Opinions on Upgrading a Small Form Factor PC for Gaming

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xTamx420

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Apr 13, 2013
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A few months back I built a small form factor PC for the purpose of streaming my main gaming rig to my home theatre setup over Steam. Unfortunately it doesn't work over the wifi as well as I had hoped and running a 50 foot ethernet cable up my stairs isn't any sort of long term solution. So I decided to slap a GPU in it and use it for some light gaming which worked half decently but I think there is definitely some room for improvement.

As it stands right now the machine has the following main components:

- Intel Celeron G1840 CPU (Newegg No. N82E16819117301)
- EVGA GT730 (Newegg No. N82E16814487052)
- 4 GB RAM (Newegg No. N82E16820104457)
- 2.5" HDD

It's all in an Antec ISK 300-150 case so low profile GPUs are my only option here. I'm really happy with the form factor so I don't want to change the case. It's not my main gaming rig anyway so I'm not going for extreme performance here. But if it can play Borderlands The Pre-Sequel at 1080p I'll be happy as a clam. Right now it can do 720p with high settings. 1080p kills the framerate, even at low/medium settings.

The Celeron was more than enough for streaming but right now I sort of suspect it's bottlenecking the performance. I don't know nearly as much about the effect of a CPU on gaming as I would like though so any advice here would be welcome. I'd be willing to upgrade it to an i3 or even an i5 if necessary.

I'm not sure about the RAM either. Would 8 GB make a noticeable difference or is 4 sufficient for this? Normally I just get way more RAM than I need but for this rig I only got 4 because I was trying to build it on the cheap.


I'm mainly looking for opinions on how to go about upgrading this little box. Do you think I can squeeze a bit more performance out of it? Or is this thing as good as it's going to get? Any opinions/experiences/advice would be welcome.
 
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You will need a Core i3 and a low profile gtx 750 ti.

This combo is about the best you will get in that form factor. Obviously you can get a better cpu, but the gpu would hold a better cpu back.

Look into powerline adapters instead of the wifi. A 500-600mbps powerline adapter will get you about equal speed as 300mbps wifi would from 1-2 non-insulated walls away, but with a much faster response time.
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You will need a Core i3 and a low profile gtx 750 ti.

This combo is about the best you will get in that form factor. Obviously you can get a better cpu, but the gpu would hold a better cpu back.

Look into powerline adapters instead of the wifi. A 500-600mbps powerline adapter will get you about equal speed as 300mbps wifi would from 1-2 non-insulated walls away, but with a much faster response time.
 
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I would love a 750ti in this machine but I can't seem to find any single slot, low profile versions. The overall card thickness including heat sinks and fans and whatever else is sticking off the card cant be more than a single slot thickness. The 730 I have in it now barely fits and is being pushed a bit by the wall of the case. Do you know of any single slot, low profile versions of the 750ti?
 
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I doubt it. You can see in this picture how close the PCI slot is to the edge of the case:

http://content.hwigroup.net/images/products/xl/087525/4/antec_isk_300150.jpg

I'm honestly really surprised the 730 fit. And like I said its being pushed inward by the wall of the case already. That 750ti definitely has a bigger heat sink assembly on it.


I could try putting everything in a Thermaltake SD101 case. It's got a similar size but a dual width low profile PCI slot. It seems to be discontinued though...
 
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If even that card wont fit then a case upgrade sounds necessary.

I use a Silverstone ml03b case for my XBMC htpc in the living room(think they are up to version 6 or 7 now), it blends in nicely with home theater equipment . It is still only half-height but it has multiple pci slots and supports a full size atx power supply.

I would find as close to a normal case as you can that is in the size range you want.
 
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I've never been a fan of most silverstone cases personally. There's something about them that I just don't like visually. The internal design of that ml03b looks really nice though.

I ended up getting that Thermaltake SD101 on ebay and I'll transfer everything into it when it shows up. I'll definitely go with that low profile 750ti for now and upgrade the CPU later on if it seems like its affecting performance. This should end up being way more powerful than I was thinking when I started this thread thanks a lot!
 
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do you think you could swap out the cases and add a dual fan rx 460 and a new psu because i plan on doing that to a sff that i am buying and upgrading

or would it be safe without a panel for moderate and lets say 2 years of gaming
 
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