System Builder Marathon Q2 2015: $1600 Mini Gaming PC
- Introduction
- $1600 Mini Gaming PC
- Component Selection
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Synthetics
- Gaming
- Media, Productivity And Compression
- Power, Heat, Efficiency And Value
Because you asked for it, we put an Intel Core i5 and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 into a mini-ITX case. But how does it perform compared to its larger twin?
System Builder Marathon Q2 2015
Here are links to each of the five articles in this quarter’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published). And remember, these systems are all being given away at the end of the marathon.
To enter the giveaway, please fill out this SurveyGizmo form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!
- $1600 Performance PC
- $1600 Mini Performance PC
- $1600 Gaming PC
- $1600 Mini Gaming PC
- System Value Compared
$1600 Mini Gaming PC
I’m back, this time with a smaller mini-ITX gaming machine. And, in following the naming convention of the first machine, which I called Big Build, I’d like to introduce “Mini Build”. Yes, the creativity runs strong in someone else’s veins, not mine.
Working on this quarter’s System Builders Marathon (SBM) was quite an experience. The biggest lesson learned from my first machine was to allocate a lot more time for this project. Piecing together the system isn’t the hard part. It’s the testing that can take a while.
As I mentioned before, Thomas and I were handed a budget of $3200 each for this quarter’s System Builder Marathon, which we took to build a pair of $1600 PCs. Thomas was asked to focus on CPU-driven builds, while my machines were more graphics-heavy.
Working with mini-ITX is always challenging and if you don’t do the right research, you’ll end up sending back plenty of return items because you misjudged a measurement somewhere. I know this especially since most of my previous builds were small form factor machines I built at home. Fortunately, I learned and didn’t have return anything this time. Actually…I did return something, but I’ll save that for the Component Installation section below.
Here’s what I used for my Mini Build:
Case | Cooling | Cooling | CPU | Graphics | Memory | Motherboard | PSU | Storage | Storage | Optical | Software | |
Products |
Rosewill Neutron |
SilverStone NT06-PRO |
SilenX EFX-12-15 |
Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon |
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 |
G.Skill TridentX Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) |
MSI Z97I AC |
Rosewill RD600-M |
Samsung 850 Pro (256GB) |
Seagate Barracuda (1TB) |
Samsung DVD Writer |
Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit) |
Pricing |
- Platform Cost: $1402
- Total Hardware Cost: $1495
- Complete System Price: $1595
Component Selection
EVGA GeForce GTX 980
Graphics
Wanting to add some variety between Big Build and Mini Build, I took a chance and went with EVGA’s GeForce GTX 980. It was $35 more than my other machine’s Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980, but since I needed to focus on graphics, I let the extra cost slide. Remember that the graphics component of this machine is going to be the centerpiece of this project.
I will say one thing between the Gigabyte and this EVGA card; the former comes with plenty of video interface options including three DisplayPorts outputs, two DVI connections and one HDMI port. The EVGA brings us three ports including one each of DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI. Fortunately, the 4K monitors I’ve been using work with the EVGA card just fine.
Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon
CPU
The quad-core/quad-thread Devil’s Canyon processor is back. Why? Because it’s the only fast, unlocked Core i5 I can use. When it comes to the CPU, I’m really not expecting this machine to beat any of Thomas’, Don’s or Paul’s past i7-based projects. My angle is graphics, but I still needed some decent processing power to run Mini Build.
If anything, since Thomas took a decent step down and went with the PNY GeForce GTX 970 for his graphics requirement, I had to return the favor and go with the Core i5. Let’s just hope I don’t regret it.
SilverStone NT06-PRO
Cooling
Since I was going with a smaller case this time, I needed to take space-saving tactics into consideration. I originally wanted one of the Noctua CPU cooling kits, but I needed something high up enough that would clear the components on a mini-ITX motherboard. So considering that, and since I was worried about a possible lack of ceiling room, I went with the SilverStone NT06-Pro low profile cooler. Aside from being just over 26mm above the motherboard, the NT06-Pro’s designed offset would really come in handy since I’m working with a smaller space and I wanted sure that the heat sink and fan didn’t get in the way of the EVGA graphics card.
Also, with my emphasis on cooling, since the motherboard will be sitting horizontally in the case, above the power supply, I could invert a fan on the roof of the chassis and blow air directly onto the CPU cooler’s fan, adding extra air cooling to keep things rather chill, especially when we get to overclocking.
G.Skill TridentX Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Memory
When it comes to RAM, I basically tried to find the fastest/cheapest I could get. Filtering through the Newegg site, G.Skill kept coming up on my search results, especially since I was trying to get something with a CAS Latency of 10 or better. I was also trying to choose RAM that I knew Thomas wouldn’t be using, but the more I filtered, the less options were listed. In the end, I had to go with 16GB (2 x 8GB) of G.Skill’s Trident X series. At $140, it was just the right price for me to include DDR3-2400 memory in Big Build. On the plus side, I do get heat sinks, and since the memory is going in a bigger box, I don’t have to worry about clearance for the added height.
