Hello everyone! 
A bit of backstory: The first money I ever earned went towards my first desktop, when I was 14 years old, and it’s been a couple of rigs since, but my last desktop was put together back in 2011, and now with a small family to take care of, I didn’t feel I could justify spending a lot of cash on a PC I honestly didn’t really need. For a year I’ve been browsing r/buildapc, and slowly began to put together a “if I was to build right now”-build. Eventually I ventured in to the world of small form factor PC’s, inspired by my brothers’ Dancase builds, and I never looked back. r/sffpc and this forum have been great sources of inspiration and knowledge. I sold my old tower and started saving up.
Fast forward to last years Christmas and I had set aside a little bit every month, I was gifted a motherboard from my parents, my in laws chipped in with some cash, my brother borrowed me a graphics card and my wife gifted me “*what I needed*” to get going. I’m 29, but I was as giddy as I was at 14. Coming from a Phenom X4 II 965, a HD 5970 and a 60 GB SSD this was quite an upgrade. After months of window gazing, planning, asking questions and seeking information I was finally ready to order.
I ended up with this:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased For $147.00)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-L12 37.79 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $49.00)
Motherboard: ASRock - B450 GAMING-ITX/AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For $0.00)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Intel - 320 Series 300 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Kingston - A1000 960 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Purchased For $160.00)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 960 4 GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair - SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply (Purchased For $118.00)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit (Purchased For $0.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80mm Fan (Purchased For $17.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A12x25 PWM 60.1 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For $27.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A12x25 PWM 60.1 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For $27.00)
Keyboard: Logitech - K350 Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard (Purchased For $0.00)
Headphones: Kingston - HyperX Cloud II 7.1 Channel Headset (Purchased For $0.00)
Speakers: Creative Labs - Pebble 2.0 4.4 W 2ch Speakers (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Dell 2407WFP-HC Black / Silver 24" WideScreen Screen 1920 x 1200 Resolution LCD Flat Panel Monitor (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Logitech Performance MX (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Sharkoon QB One (Purchased For $43.00)
Total: $702.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-22 15:49 EST-0500
The prices are without tax (25 % in Denmark), and anything set as $0 were either gifts or parts from my old rig.
Noticeable parts:
Case: Initially I fell in love with the Louqe Ghost S1, but in the end it was too pricy for me. After a lot of digging around I eventually ended up with the Sharkoon QB One, and it turns out it was the perfect case for me. It’s quite small at 14.9 liters, it has quite good cooling possibilities, features dust filters, it's cheap and personally I think it looks great. I’ve never been one for windows and RGB and the QB One looks great, if not eye catching It even includes a ATX to SFX PSU bracket.
CPU cooler and fans: As mentioned before, I wanted to build in a Ghost, and part of me still likes the idea of moving the parts into one someday. I chose the L12 as it would enable me to reuse it with a Ghost build. I chose the Vengeance LPX RAM, as I will try to cram an A12x15 under there eventually. Looks like there’s room enough. The rest of the fans I got since I have a special brown/beige part of my heart and they are fantastic. The build is silent at idle and doing office work or browsing, and when I’m gaming I can only hear the graphics card.
Speakers: Last and sorta least. They’re dirt cheap budget speakers, but they are surprisingly good. For gaming and prolonged music sessions I always use the headset anyways. They were a gift for my mother, as I recommended them for her, and she surprised me by buying an extra pair for me. For anyone on a tight budget, I'd highly recommend them.
The building process was so much fun! Cable management in such a small case was much more of a challenge than in the past, and I really had to think everything through before beginning to build. Even with the absence of tweezer, an allen wrench or a swiss army knife, it all went really smooth and it is my favorite build so far. Having to plan around restrictions when picking parts, made it so enjoyable and satisfying to finally find the perfect part.
Now to the build!
The parts:
The parts! A whole lot of brown and beige in there. And I have the first thing I needed as well: A table.
CPU and RAM in. The CPU was a demo model, so I had to clean it before mounting. The RAM are as low as I had hoped. So far, so good.
PSU, 2.5" SSD and CPU cooler installed in the case. Eventually I ended up taking the cooler off and redoing the cable management, which was much easier. The faint of heart might want to look away before the next picture...
Yeah, so I had to do some "modifications" to the 80 mm fan. It simply wouldn't fit with the L12. I went to town with a diagonal cutter and smooth it down a bit with a file and sand paper.
It's not an elegant solution, but it fits. The L12 wouldn't fit, orientated any other way, so my hands were forced.
Cooler fully mounted and graphics card in. My next purchase will be some cable combs, to tidy up the black spaghetti in there. Almost done.
A12x25's mounted on the side panel, ready to close up.
View from the top with the side panel on. It's not super tight, but quite snug.
And it's done! Everything fits and it looks great. I had a bit of a scare when I plugged it in at first. I pushed the power button and... nothing. Not even an LED blink. Turns out the power cord wrapping around to the front of the case, where the PSU is mounted had come loose. I popped it back in, and everything worked perfectly.
And there it is. I love the size and the looks of it and it is inaudible when doing anything other than gaming. I'm getting some black fan screws for the side panel as the silver ones are sorta an eyesore. Now to upgrade peripherals...
The building process was so much fun! Cable management in such a small case was much more of a challenge than in the past, and I really had to think everything through before beginning to build. Even with the absence of tweezer, an allen wrench or a swiss army knife, it all went really smooth and it is my favorite build so far. Having to plan around restrictions when picking parts, made it so enjoyable and satisfying to finally find the perfect part. Thanks to everyone who answered my questions and helped me out along the way.
