Mini ITX PC's
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So these have been around for a while, but I'm not seeing them around a lot, which is surprising for the price to performance ratio of even a high end build. They're very efficient for cooling, and a lot of them can even fit 240mm radiators and 290mm long GPU's. The options for the Chassis' and Motherboards for such a rig have become much closer to their ATX counterparts, and similar in performance. In fact, in a Corsair 250D or a Bitfenix Prodigy MITX, you could fit something like an i7-4770K with a Corsair H100i, and an Nvidia GTX Titan Black series stock, or even with an NZXT G10 Kraken, and 32GB of ridiculously large Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM, and some of these cases can fit up to 8 storage drives. I have to say I'm quite impressed with the abilities of such a small form-factor PC. The acoustic and cooling properties even when running just air cooling are quite impressive. The aforementioned Bitfenix Prodigy MITX will house 5 120mm fans. If you were to replace these all with some Quiet Edition fans, you could make a tiny, inexpensive, whisper quiet, well cooled, and powerful little PC. It would also be beautiful as a Hackintosh platform, but that isn't officially condoned. I'm making the switch to Mini ITX quite soon, and I'll be using it for my business oriented rig, though I am going to go with a fancy Black and Purple color scheme with some LED fans. If anyone has any sort of PC built on this size standard, what kinds of advantages and drawbacks do you think Mini ITX has? What case and components do you use? If you stuck around and read this whole boring mess, thank you for your time
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From a business perspective, I think the industry hopped from traditional desktops to all-in-ones, laptops/tablets, or thin clients, depending on environment. That being said, I'm considering building one for home use in order to set up Sophos UTM home edition to replace my aging Apple Time Capsule.
Have you come across an Intel NUC yet? They're reasonably powerful and pretty tiny. I'm using one along with a Synology NAS for a backup target at a client location.
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@alexntg I've had the opportunity to use one, but not extensively. I'll be using my rig for a small amount of video editing and gaming, so a NUC is somewhat out of the question for that, but I've been considering buying one just to have it around to toy with. I'll probably leave my GTX 660 SC and my A10-7850K for that build, which is quite a lot more power than a NUC has.
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I've always liked Mini ITX. Computers are so often unnecessarily large.
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Sorry, you have to click the links to see the images.
I built a few like this a few years ago for my clients. Core2Duo and 4GB RAM with W7P. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112394
I built 2 with this case and hated it even though it was really small, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154115
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I think I want this for my next case.
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I love Lian Li cases, so well thought out and so tiny. I personally wouldn't use one, but for people not wanting a huge GPU or CPU Cooler, I would highly recommend one. I've decided on a White Bitfenix Prodigy, with Purple LED Case fans and lighting (I know, strange).
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I might be building something soon.
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Any excuse to build a new PC is great
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@scottalanmiller Are you looking to build one in the MITX form factor?
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller Are you looking to build one in the MITX form factor?
Possibly. I prefer small if possible. Need a good GPU to fit.
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Aha! GPU's are my first love. Any specific budget/purpose for this rig?
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DOH...forgot the link: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8691178&CatId=1509 for my next home built project.
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Well if we're off the topic of M-ITX, I'd like a Corsair 900D
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Aha! GPU's are my first love. Any specific budget/purpose for this rig?
Video game rig. Will play a dual role as a office desktop but video games too. Needs to be quiet.
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Well if you want me to whip up a rig that matches your NTG Color scheme, is quiet and cool, and will meet your requirements for gaming but not cost too much, let me know
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Well if you want me to whip up a rig that matches your NTG Color scheme, is quiet and cool, and will meet your requirements for gaming but not cost too much, let me know
Color scheme? Ooohhhh..... Gotta see this.
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Well, here's something close. Can buy anything and do the colors custom myself as well, or have it sent somewhere to have it done. Can also lighten it, do any acrylic for windows, or pretty much any drilling needed for any special cooling/optical drive/storage solutions here as well, and custom wiring and lighting I can do.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Well, here's something close. Can buy anything and do the colors custom myself as well, or have it sent somewhere to have it done.
Nice. How small can we find?
Are we going to get logos?
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@scottalanmiller Well, that's a mini ITX, and you could easily fit a 850 Watt PSU, an i7 4770K cooled by a corsair H100i , and a GTX 690 in there if you wanted. That's one of the larger more versatile rigs in that standard, and as a frame of reference, the compartment in the bottom left is for the PSU (Standard ATX form factor). You can find smaller ones and use AMD APU's for the processor. Could build a functional work rig out of one of these for... I'd say $450 with an APU driving the graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 250 watt PSU, 1TB of storage, and two Corsair AF 120mm Silent fans (LED or not) to make it whisper quiet. But you could easily make it cheaper, and that's pretty overpowered for a work rig. As stated before, a smaller cheaper case could be used if desired, cutting costs and size even more, though in a smaller case a low-profile CPU heatsink/cooler may have to be considered. I'm not any sort of expert on manufacturing Logos, I have no idea how much that would be.