Samsung 850 Pro (256GB)
Storage
A favorite SSD from last year, Samsung’s 850 Pro performed well amongst its competition, but its high cost often kept it out of the hands of eager system builders.
A year later, here we are. We get to use a 3D V-NAND-powered 850 Pro as the system drive that will boot the machine and run Windows 8. For these builds, I went with the 256GB version of this solid-state drive. The 512GB 850 Pro was definitely out of my price range, so I subsidized Big Build’s storage needs with a 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD. I seem to have better luck with Seagate drives when it comes to long-term use than Western Digital drives. And though I’m paying a couple dollars more for my preferred HDD, I’m backing the longevity of Seagate’s product with my own experience. Regardless, Mini Build’s total 1.25TB of capacity should be enough space to hold the OS and plenty of games.
MSI Z97I AC
Motherboard
With the MSI Z971 AC mini-ITX being a one-time winner of our Tom’s Hardware Editor Award, it wasn’t hard for me to consider choosing it for this quarter’s SBM. These boards were once easy to find in the local computer store motherboard section, but now they’ve slowly disappeared out of existence.
Though we didn’t really discuss wireless networking for this quarter’s SBM, I thought the biggest bonus for the MSI Z97I AC was its built-in Wi-Fi controller. Personally, I prefer copper over wireless for my desktops. However, if you’re working on a computer small enough to be semi-portable, or one that's placed away from any nearby network cabling, then the 867 Mb/s 5GHz radio makes the most sense.
Rosewill RD600-M
PSU
The 600W Rosewill RD600-M was on sale and cost me $49.99. Though a PSU is a core component for any computer, most of my money went to the graphics and host processing subsystems. So, similar to my stance on which components to buy for Big Build, I went the same direction for Mini Build. Price is a major factor. As long as the power supply was modular enough where I could pick the cables I needed to use, the better. There’s no real point in stuffing a lot of unnecessary wires into a case that could potentially have airflow problems.
Rosewill Neutron
Case
I probably spent the most time focusing on the aforementioned SilverStone CPU cooler and my case of choice, Rosewill's Neutron. For this second build, I wanted some sturdiness in the construction as well as some decent headroom for the CPU cooler.
As for overall design, I like the case’s split-level layout. The power supply and the drive cage sit on the floor of the case, while the motherboard sits horizontally on a second level tray. The case’s size is not what you would expect for a mini-ITX system and is actually quite big. Because of my low-profile CPU cooler, I had enough space to add an additional fan to blow cool air down directly onto the processor.
Hardware Installation
Overall
For the most part, Mini Build was assembled without too many issues. The mini-ITX motherboard’s compact size and the dimensions of the case didn’t leave much room for my hands, but they were workable. One constant issue I had was accidentally pulling cable connectors off of a motherboard pin every time I had to nudge a tight harness out of the way. Since the pins for the case’s front-panel electronics were underneath the heat sink, reconnecting a loose wire usually required unscrewing the motherboard tray from the chassis and pushing it away from the case’s back wall. Rosewill definitely put some thought into this case because it added a couple of rails that the motherboard tray sits on, making it easy to access the back of the platform in loosened cable situations like the ones I had.
The rails sitting horizontally below the graphics card and above the hard drive cage came in really handy when I had to work on the back end of the motherboard without having to completely remove it.
Motherboard Problems
When I said that I got pretty good at not having to return items due to bad judgment calls, I was telling the truth. In the case of my returned MSI Z97I AC motherboard, it was different matter.
Once the machine was built, I let it run for a while just to make sure it stayed powered on. Mini Build worked fine fFor the first few days, until one night when I went to reboot it. I kept getting a “no signal detected” error on the 4K display that was connected to the EVGA card. I confirmed that the cable was fine and that the monitor’s DisplayPort interface was functional. I even swapped out the EVGA graphics card with Big Build’s Gigabyte card and confirmed that it wasn’t a graphics card problem; the EVGA card worked when I put it in Big Build, while the Gigabyte card couldn’t send out any signal on behalf of Mini Build.
At this point, the problem was either the motherboard or the Rosewill power supply. I pulled a be quiet! Dark Power Pro from one of our reference systems, connected it to the MSI board and its components, and still had the “no signal detected” message come up. Just to be sure, I also grabbed my multimeter and checked the two power leads that plug into the GPU, confirming that voltage was there.
At this point, my guess was a bad PCIe slot. I did have some extra cards to test with, and the only ones that worked were smaller ones like Sapphire’s R7 240.
After all of that, I gave in and sent the motherboard back to the vendor for replacement.
