Hi, hello.
You may know me from such threads as "My Humble NCase M1 (Dual 240mm Custom Loop)". in which I went though the process of air cooling a 2080Ti/9900K with an Accelero III and Noctua D9L, to swapping to an Eisbaer LT240 AIO for the CPU, to finally putting the whole thing on water, before finally swapping cases entirely to a Lian Li Q37.
In any case (pun not intended), today I bring to you something that is definitely humble in comparison. A fairly quick build I put together for my girlfriend from some left over parts and based around a 10400F, ASRock Z490 ITX/AC and EVGA 2060 KO inside the NZXT H1.
Now, when the NZXT H1 released I was skeptical, the GPU cooling was fairly questionable and the price was far from a bargain compared to buying something like an SG13, PSU and cooler. That said, the form factor and footprint of the case did interest me and I was intrigued by it. Given supply and pricing issues caused by Covid-19, the included PSU and AIO made it somewhat of a decent purchase. The case was on a small sale recently and I put an order in for it with the intention to replace my girlfriend's absolutely terrible Asus laptop with an SFF PC.
Shortly after ordering the case from eBuyer, I put an order it for the CPU, motherboard and GPU with SCAN. I already had a spare kit of 3200mhz/CL14 DDR4, and there was a secondary M.2 drive in the laptop that was repurposed for this build.
To expand on the part choice, an i5 10400F. Why not a Ryzen 3600?
I have personally owned and used a Ryzen 5 1600 across two different motherboards. An ASRock AB350M PRO 4, followed by an Asus B350-i. On top of that, my girlfriend's laptop was an Asus Zephyrus GA502DU, a Ryzen 7 3750H based laptop. With both CPUs, I can honestly say I have had nothing but issues. Issues with RAM compatibility and stability with the R5 1600, and a plethora of issues with the R7 3750. Notably, a 400mhz clock speed bug that I tried everything possible to fix to no avail. I'm not going to shit on Ryzen, I know a lot of people are happy with those AMD CPUs and that's great.
My experiences however, they shaped my purchasing decisions. I've had in the last ten years an i5 2320, an i5 9600K, and an i9 9900K, for all three have ran without a single issue. The i5 2320 is still going strong after 9 years on the stock cooler in my old build that I sold to a friend. So for me, considering the similar gaming performance between an i5 and R5, Intel was the obvious choice.
To top it off, I checked the prices, it was slightly more expensive to buy a R5 3600 and B550 board or B450 board with two M.2 slots than it was to buy the i5 and ASRock Z490 ITX/AC.
It was slightly cheaper (by the same margins) to buy a R5 3600 and a B450 Gigabyte/MSI board with a single M.2 slot though. Either way, the difference was £15-£20. Not a huge factor.
So with that out of the way. Why a Z490 instead of a B460/H470?
I already owned a kit of Team Group Dark Pro 3200mhz/C14 DDR4, and I wanted the i5 10400F to take full advantage of that RAM speed.
Finally, you may ask Why not wait for the RTX 3000/Navi 2 series?
To that I say, all my girlfriend really plays is Foirtnite and Fall Guys, and she uses a 240hz/1080p monitor. The only key factor in the GPU purchase was that it needed to support DLSS. On a personal level, I really believe in DLSS(2.0+). Ray tracing, I don't really care for. It's a bonus, nothing else. DLSS though, the preservation of image quality and performance boost possible with it in supported games, I'm all for.
Given the supply issues with the RTX 3000 series, and the driver issues people have had with AMD GPUs recently, going with a fairly cheap 2060 KO now made the most sense over waiting for a 3060/3060Ti next year or whatever AMD has up their sleeve.
With all that out of the way then. Here's the build.
CPU: Intel i5 10400F
Motherboard: ASRock Z490 ITX/AC
RAM: 2x8Gb Team Group Dark Pro 3200mhz CL14 (with EK Monarch heatsinks that just barely fit)
SSD: 1tb Crucial P1 M.2 NVMe SSD
Case: NZXT H1 with the included AIO and PSU.
