Need some guidance on a new Mini PC Build.

[Sinate]

Dear All,

I am trying to put together a mini ITX build, my current PC is now a dinosaur and in need of a desperate upgrade. It has been so long since I built a new PC that I need some help with a few points. So Far I have selected the following components. FYI I am based in Europe, Austria

I intend to use the PC for Gaming mainly but with some photo editing and digital drawing on the side.

Overclocking is not that important to me

Case: Obsidian 250D
Motherboard: MSI Z87I Gaming
CPU: I5 4670K, or should I do the I7?
RAM: I am clueless in this area, 16Gb is preferred. but make and type?? No idea
SSD: Samsung Evo 500Gb
Gfx Card: MSI N770 2Gb OC
Cooler: Corsair H100i
PSU: Corsair RM550

Any suggestions on some top quality RAM? Would you recommended the I7 instead? Any thing else you would change?

Thanks a lot guys and girls

 

[Mr Poptart]

What will you be using this pc for?

 

[AshyCFC]

What are you using the PC for? like posted above is the important question.

Also where are you from? What's a good price over in the UK/USA might not be a good price difference between i5 and i7 over there.

 

[Sinate]

What are you using the PC for? like posted above is the important question.

Also where are you from? What's a good price over in the UK/USA might not be a good price difference between i5 and i7 over there.

Updated the original post with this info, thanks!

 

[AshyCFC]

Overclocking not important to you > XEON 1230 V3 your build just SCREAMS it. It's as good as the i7 4770 but costs not much more than the 4670k(like $10) and can be used on the same motherboards.

Gaming you don't need 16GB RAM only 8GB but I'll suggest a build with 16GB anyway.

Also if you don't want to OC why are you buying the corsair h100i? It's louder than the stock coolers!

Just as an example I'll use pcpartpicker germany and then you can see if you can pick up the same parts in Austria.

 

[Sinate]

Overclocking not important to you > XEON 1230 V3 your build just SCREAMS it. It's as good as the i7 4770 but costs not much more than the 4670k(like $10) and can be used on the same motherboards.

Gaming you don't need 16GB RAM only 8GB but I'll suggest a build with 16GB anyway.

Also if you don't want to OC why are you buying the corsair h100i? It's louder than the stock coolers!

I will definitely take a look at the Xeon 1230 V3 I currently have 8Gb of RAM and when I have my browser open and playing EQ Landmark my RAM usage is actually at 100% almost all the time. So I want to play it safe with 16Gb. The H100i I also picked because it was suggested as a nice cooler. I am happy to go lower to maybe a H75? I just like water coolers.

 

[AshyCFC]

Sadly no xeon's in germany...so not sure if there's any in austria.

 

[Sinate]

Sadly no xeon's in germany...so not sure if there's any in austria.

I just checked my local re-seller, amazingly they have some on stock! €220 is the price.

 

[AshyCFC]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (€101.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (€114.90 @ Caseking)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (€253.91 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€47.99 @ Pixmania DE)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (€293.07 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case (€92.05 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (€105.55 @ Hardwareversand)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (€13.49 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1022.85
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-08 12:07 CET+0100)

+ the cost of the Xeon (It's worth the extra 30euro over the i5) it's a server CPU based on the design of the 4770 and they come at the same stock speed and perform basically the same. main difference is the xeon has no integrated graphics(who cares if you've got a gtx 770)

How does something like this look? A Z87 board + Water cooler is just excessive...You don't need it for non overclocking builds. You can spend the money saved on something like a stronger GPU.

H87 has the same features as z87 just can't OC really.

PSU also massively too big but was a great price on the partpicker, so any modular XFX/Seasonic 650W+ will be fine.

If you post a link to your local reseller and how much you'd like to spend I'll check there as well

 

[Sinate]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (€101.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (€114.90 @ Caseking)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (€253.91 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€47.99 @ Pixmania DE)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (€293.07 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case (€92.05 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (€105.55 @ Hardwareversand)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (€13.49 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1022.85
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-08 12:07 CET+0100)

+ the cost of the Xeon (It's worth the extra 30euro over the i5) it's a server CPU based on the design of the 4770 and they come at the same stock speed and perform basically the same. main difference is the xeon has no integrated graphics(who cares if you've got a gtx 770)

How does something like this look? A Z87 board + Water cooler is just excessive...You don't need it for non overclocking builds. You can spend the money saved on something like a stronger GPU.

H87 has the same features as z87 just can't OC really.

PSU also massively too big but was a great price on the partpicker, so any modular XFX/Seasonic 650W+ will be fine.

If you post a link to your local re-seller and how much you'd like to spend I'll check there as well

Thanks for the great response, I would most likely order as much of this as possible via amazon.de, my local re-sellers e-tec.at and ditech.at do not often have much on stock.

Regarding RAM, how do you pick the best fit for your system? Is the speed that important? should it be more that 1600?

Thanks!

 

[AshyCFC]

Speed isn't really that important 1600mhz is perfectly fine.

You can set the pcpartpicker to only purchase from amazon.de as well, I'll have an experiment with that and update my build suggestion

Plus your local retailers had the xeon 1230 v3 and amazon did not, you never know they may surprise you.

This was the xeon I was speaking of: http://www.ditech.at/item.do?kurzbez=IX3V323

Buy it from wherever it's 220euros as these guys seem to have 0 in stock?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (€101.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: GeIL Value PLUS 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (€138.16 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (€253.91 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€53.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (€293.07 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case (€92.05 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (€115.67 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (€13.49 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1062.14
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-08 13:16 CET+0100)

Similar build as before but costs a bit more as all parts are from Amazon.DE I'll explore your local stores now.
Couldn't find much at local stores that wasn't either more expensive than amazon.de or out of stock.

 

[Sinate]

Speed isn't really that important 1600mhz is perfectly fine.

You can set the pcpartpicker to only purchase from amazon.de as well, I'll have an experiment with that and update my build suggestion

Plus your local retailers had the xeon 1230 v3 and amazon did not, you never know they may surprise you.

This was the xeon I was speaking of: http://www.ditech.at/item.do?kurzbez=IX3V323

Buy it from wherever it's 220euros as these guys seem to have 0 in stock?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Similar build as before but costs a bit more as all parts are from Amazon.DE I'll explore your local stores now.
Couldn't find much at local stores that wasn't either more expensive than amazon.de or out of stock.

Here is the CPU in stock:
http://www.e-tec.at/frame1/details.php?art=156280

It is looking a pretty nice build so far. Thanks for the help!

BTW any reason why you picked the Asus 770 over the MSI? would the RM550 PSU be enough, it is slightly cheaper at only €89?

Thanks!

 

[AshyCFC]

The thing about the RM550 is, it's probably enough but corsair have doing rather poor quality PSU units lately so I can't recommend it.

I'll look for an alternate smaller PSU on Amazon.de and snap up that xeon 1230 v3 whilst you can.

No real reason of ASUS over MSI, go with whichever you prefer.