Ideas for a small, powerful and portable graphics machine on a budget

[heroicsatsuma]

Soooo...haven't built a PC since 2006 and I wanted to build something small and portable, firstly thought mini itx was the way to go. As I mainly use 3D software and adobe creative suite I need a CPU with some oomph, so was looking at the new Xeon E5 2630 V3 2.2ghz as zbrush uses CPU only to render. It seems however that there are only a handful of motherboards that can hold that chip in the mitx form factor and they're rather expensive. I wanted to also get some ddr4 memory preferably 16/32gb as well as ssd drives for storage. Has anyone got any other ideas for this kind of small yet powerful machine I want to build for both work and home?

Many thanks

 

[basroil]

It's going to be expensive, but how about:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($369.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard ($243.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($88.30 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Superclocked Video Card ($104.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Fractal Design Core 500 Mini ITX Desktop Case ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($45.85 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1176.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-27 12:22 EDT-0400

If you modify the case a bit you can add a handle to make it really portable 😉 Performance is on par with the 2630 v3 and faster in some cases (thanks to 50% higher clock speed), though memory performace takes a hit when using mITX instead of ATX

 

[heroicsatsuma]

Wow that was a quick response!

Ouch that's a lot of moolah! I guess I can cut the optical drive as won't need that.

If I switch to atx would the price differ dramatically? I know the overall dimensions of the PC would increase, but if I can save a bunch it might be worth investigating.

Also what are tour thoughts on the gigabyte brix machines?

Many thanks

 

[basroil]

Wow that was a quick response!

Ouch that's a lot of moolah! I guess I can cut the optical drive as won't need that.

If I switch to atx would the price differ dramatically? I know the overall dimensions of the PC would increase, but if I can save a bunch it might be worth investigating.

Also what are tour thoughts on the gigabyte brix machines?

Many thanks

Prices won't change too much, maybe ~$150. As for Brix, you lose about 75% performance in terms of CPU alone, and maybe 80% loss in graphics, assuming the high end i7 6000 series U version against my system.