THAT CLEARANCE
You may know me from such threads as "My Humble NCase M1 (Dual 240mm Custom Loop)". in which I went though the process of air cooling a 2080Ti/9900K with an Accelero III and Noctua D9L, to swapping to an Eisbaer LT240 AIO for the CPU, to finally putting the whole thing on water, before finally swapping cases entirely to a Lian Li Q37.
In any case (pun not intended), today I bring to you something that is definitely humble in comparison. A fairly quick build I put together for my girlfriend from some left over parts and based around a 10400F, ASRock Z490 ITX/AC and EVGA 2060 KO inside the NZXT H1.
Now, when the NZXT H1 released I was skeptical, the GPU cooling was fairly questionable and the price was far from a bargain compared to buying something like an SG13, PSU and cooler. That said, the form factor and footprint of the case did interest me and I was intrigued by it. Given supply and pricing issues caused by Covid-19, the included PSU and AIO made it somewhat of a decent purchase. The case was on a small sale recently and I put an order in for it with the intention to replace my girlfriend's absolutely terrible Asus laptop with an SFF PC.
Shortly after ordering the case from eBuyer, I put an order it for the CPU, motherboard and GPU with SCAN. I already had a spare kit of 3200mhz/CL14 DDR4, and there was a secondary M.2 drive in the laptop that was repurposed for this build.
To expand on the part choice, an i5 10400F. Why not a Ryzen 3600?
I have personally owned and used a Ryzen 5 1600 across two different motherboards. An ASRock AB350M PRO 4, followed by an Asus B350-i. On top of that, my girlfriend's laptop was an Asus Zephyrus GA502DU, a Ryzen 7 3750H based laptop. With both CPUs, I can honestly say I have had nothing but issues. Issues with RAM compatibility and stability with the R5 1600, and a plethora of issues with the R7 3750. Notably, a 400mhz clock speed bug that I tried everything possible to fix to no avail. I'm not going to shit on Ryzen, I know a lot of people are happy with those AMD CPUs and that's great.
My experiences however, they shaped my purchasing decisions. I've had in the last ten years an i5 2320, an i5 9600K, and an i9 9900K, for all three have ran without a single issue. The i5 2320 is still going strong after 9 years on the stock cooler in my old build that I sold to a friend. So for me, considering the similar gaming performance between an i5 and R5, Intel was the obvious choice.
To top it off, I checked the prices, it was slightly more expensive to buy a R5 3600 and B550 board or B450 board with two M.2 slots than it was to buy the i5 and ASRock Z490 ITX/AC.
It was slightly cheaper (by the same margins) to buy a R5 3600 and a B450 Gigabyte/MSI board with a single M.2 slot though. Either way, the difference was £15-£20. Not a huge factor.
So with that out of the way. Why a Z490 instead of a B460/H470?
I already owned a kit of Team Group Dark Pro 3200mhz/C14 DDR4, and I wanted the i5 10400F to take full advantage of that RAM speed.
Finally, you may ask Why not wait for the RTX 3000/Navi 2 series?
To that I say, all my girlfriend really plays is Foirtnite and Fall Guys, and she uses a 240hz/1080p monitor. The only key factor in the GPU purchase was that it needed to support DLSS. On a personal level, I really believe in DLSS(2.0+). Ray tracing, I don't really care for. It's a bonus, nothing else. DLSS though, the preservation of image quality and performance boost possible with it in supported games, I'm all for.
Given the supply issues with the RTX 3000 series, and the driver issues people have had with AMD GPUs recently, going with a fairly cheap 2060 KO now made the most sense over waiting for a 3060/3060Ti next year or whatever AMD has up their sleeve.
With all that out of the way then. Here's the build.
CPU: Intel i5 10400F
Motherboard: ASRock Z490 ITX/AC
RAM: 2x8Gb Team Group Dark Pro 3200mhz CL14 (with EK Monarch heatsinks that just barely fit)
SSD: 1tb Crucial P1 M.2 NVMe SSD
Case: NZXT H1 with the included AIO and PSU.
THAT CLEARANCE