Hep in deciding of getting small PC or not?

[alinescoo]

At the moment I have a old i5 3350p, 8 GB RAM, Geforce 650 TI in a big ATX Antec case. When I've built this, I took a lot of attention in being silent, so I have a good PSU, good CPU cooler, case is also good at noise handling... but it's very big.
As the GPU is old, this is used for software development but.. I'd like to have an option to play games from time to time on my TV.

I've been thinking for quite a few months now about building a ITX build. Actually everything started with hearing about Intel Skull Canyon NUC which looked very good but from what I've read had some problems with acoustics and temperatures and also the price wasn't exactly cheap. After that I started looking into NUCs and saw that they have low TDP CPUs which offered lower perfomance vs desktop ones.
Looking at the ITX form factor, I tried looking at various cases, from ones like SG13, Metis, Node but really, they all look very big to me... maybe because of the way they are shown in reviews. And then, on most builds I saw, watercooling is used because the CPU doesn't have too much space to have proper cooling. Even so, there's a risk of high temperatures and noise. Initially I thought of a i5, maybe i5 7500, then thought of i7 7700, then Ryzen came and I waited to see what mITX board appear... On the GPU I think I am pretty decided to GTX 1060 6GB RAM. I also need 16 GB RAM and a m2 PCIE SSD. So in the end, I can't really say that I have found something that is small enough, maybe excepting the custom cases of over 150$...

Then I've looked at prebuild systems and they seem to somehow be a mix of both, compact but smaller than mITX. I see that Asus has G20, MSI has Trident 3 or Trident Arctic and a new very interesting addition Gigabyte Brix VR at only 2.6l.
I'm kind of drawn to Gigabyte because it has very compact size, a i7 7700HQ and a 1060GTX but probably it's a bit noisy and since it's barebone, adding RAM+SSD get's me to around the same price as Trident Actic which has a desktop 7700 and a 1070GTX. Corsair ONE is too expensive, AsRock Deskmini GTX sounds expensive and who knows when it will be released, Zotac Magnus with Ryzen looked interesting, but no news on when available or pricing... Did I miss any model?

So, is small, powerful and quiet possible?

 

[SeñorDonut]

How small do you want to go? CustomMOD has an 0.99L case here, but you'd have to get an STX board and MXM GPU. There's actually 5 cases IIRC, this post has a link to all of them If I were you, I would not go with a prebuilt as they are hard or impossible to upgrade, and stay with ITX and normal GPUs as they are cheaper. The S4 Mini might fit your needs perfectly.

 

[alinescoo]

Thank you very much for your answer.

As a side note, I just realized that I can't go with Ryzen because of the missing HAXM for my Android development, so only Intel CPUs remain. I think that about to 3-5l is reasonably small, but the smaller the better.

CustomMod looks interesting, I'll need to see what prices do I get with it considering that is pretty expensive with the PSU. I agree with the upgrade options, but I really don't upgrade my PCs, I just exchange them fully after a few years of service. Basically in a few years, only the case+psu would really remain, the rest mobo+cpu+gpu+ram kind of needs to be replaced. However, building it myself allows me to tweak the coolers used vs a prebuild one. The prebuild one, comes with the advantage of everything being compatible and tested and maybe even the acoustics and thermals are optimized. Some small barebones have all kind of custom cooling solutions.

 

[jtd871]

You could maybe repurpose the 650ti for streaming from a newer GPU to a TV-connected PC.

 

[alinescoo]

Thank you for your suggestion.
Given some calculations I get around the same price for a barebone Gigabyte Brix VR (https://www.gigabyte.com/Mini-PcBarebone/GB-BNi7HG6-1060-rev-10#ov) + SSD + RAM vs a system built on the customMod case. The downside at the moment is the high price of 1060 GTX. Still unsure about the noise and thermals in customMod

 

[alinescoo]

Looking at prices at small things, I may end in getting a big AIO... small stuff is really expensive

 

[jtd871]

Small stuff is expensive, agreed. I'd check to see if the AIO has upgrade path for the parts that make sense for you.

 

[alinescoo]

Lenovo Y720 seems a decent choice for a cube small form factor and a decent price. It may not be that small but it looks like it has proper cooling. If I start building my own pc maybe in a SG13 or Metis I am affraid that temperatures and noise would be an issue...

AIO indeed seems like a dead end in terms of upgrade-ability and also to be honest I am a little concerned of how the hardware will act after warranty is off, given that there are some high temperatures in that low space.

 

[ignsvn]

Btw, you mentioned that SG13, Node, Metis are still too big.

May I know what you consider as small? Perhaps can give case example, or dimension?

Edit:
After re-reading all posts.. have you seen Zotac mini PCs, especially the ZBox E Series? Perhaps will suit your needs: https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/zbox_e_series

 

[alinescoo]

I guess I'd like something around 7 liters and acoomodate a i7 and a 1060 or 1070... or maybe Vega 54
But as I've read, the smaller the size the bigger the problems with noise and temperatures given hight TDPs of CPU and GPU... so that is why I am thinking that maybe something pre-built could have an enhanced cooling solution which I can't really make myself.

 

[alinescoo]

@ignsvn I didn't really liked the customer reviews on some zotac products and there's really almost no availability in my country + very expensive. To be honest I kept an eye on the Ryzen Magnus shown at Computex but then recently I realized that my Android emulator does not work on Windows with Ryzen as it requires HAXM.

So far, from what I saw:
- Gigabyte Brix seems like one of the best choices for me: very small, 1060 GPU, should be max 35db under load so acceptable noise. The only drawback is the 7700HQ CPU and if it breaks after warranty I am pretty sure there's nothing to do to fix it.
- Asus I don't like the design and size
- MSI Trident Arctic is not available in my country and the design is not on my taste.
- Lenovo is big... but has promos sometimes so good prices

What I'd like about my own build is that each piece has own warranty, some more that the usual brand system warranties and also can be easily upgraded or if a part breaks, replace it with another.

CustomMod looks interesting but I am confused when I see that GUnique PSU and modded Dell brick... not really into this sort of things.

 

[ignsvn]

Edit: just saw your replies; my internet connection is currently quite slow.

I never thought Zotac reviews are bad.. Yeah I guess Brix is the best option for you at the moment.

 

[alinescoo]

Zotac reviews aren't bad, I just saw some user reviews which weren't that good.

 

[ignsvn]

I see.. I guess I can't comment much about Zotac since the only Zotac product I use is their GTX 950 ITX (which so far runs OK).

Btw, if you are interested in CustomMod cases but don't like the GUnique PSU / bricks, they have one with SFX PSU. You'll have smaller volume, more standardized & readily available PSUs. The catch is that you have to use low profile CPU coolers.