Need an Extremely Small and Portable Gaming System
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Okay, last time that I was looking at building a gaming rig it was before I moved to Europe and me needs were very different. Low cost was important (can't be wasting lots of money on a gaming system) but small and portable was not. I liked the design that we came up with with the integrated AMD CPU and GPU (APU), that made a lot of sense.
What I need now, with my current lifestyle, is the ability to build a gaming system that is much, much smaller than what we had planned. I need something that can git into luggage and is hopefully light. Will need to wrap it in bubble wrap or something while transporting it, that's a given. But I need something really small.
I'm assuming that @Mike-Ralston will be all over this. Our plan is to also get a tiny, portable projector to use as a display device (1080p I hope but maybe 720p to keep size and cost down) and maybe, at some point, something like an Oculus Rift to use for private gaming. As I don't get a normal monitor I need to be creative.
The machine will need to run Windows 10 and will be used primarily for Steam and GOG gaming as well as as a media center.
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I would think something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108396
Coupled with an AMD APU would work fairly well in this instance. Nothing too powerful but should be just enough for what you generally play.
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What about the dell/hp/lenovo micro form factor machines. I know they can be had with 16fb of ram and current gen i7 processors from dell, lenovo uses amd and no idea what HP has. They have display port output generally along with vga.
Never looked into video specs on them.
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Well, with an APU, you're not going to be playing anything newer than 2008 on an Oculus Rift or a 1080p display... You're going to want a dedicated GPU for gaming, but even up to the 970 can be had in a micro form factor, like so http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125706&cm_re=Gigabyte_GTX_970--14-125-706--Product
What would your budget be, for said machine? That's always the easiest starting point.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Well, with an APU, you're not going to be playing anything newer than 2008 on an Oculus Rift or a 1080p display...
The APU was based on your recommendations of it being so powerful for gaming in the other thread.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
Well, with an APU, you're not going to be playing anything newer than 2008 on an Oculus Rift or a 1080p display...
The APU was based on your recommendations of it being so powerful for gaming in the other thread.
The A10 has some iffy performance on modern games. It works well for most things but you may have to tune back the graphics options to get many games above 30fps.
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Not sure what your budget is or how performant/future proof you'd like it to be, but according to one review this mini gaming PC can play GTA V on max settings. You would just need to grab some RAM and an SSD. The video card has 3gb RAM which isn't ideal, but the form factor is hard to beat on packability.
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Why not just get a gaming laptop?
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@Nic said:
Why not just get a gaming laptop?
Cost, fragility, performance and don't want another screen to deal with.
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@WingCreative said:
Not sure what your budget is or how performant/future proof you'd like it to be, but according to one review this mini gaming PC can play GTA V on max settings. You would just need to grab some RAM and an SSD. The video card has 3gb RAM which isn't ideal, but the form factor is hard to beat on packability.
Oh, that looks pretty interesting. Not cheap but not expensive either.
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Have you looked at these guys? https://www.xi3.com/
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@Nic said:
Have you looked at these guys? https://www.xi3.com/
That's the company I was looking for thanks.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Have you looked at these guys? https://www.xi3.com/
Those look really sweet!!
It may take a very long time... but have you looked at any of the Steam Machines that have been announced?
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Has anyone used any of their machines? How is the build quality? Looks gorgeous from the pictures.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Have you looked at these guys? https://www.xi3.com/
Those look really sweet!!
It may take a very long time... but have you looked at any of the Steam Machines that have been announced?
Can't use a Linux machine. Need a Windows machine.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Have you looked at these guys? https://www.xi3.com/
Those look really sweet!!
It may take a very long time... but have you looked at any of the Steam Machines that have been announced?
Can't use a Linux machine. Need a Windows machine.
Oh, right GoG forgot about that requirement.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Has anyone used any of their machines? How is the build quality? Looks gorgeous from the pictures.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/13/xi3-pistons-modular-pc-custom-UI-hands-on/
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I've seen them in person and they are tinier than they look in online pictures. Not sure about anything else in terms of build quality or power, but they look to be the smallest gaming machines out there, and they claim to be modular so you can swap in a new graphics card when you need to upgrade.
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Tiny does matter a lot in this case.
