Current setup for small 'lanbox' build - Advice wanted! (\o Ao/)

[burstfyre20]

This is the build I'm currently contemplating that will be my new ongoing project and plaything Now here's the process that's in my head. Also note that I will purchase most or all of the parts next month during the likely independence day sales.

Note - Parts with $0.00 price are parts all ready in possession/going to be stripped from a temporary computer.

Both solid state drives will be in a raid 0 for OS and system applications, same with the two mechanical drives but those will be for games and data storage.

Due to change in living arrangements, I will have to use wireless but at least the host router is a dual band AC-class router.

Initial processor will be the G3258 that will be a test platform to gauge it's performance under gaming, video processing, server hosting and everyday situations. Later processor will be an i5 4690K. Only reason I'm not choosing to start with this processor is because I want to play with the pentium first.

Note 2 - Both the pentium and the i5 will be overclocked to the highest stable clock possible with ram sped up to match.

Parts that I would like suggestions that would either give better performance without moving total price [with shipping] past $700, or give same performance and reliability for a lower price are the following- CPU Cooler, Motherboard, Ram, Wireless Adapter and case fans.

The home where all these parts will be living in will be the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv. I like its design, its priced very well and its rather spacious for a small form factor machine. The case does come with a large 200mm fan mounted on the front and a 140mm fan mounted on the back. I would like to keep those unless there are better fans that give the same or better performance without much cost and are no louder than the pre-installed fans.

 

[i7Baby]

You need to sort out the incompatibilties noted by PartPicker first.

 

[burstfyre20]

You need to sort out the incompatibilties noted by PartPicker first.

PartPicker is wrong about the incompatibilities. The first one being that it lists the case I want as an ITX when its an mATX/ITX case. All the "incompatibilities" are inaccuracies within partpicker. Phantek's website clearly reflects that.

 

[Vosgy]

You need to sort out the incompatibilties noted by PartPicker first.

PartPicker is wrong about the incompatibilities. The first one being that it lists the case I want as an ITX when its an mATX/ITX case. All the "incompatibilities" are inaccuracies within partpicker. Phantek's website clearly reflects that.

The one you have in PCpartpick is the ITX one, you can tell from the pics.
There are two versions of that case:
1. ITX http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=25_1573&products_id=31368
2. mATX/ITX http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=25_1573&products_id=29084

Update 3 models, looks like there is a ATX one as well.

 

[i7Baby]

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/phanteks-case-phes215pbk says mitx

Change the case and see if there's any incompatibilities left.

 

[burstfyre20]

I didn't notice there were two versions :s I edited my parts list accordingly. Kinda makes me go over my budget a bit but I still think its a very elegant case so its worth it.

 

[i7Baby]

Still there.

 

[burstfyre20]

I clicked the link I posted here and it shows the mATX varient of the case instead on the ITX.

 

[i7Baby]

Yep. OK.

Build seems OK.

 

[Vosgy]

Another case to consider if you want lots of storage space in mATX is the Fractal Design Node 804
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=25_1055&products_id=27898

 

[burstfyre20]

That case looks a tad too cubular for me and I don't plan on having more than four hard drives total in it anyways. Maybe five if I manage to fill or get close to filling the 2TB raid 0 array but I don think I will, especially with an external 1TB backup drive.

 

[eatmypie]

Are you playing anything like mmorpg games, or mobas?

 

[burstfyre20]

Umm...a few on occasions but I'm looking to put some play time on Hitman Absolution, which is getting pretty good where I left off, getting some time on DA Inquisition and some of the other games I have on my seemingly endlessly growing list of games on my steam as well as origin and the few hard copies I have.

 

[eatmypie]

I think most of your stuff looks good, If you live close to a micro center you honestly could get the same motherboard you chose and a 4690k bundled for about $40 more than your current cpu+board. The i5 really seems worth it if you have a large list of games that you would like to play. Like I really only play mmorpg games when I have the time, and I really only play triple A titles and other games from large discounts online just to get through the story, and I have found doing that having a nice processor really help. The one you had originally is great, but I've had it before also in my other small form factor pc that I built when the chip came out, works great, but some of the newer games I've played made me switch it to a Xeon, and I got even better performance.

