It’s another step towards mainstream for the mini-ITX gaming system. I was perusing the magazine rack at my local Wal-Mart and my eyes fell upon the cover of the December issue of Maximum PC. Two things jumped out at me. First, it’s the middle of October, which seems a bit early for a December issue. Second, and much more important, was the secondary headline “Wee PC, Kick-Ass Power”. It would seem that the power enthusiasts over at Maximum PC have caught wind of the emergence of the mini-ITX gaming system.
They put together a powerful mini-ITX system housed in a Silverstone SG07 case, a popular choice due to the integrated 600x power supply. The internals start with a Zotac H55-ITX motherboard, an Intel Core i7-870 and 4 GB of DDR3-1333. The system runs Windows 7 Home Premium on a 128 GB solid state hard drive with a 1 TB drive for storage. Gaming power is provided courtesy of an Nvidia GTX 460 with 1 GB of RAM. The price, it comes in at a little under the $1,700 mark.
Their mini-ITX gaming system put up some good benchmarking numbers. It’s another great example that powerful gaming can be had on a small form factor system. Mini-ITX gaming systems may not yet be a mainstream product, but it seems that the idea of a small, powerful and affordable gaming system is catching on.
Pick up the December 2010 issue of Maximum PC for the complete build details and benchmarking results.