enjoy. For CPU and mobo, I buy the top end i5 overclockable part. I don't bother with overclocking until the games seem to benefit from it (2-3 years out). CPU tends to last me 4 years or so. At 1080p and my style of games (mostly WoW, WoW-like, and some strategy games), I find a $200 card lasts me 2 years, a $300 card lasts three years..I tend to buy the $200 card because architectures are on a two year cycle and I get the biggest benefit in fps, new features, lower power use, etc..
CPU: Typical games do fine with 2 physical cores, some make use of 4. Few make effective use of hyperthreading. Most perform linearly with clock rate, though. Hence this higher clocked i5. If you really wanted to go cheap, go for the Haswell Pentium anniversary part. If you multitask (games + watch a movie + chat + browsers, etc), you might prefer the i5.
Mobo: The primary reasons to go with the 9 series boards are, improved UEFI and s/w, better fan controls, they fixed the poor dpc latency that haunted the 8 series boards, other new features. I grabbed the lowest cost MSI board on partpicker.
RAM: similar price CAS 9 instead of your CAS 10.
SSD: You could go with 120GB if you only have a few games. The primary benefit of 240GB (other than space) is the 120GB drives don't populate all of the controller's read/write channels, so lesser performance. I like the Samsung 850 Evo. The Crucial MX200 is fine, too.
Video card: reasoning is above.
PSU: more efficient, less heat, quieter.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
I get everything except for CPU+GPU part.
So 4690 CPU costs 170 GBP
960 costs 170 GBP
970 costs 230 GBP
To me it looks perfectly sensible to cut 60 GBP off the the CPU and spend it on the gPU if it will increase it's life cycle by 50%.
Do you think 2 years from now a cheaper CPU can realistically become a bottleneck? because gPU certainly will and thus system will survive for 2 years where it could survive for 3.
p.s. quite frankly i wouldn't go for 960 now simply because even now it hardly runs everything at 60 fps and having 45 means it can easily dip below 30 at peak loads which is uncomfortable. CPU on the other hand — have marginal impact on fps.
What am i missing?
So 4690 CPU costs 170 GBP
960 costs 170 GBP
970 costs 230 GBP
To me it looks perfectly sensible to cut 60 GBP off the the CPU and spend it on the gPU if it will increase it's life cycle by 50%.
Do you think 2 years from now a cheaper CPU can realistically become a bottleneck? because gPU certainly will and thus system will survive for 2 years where it could survive for 3.
p.s. quite frankly i wouldn't go for 960 now simply because even now it hardly runs everything at 60 fps and having 45 means it can easily dip below 30 at peak loads which is uncomfortable. CPU on the other hand — have marginal impact on fps.
What am i missing?
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
<shrugs> Your call. The UK prices are different than here, so different economics apply.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Nothing! Go for an i3-4150. It won't hold back a GTX-970. At least not much.lieto wrote:What am i missing?
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Any views on Super Flower SF-350P14XE (HX) PSU?
I assume less watts is generally better, right?
Found this one on overclockers and it seem to have amazing review while being 30% cheaper than any other gold rated psu.
Seeing skylake performance on tomshardware — the cpu+mobo+ddr4 will probably be 60% more expensive that i5+h9
I assume less watts is generally better, right?
Found this one on overclockers and it seem to have amazing review while being 30% cheaper than any other gold rated psu.
Seeing skylake performance on tomshardware — the cpu+mobo+ddr4 will probably be 60% more expensive that i5+h9
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
A Skylake i5 should not cost much more except that budget motherboards are not available yet. DDR4 isn't that much more expensive than DDR3 either.
mITX motherboards never seem to make it to the budget category so I think you should actually price it out, you may be surprised. Z170A also has some features that you might miss in a older chipset so the premium you pay will come with more than just the CPU.
One thing that I seen in Z170A that might be worth the premium is a M2 slot on the motherboard and NVMe compatibility. A fast SSD like a Samsung 951 can potentially improve your experience more than fast ram, or higher clocks so if you are buying an SSD for it, that is where you can pick up performance.
mITX motherboards never seem to make it to the budget category so I think you should actually price it out, you may be surprised. Z170A also has some features that you might miss in a older chipset so the premium you pay will come with more than just the CPU.