 

[burstfyre20]

I don't want to have the i5 to begin with and if I bought it along with the rest of my stuff, I'd still use the G3258 because I want to play with it to see what I can get out of it. Nearly all games are single threaded tasks and that lone 'k' series pentium has the highest single threaded performance on average. It's higher than on i5s, i7s, Xeons and any AMD chips currently available on the market. Granted, single threaded performance is only one factor, I think it makes a pretty big impact on gaming performance and I want to see if that's true. I've crunched the numbers on the i7 I had, as well as the numbers on my older FX-6100 and the Phenom II X4 940 I have in my possession. I didn't benchmark and include the i5 housed in my laptop for the simple reason it won't have the same graphics card as my desktops. All I need to do is put the G3258 through the same paces, before and after overclocking, and repeat with the i5, before and after overclocking, to really see the performance differences between them. Multi-core processors really shine while performing multiple tasks at the same time and when I play a game, I don't have other significant programs running in the background other than steam. I usually close out as many processes as I can. Namely explorer.exe and any browser I had open since chrome seems to eat up resources. This, at least in theory, would mean that a dual core processor, such as the G3258, will perform about as well as a i5 or i7 when only performing one task. Since the only i7 I've owned is a first gen i7, the results are somewhat subjective and since I don't want to invest $300+ on a processor because, frankly, I don't think that the performance you get from an i7 compared to an i5 constitute a $100+ increase in price. I'm sure they are totally worth it in some circumstances but for my performance needs, they are easily met with an i5 and possibly even with a pentium I'll be able to achieve satisfactory performance.

 

[eatmypie]

If you don't want to pay $40 more to go to a micro center to get something that will last much longer go ahead.

 

[burstfyre20]

I didn't even know microcenter had a physical store. I do all of my shopping for computer parts online. If that wasn't a good reason, the fact I don't have a car should answer any -you could go here and buy x!-

 

[eatmypie]

You don't know anyone who could drive you?

 

[burstfyre20]

Not anyone willing to drive a full day just so I can buy some computer parts that would have been cheaper to order online verses spending $60+ on gas and food and probably some kind of motel.

 

[burstfyre20]

Alright! So, here's an update on where my new gaming machine is sitting. Its, for all intents and purposes, complete. I'm using a spare set of 8GB 1600Mhz ram instead of the 16GB 2133Ghz ram because I haven't bought it yet and the money that was supposed to go towards that ram kit went instead to a pair of 2.5" 1TB/8GB SSHDs I had to buy due to the fact I had to remove the 3.5" hard drive cage because the power supply I have on hand was too long to fit with the cage installed. A bit of an inconvenience but I didn't mind. My 240GB SSD also failed two days after I installed it in my machine, which sucked, but mushkin had kindly and quickly agreed to replace it. I'll have that in next week. As far as current performance, my Pentium G3258 is sitting comfortablely at 4Ghz due to the slower ram but its also quite cool, topping out at 56C under long and intense gameplay. None of this really has put any noticeable hindrance on my gameplay, as may have pointed out otherwise. In the span of two days, I played Warframe, War Thunder, Hitman absolution, Skyrim w/about 100 graphical and texture mods, Dead Space, League of Legends, Age of Empires II Age of kings (steam edition), and Minecraft and everything is at approximately on par, graphically and performance wise, with the previous i7 920 I had. Once I get the faster set of ram, I'll try pushing for 4.6~4.7Ghz, which is where the Pentium seems to hit its highest clockrate/still stable mark after some more reading and comparing various guides and reviews. Still, these initial results are quite exciting, especially coming from a tiny $60 processor with the approximate wattage of a laptop i5/i7 processor! xD