A bit of backstory: The first money I ever earned went towards my first desktop, when I was 14 years old, and it’s been a couple of rigs since, but my last desktop was put together back in 2011, and now with a small family to take care of, I didn’t feel I could justify spending a lot of cash on a PC I honestly didn’t really need. For a year I’ve been browsing r/buildapc, and slowly began to put together a “if I was to build right now”-build. Eventually I ventured in to the world of small form factor PC’s, inspired by my brothers’ Dancase builds, and I never looked back. r/sffpc and this forum have been great sources of inspiration and knowledge. I sold my old tower and started saving up.
Fast forward to last years Christmas and I had set aside a little bit every month, I was gifted a motherboard from my parents, my in laws chipped in with some cash, my brother borrowed me a graphics card and my wife gifted me “*what I needed*” to get going. I’m 29, but I was as giddy as I was at 14. Coming from a Phenom X4 II 965, a HD 5970 and a 60 GB SSD this was quite an upgrade. After months of window gazing, planning, asking questions and seeking information I was finally ready to order.
I ended up with this:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased For $147.00)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-L12 37.79 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $49.00)
Motherboard: ASRock - B450 GAMING-ITX/AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For $0.00)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Intel - 320 Series 300 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Kingston - A1000 960 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Purchased For $160.00)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 960 4 GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair - SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply (Purchased For $118.00)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit (Purchased For $0.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80mm Fan (Purchased For $17.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A12x25 PWM 60.1 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For $27.00)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-A12x25 PWM 60.1 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For $27.00)
Keyboard: Logitech - K350 Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard (Purchased For $0.00)
Headphones: Kingston - HyperX Cloud II 7.1 Channel Headset (Purchased For $0.00)
Speakers: Creative Labs - Pebble 2.0 4.4 W 2ch Speakers (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Dell 2407WFP-HC Black / Silver 24" WideScreen Screen 1920 x 1200 Resolution LCD Flat Panel Monitor (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Logitech Performance MX (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Sharkoon QB One (Purchased For $43.00)
Total: $702.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-22 15:49 EST-0500
The prices are without tax (25 % in Denmark), and anything set as $0 were either gifts or parts from my old rig.
Noticeable parts:
Case: Initially I fell in love with the Louqe Ghost S1, but in the end it was too pricy for me. After a lot of digging around I eventually ended up with the Sharkoon QB One, and it turns out it was the perfect case for me. It’s quite small at 14.9 liters, it has quite good cooling possibilities, features dust filters, it's cheap and personally I think it looks great. I’ve never been one for windows and RGB and the QB One looks great, if not eye catching
It even includes a ATX to SFX PSU bracket.CPU cooler and fans: As mentioned before, I wanted to build in a Ghost, and part of me still likes the idea of moving the parts into one someday. I chose the L12 as it would enable me to reuse it with a Ghost build. I chose the Vengeance LPX RAM, as I will try to cram an A12x15 under there eventually. Looks like there’s room enough. The rest of the fans I got since I have a special brown/beige part of my heart and they are fantastic. The build is silent at idle and doing office work or browsing, and when I’m gaming I can only hear the graphics card.
Speakers: Last and sorta least. They’re dirt cheap budget speakers, but they are surprisingly good. For gaming and prolonged music sessions I always use the headset anyways. They were a gift for my mother, as I recommended them for her, and she surprised me by buying an extra pair for me. For anyone on a tight budget, I'd highly recommend them.
The building process was so much fun! Cable management in such a small case was much more of a challenge than in the past, and I really had to think everything through before beginning to build. Even with the absence of tweezer, an allen wrench or a swiss army knife, it all went really smooth and it is my favorite build so far. Having to plan around restrictions when picking parts, made it so enjoyable and satisfying to finally find the perfect part.
Now to the build!
The parts:
The parts! A whole lot of brown and beige in there. And I have the first thing I needed as well: A table.
CPU and RAM in. The CPU was a demo model, so I had to clean it before mounting. The RAM are as low as I had hoped. So far, so good.
PSU, 2.5" SSD and CPU cooler installed in the case. Eventually I ended up taking the cooler off and redoing the cable management, which was much easier. The faint of heart might want to look away before the next picture...
Yeah, so I had to do some "modifications" to the 80 mm fan. It simply wouldn't fit with the L12. I went to town with a diagonal cutter and smooth it down a bit with a file and sand paper.
It's not an elegant solution, but it fits. The L12 wouldn't fit, orientated any other way, so my hands were forced.
Cooler fully mounted and graphics card in. My next purchase will be some cable combs, to tidy up the black spaghetti in there. Almost done.
A12x25's mounted on the side panel, ready to close up.
View from the top with the side panel on. It's not super tight, but quite snug.
And it's done! Everything fits and it looks great. I had a bit of a scare when I plugged it in at first. I pushed the power button and... nothing. Not even an LED blink. Turns out the power cord wrapping around to the front of the case, where the PSU is mounted had come loose. I popped it back in, and everything worked perfectly.
And there it is. I love the size and the looks of it and it is inaudible when doing anything other than gaming. I'm getting some black fan screws for the side panel as the silver ones are sorta an eyesore. Now to upgrade peripherals...
The building process was so much fun! Cable management in such a small case was much more of a challenge than in the past, and I really had to think everything through before beginning to build. Even with the absence of tweezer, an allen wrench or a swiss army knife, it all went really smooth and it is my favorite build so far. Having to plan around restrictions when picking parts, made it so enjoyable and satisfying to finally find the perfect part. Thanks to everyone who answered my questions and helped me out along the way.
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