One thing that I seen in Z170A that might be worth the premium is a M2 slot on the motherboard and NVMe compatibility. A fast SSD like a Samsung 951 can potentially improve your experience more than fast ram, or higher clocks so if you are buying an SSD for it, that is where you can pick up performance.
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
I guess you are right, although MSI H97I 80 gbp price seems reasonable considering it has WLAN onboard (something that i consider desirable). Still 2 times more than h81 but i guess h81 can potentially have problems with new components (although i don't have a clue how)
I just don't understand the mid-atx+ form factor — maybe someone does need 8 hdds, 6 pci-e slots and 2 DVD roms /shrug. Living in London, when i see the mid tower it makes me want to put shoes into it just to not waste that space as it does looks empty if you put my setup in there. Maybe if i would live in Texas and had a rancho of my own i just wouldn't care, who knows. hehe
I just don't understand the mid-atx+ form factor — maybe someone does need 8 hdds, 6 pci-e slots and 2 DVD roms /shrug. Living in London, when i see the mid tower it makes me want to put shoes into it just to not waste that space as it does looks empty if you put my setup in there. Maybe if i would live in Texas and had a rancho of my own i just wouldn't care, who knows. hehe
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xan_user
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Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
....for the possible extra time spent dealing with any buggy new tech/architecture.QUIET! wrote:A Skylake i5 should not cost much more except.....
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
So my "tight budget gaming" ended up above 1000usd (just about 700GBP). Might end up with 4460 and h81 after all which will probably save around 100usd on spot, not sure. Read reviews that this particular MSI mobo is restrictive when it comes to custom CPU cooling as gPU is too close to CPU and interfere with large radiators, so have to see if it's indeed the case.
No optional cooling included for now, just want to check how noisy it is before i spend extra, as i invested extra 50 into twin frozr over zotac.
I am going to be buying in 7-10 days and will see if skylake will make any impact on prices by than.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£169.19 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H97I AC Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£79.16 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£34.54 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£73.37 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (£259.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Tower Case (£32.42 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Super Flower Golden Green HX 350W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£40.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £689.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-07 21:45 BST+0100
No optional cooling included for now, just want to check how noisy it is before i spend extra, as i invested extra 50 into twin frozr over zotac.
I am going to be buying in 7-10 days and will see if skylake will make any impact on prices by than.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£169.19 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H97I AC Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£79.16 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£34.54 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£73.37 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (£259.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Tower Case (£32.42 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Super Flower Golden Green HX 350W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£40.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £689.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-07 21:45 BST+0100
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Ended up grabbing a used mITX from a local londoneer.
4670k + arctic freezer 7
780 GTX
z87 pro asus mobo
2133mhz ddr3 8gb
bitfenix prodigy
Bequite straight power e9 680W
(2x)BitFenix Spectre 120mm Case Fan Black - White LED &
(1x)Bitfenix 230 x 230 x 30mm Spectre Black White LED Case Fan
Figured that if i am not going for skylake there is not much difference, between this and what i built
Downside is probably that i will need to get rid of everything but the cooling on the next upgrade.
Quite happy with 780 though, GTA V doesn't drop below 60fps on 1080p, and system is silent enough.
4670k + arctic freezer 7
780 GTX
z87 pro asus mobo
2133mhz ddr3 8gb
bitfenix prodigy
Bequite straight power e9 680W
(2x)BitFenix Spectre 120mm Case Fan Black - White LED &
(1x)Bitfenix 230 x 230 x 30mm Spectre Black White LED Case Fan
Figured that if i am not going for skylake there is not much difference, between this and what i built
Downside is probably that i will need to get rid of everything but the cooling on the next upgrade.
Quite happy with 780 though, GTA V doesn't drop below 60fps on 1080p, and system is silent enough.
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quest_for_silence
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Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
lieto wrote:probably that i will need to get rid of everything but the cooling on the next upgrade.
That cooling is unremarkable-to-mediocre at best (for local standards, of course).
At any rate, enjoy your new rig!
Re: Mini ITX gaming on a tight budget.
Fair enough, guess Intel didn't do us a favour with changing mobo architecture and stuff. So it won't really be an upgrade but more of a replacement.