An ITX gaming build

[Remko]

I was thinking about buying a laptop for my room at the military base. While looking at some high end laptops like Alienware, I thought why not build a cheaper and way faster mini-itx gaming system

I got an e-mail yesterday that my order was complete, hurray!
I picked up the parts today and assembled the system.

The parts:

The Intel DH67CF board with ram and cooler installed:

The board installed in the SG07 chassis:

Wow, the HD6950 is huge and heavy, I had some trouble installing this beast. The power connectors are on top of the card and press against the top of the chassis. This puts a lot of pressure on the PCI slot and motherboard making it bend downwards, not good. I solved this problem by putting a piece of hard foam between the card and the bottom of the chassis to support it and relieve pressure from the motherboard:

And here is the case fully assembled:

Specs:

Sandy bridge I7-2600
Corsair XMS3 8GB
Corsair Force 120GB SSD
Sapphire HD6950 2GB
Sony optical drive

Everyting stock atm, maybe I will flash the 6950 to 6970 later.

I installed Windows7 ultimate on the SSD, boot time is superfast, around 5 seconds. My other system with an intel postville SSD boots in 11 seconds. This suprised me a lot.

Windows rating:

3DMark:

Idle temps around 30 and under load around 60 degrees with fan speed on low:

So far im very happy with the result

 

[WR2]

Sweeet! Nice things CAN come in small packages too.
Excellent example of going small and going FTW.

 

[boiler1990]

What was the total cost for the whole thing?

If I didn't have a ton of space I would totally do this, probably with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 and OC it.

 

[Remko]

What was the total cost for the whole thing?

If I didn't have a ton of space I would totally do this, probably with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 and OC it.

It cost 1090 Euro.

The standard (cheaperst) Alienware m17x rev3 I was looking at in the first place is 1999 Euro here.

 

[WR2]

If you had to do it over would you use a micro-ATX motherboard in your build?

 

[boiler1990]

Even if the Alienware were the same price, this would still be a better deal. Mobile gaming GPUs aren't as good as the desktop cards, and all you'll hear from the laptop are fans fans fans...

 

[Remko]

If you had to do it over would you use a micro-ATX motherboard in your build?

Micro-ATX is twice the size. It would need an other case also.
It does offer the option of SLI/CF. Personaly I like a single high end gpu better.

Part of the fun is to make it as powerful and small as possible and keep it silent and cool as well.
If I had to do it over I wouldn't change a thing.

 

[WR2]

Going smaller does make the cost grow.

The MB size is double, but not the whole system. mATX size would only be about 15% larger.
Sugo SG07 8.74" x 7.48" x 13.78" (L x W x H)
Sugo SG02 15.47" x 10.63" x 8.35" (L x W x H)

 

[boiler1990]

I've noticed that you can get mATX boards cheaper than ITX ones though, so you could potentially save there.

 

[Remko]

Going smaller does make the cost grow.

The MB size is double, but not the whole system. mATX size would only be about 15% larger.
Sugo SG07 8.74" x 7.48" x 13.78" (L x W x H)
Sugo SG02 15.47" x 10.63" x 8.35" (L x W x H)

SG07 8.74" x 7.48" x 13.78" = 911,87
SG02 15.47" x 10.63" x 8.35 = 1373,12

1373,12 / 911,87 = 1,505 = 50%

Thats actually 50% larger