Cooling
The Rosewill Neutron case really grew on me, especially when it came to having a nice cooling configuration. You can fit up to six fans: two on top, two in front and two in back. For this build, I ended up using five fans since the DVD writer I added takes up the space where a sixth top fan would have gone. The two fans in front blow air into the case, with the bottom fan blowing air straight to the storage drives and out the back through the rear-lower fan. The top-front fan blows air over the motherboard and exhausts out of the computer through the rear-upper fan.
The Rosewill Neutron’s split-level design helps the case keep heat-producing elements separated. Even the PSU had vents on the case’s side panel.
Overclocking
Since I haven’t overclocked an MSI motherboard before, I did a little digging and found that I can use MSI’s Control Center software to help set the necessary parameters. I was curious about the software, so I downloaded and installed it on Mini Build. However, that little experiment lasted about ten minutes, since it crashed whenever I started making changes to the core voltage. So, off into the BIOS I went.
This time I went hunting for the magic numbers from high to low. I started at 4.4GHz, but Mini Build wasn’t as giving as Big Build. After some stress testing with Prime95, I ended up with a Core i5-4690K running at 4.2GHz and 1.24V.
CPU settings for Mini Build’s overclocking.
For the graphics card overclocking, I had to register on EVGA’s website to download and install PrecisionX. Using the program, I went a little extreme with the settings at first, thinking that 3D Mark’s Fire Strike benchmark would be a good indicator for overclocking stability.
The highest overall score I got in Fire Strike was 12013, and that was thanks to some tinkering and a little advice from our other techs. At this level, the fans on Mini Build were running all-out and I was ready to start the first round of testing, including the multimedia, productivity and synthetic apps. Games were last.
EVGA’s GPU overclocking tool, Precision X. Note that these settings are the original numbers used before toning for game testing.
Loud as it was, Mini Build finished most of the testing without a hitch. However, things turned the other way as I started to go through the game benchmarks. I ran into some major problems, especially after exiting Far Cry 3, Battlefield 4 and Arma 3. I saw driver crashes and restarts, along with an occasional blue screen and reboot. The reality of the situation reared its ugly head when I was trying to test Grid 2 and couldn’t pass the first 30 seconds of our benchmark without one of the three monitors going out on me, a precursor to a full system reboot.
At this point in the game, I chose to address the graphics overclocking and rerun all the game testing with more conservative settings. For example, where I once tried to pull off a graphics memory overclock of 600MHz, I dropped down to just 53MHz just to finish my testing.
So, what’s the lesson here? Choose how you interpret your benchmarking validation tools wisely.
Synthetics
Out of the gate, we see that Mini Build’s competition is tough. Keep in mind that the $1750 rig built in Q1 has two graphic cards in it, giving it the expected boost over Mini Build. We see this in the 3DMark graph. I’m not worried though; we‘re just getting started.
Now, when you look at the PCMark results, you may not see a complete win. However, Mini Build’s Creative score isn’t too far behind the rest.
Also, keep in mind that we’re comparing an i5 to a couple of Core i7-based PCs. The i7 may have more horsepower than Mini Build’s i5, but we’re trying to look at the whole package.
Gaming
Looking at the scores in the gaming sections, we don’t see anything too amazing. Mini Build’s competition is tough and working off of bigger architectures. It’s interesting to see that in the Grid 2 and Battlefield 4 charts, Mini Build’s EVGA graphics card performed pretty well when it came to serving up 5760×1080 graphics.
Media, Productivity And Compression
We definitely see the deficiencies of Mini Build’s Core i5 compared to the other machines’ i7s. Based on typical home- and work-related tasks, we can see that Mini Build wouldn’t be comfortable as a work PC. Its scores are based on a certain amount of time it takes to do something, and in some cases, those times may be too long.
Power, Heat, Efficiency And Value
Using a combination of a programs like Prime95 and RealTemp, we get to see and measure the amount of stress a CPU encounters through its temperature. This technique came in really handy during overclocking, as we were able to see how close we were getting to the Intel CPU’s 100-degree threshold.
We also get to see the power drawn by the GPU as Mini Build’s measured wattage shows us the impact of running a gaming PC in a home. It’s also interesting to note that the combined power drawn by the $1750 Q1 2015 overclocked PC is over 10 times the amount of the same machine when it’s idle.
Looking at the overall performance stats, we already know that Mini Build was working with a critical deficiency, its CPU, but that its only real saving grace is its gaming performance. You also see this similar scenario in the 5760×1080 chart at the very end.
While it’s definitely not an overall high-performing home/business PC, Mini Build was designed for one thing in mind: gaming. Looking back, maybe I was too generous in going with a computer using a Core i5 processor. Had I gone with a slower i7, we would see better scores in some of the non-graphics-related charts.
Still, it was a lot of fun building both Big Build and Mini Build for you. The experience was great, and it brought back a lot of memories from this old IT guy’s system building days.
[Source : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/q2-2015-newegg-system-builder-marathon-1600-mini-gaming-pc,4204.html]