How much should i spend?! build recommendations for mini itx

[Coollestersmooth]

So i'm looking into building a gaming pc. i currently do all my gaming on a laptop, its an i7 with a 2gb nvidia 630m graphics card, but alas it overheats, anything too performance intensive will just stutter like a madman or just black screen for a few seconds at a time at random.

it can handle most of my gaming, which a lot of the time consists of just starcraft 2, league of legends and heroes of the storm, in 1080p with the settings pretty low, but i have a lot of games in my steam library like the witcher 2 or dishonored which i just haven't played because there just not that playable on my laptop.

so i'm thinking about building a desktop. it would have to be mini-itx as i'm pretty low on space. however i'm not sure just how larger pile of money i need to scrape together and what sort of specs i should aim for (mostly CPU/GPU wise....)

the goals would be to be able to go on steam tomorrow, buy a new title like alien isolation (which looks awesome!), and play it in 1080, without having to go into the menu and start turning down settings. Not necessarily ultra everything on a new title like that, if it could that would be a bonus, and also to run league/starcraft maxed out 1080, or at least with most of the shiney stuff switched on.... i'm not after a 4k monster or anything like that.

most of the build designs i come up with will probably be out of date by the time i managed to save up for them. 😀

so whats realistic?

p.s. thanks to all who've taken the time to read my wafflings,

forgot to mention i have a monitor etc, so i don't need peripherals, i'm more after a rough ballpark for cpu/gpu i should aim for and a bit of an idea for the average cost of a build that will do what i'm asking.

 

[quandao93]

wait for broadwell. And its really hard to answer your question. It is all base off budget...

 

[BustaRhymes]

I would say $800-$1200 for a good gaming PC (Close to max settings) if you build it yourself. You could prob get away with about $500-600 though, playing on high with fxaa only.

 

[bsod1]

I just made this build for someone

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($329.97 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 4 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.88 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z97I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($155.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($184.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($109.97 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($149.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($84.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $1481.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-03 19:45 EST-0500

how does this look?

 

[bsod1]

adjusted for gaming:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.96 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 4 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.88 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z97I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($155.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($85.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.93 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($84.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $1147.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-03 21:37 EST-0500

 

[Rammy]

Spoiler

adjusted for gaming:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.96 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 4 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.88 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Z97I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($155.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($85.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.93 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($84.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $1147.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-03 21:37 EST-0500

This is by no means a bad way to spend $1150 on an ITX gaming machine, it's a solid build.

I'm not 100% sure it answers the OP question though, which is really "how much do I need to spend?" ie. - the minimum. For that reason, things like overclocking are a luxury, as is (to some degree) an SSD (though it's hardly a waste of money).
What he really needs as a baseline is something which will nail 1080P gaming with the majority of settings turned up - that is likely to mean a stock i5 and a significantly cheaper graphics card. How much to spend on graphics is a little subjective really - a sub $150 card is actually remarkably 1080P gaming capable, but perhaps doesn't have much of a lifespan. Something in the GTX760/R9 280X range wouldn't be a bad place to start, but it's worth looking up benchmarks to see what kind of performance you'll get to try to match your expectations.
Roughly, if you take that into consideration, you are looking at a base price of around $650 (not including OS) to have something which should meet your expectations.
I'd say anything between there and perhaps $1000 is a good window to be looking at, much more and you are getting into pretty high end stuff which by your own admission - you probably don't need. Somewhere around the $800 mark is a sensible target if you want to try to include items like an SSD and have some flexibility on component selection rather than just picking what's cheap/on offer.

 

[Coollestersmooth]

I would say $800-$1200 for a good gaming PC (Close to max settings) if you build it yourself. You could prob get away with about $500-600 though, playing on high with fxaa only.

So were talking i5/760 in that kinda price range? Self build would be ok, just trying to get an idea of how cheap i can be whilst still doing all of the above

 

[DonkeyOatie]

Based on prices today, and there will always be different deals tomorrow, this is a decent core system to start with.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($188.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($70.20 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ OutletPC)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec 450W ATX Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32/64-bit) ($94.99 @ B&H)
Total: $528.14
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-04 04:53 EST-0500

It lacks a graphics card and a SSD, but would cost under $1000 with a GTX970 and a 128Gb SSD,

The CPU is powerful enough to meet your objectives. You must choose a GPU that will play the games you want as good as you want.

 

[BustaRhymes]

If you trying to hit around the $800 mark i5 and r9 280X would work well. r9 280X is close to same price as a 760 but has gtx 770 performance and 3GB of VRAM.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

With my build, if you go Radeon GPU, you will need to up the rating of the PSU by about 50-100W for safe headroom.

 

[BustaRhymes]

Something like this would be a decent $850 build http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FDjpFT

If you wanted to spend a little more money the build bsod has above for $1100 would be good as well.

Or anything in between really.

 

[Coollestersmooth]

Thanks so much for all the responses guys, all really helpful. think i'm going to aim for around £800 for an i5 build with an r9 280 and see how the fundraising goes as to whether the specs go up or down. I was thinking along these lines to start but wasn't sure if it was just overkill for my needs.

ill have a look into the broadwell conundrum.

in the meantime, time to start e-baying some of my old junk...