the objective with our ultimate compact gaming build guide was to build an
extremely powerful basically as good as
it gets gaming rig within the confines of an extremely small chassis we wanted
to have the option to overclock this beast we wanted to maintain acceptable
thermals and we wanted to have it not be too loud this truly is a have your cake
and eat it too machine as usual we're going to start with the rationale behind
each of the components why we chose that particular part and some of the other
considerations that you may want to think about if you're going to undergo a
similar project and then after that we're going to show you guys the actual
process of building the machine with nice close-ups of what we're doing so
you can follow along and then finally we
are going to show off the finished machine including some performance
numbers which i think you are going to find to be quite impressive
before we begin though i would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor thank
you Intel for making this build guide possible we can't do these videos
without the support of great companies like Intel they're the ones who are
actually providing us the budget to set aside a week to plan shoot and edit this
video so there's ah they're awesome guys over there huge thanks again to Intel
for making this happen now when you cram a lot of components into a very small
enclosure the biggest considerations are usually the actual physical size
constraints and keeping thermals at
acceptable and safe levels for that reason part selection is absolutely
critical when the individual components in your system run too hot you are left
with basically two undesirable options so number one is
you can just leave them to their own devices and their automatic fan control
algorithms especially graphics cards will just ramp up fan speeds to
uncomfortable levels which um i personally find quite offensive although
it might not matter to you if you're a headphone user so your mileage may vary
on that one and then option number two is that the components will simply run
too hot which can cause reliability problems in both the short and in the
long term now we're going to walk you through each of the parts in the system
one by one to give you an idea of why we chose it and to give you some tips and
pointers for how to choose your own whether you are using a small case like
this or if you're just building a regular non-compact gaming machine
because remember guys it's not always all about size right
right the Intel core i7 4770k with a be quiet!
shadow rock 2 cooler was our weapon of choice for this machine now particularly
before overclocking Intel's 4th gen core series processors offer unbeatable
performance per watt so that's the heat output which is necessary for what we're
trying to achieve here now you could make the argument that there's another
4th gen processor the 4670k that would be very very suitable for this build but
we opted for the 4770k with hyper threading just because we're kind of
going for ultimate here and while most games right now are not going to benefit
from the additional threads that improvement in the coding of games is
definitely coming and there are many gamers who also do other things with
their machines such as video editing or other heavily threaded workloads
when it came to the memory we actually didn't go full on ultimate here more RAM
and higher memory speed each deliver very limited performance improvements in
games so um i mean right now it looks like in
battlefield 4 there's some benefit to faster memory but that's a bit of an
isolated case so we decided to go with something pretty standard we went with a
16 gig dual channel kit of 2133 megahertz memory from a data we could
have gone all out like 20 400 megahertz or 3000 megahertz or whatever else the
case may be but the reason we went with this option is that when you go 2133
you're actually not paying much more than a 1600 megahertz kit so really
that's the reason why just because it wasn't costing us more once you go past that it starts to get more expensive the
reason we went with 16 gigs is because it gives us more than enough for now
with the option to upgrade in the future without totally overspending on the
memory in comparison to the rest of the system 16 gigs also gives us a little
bit of flexibility for more memory intensive applications like the video
editing we mentioned before micro atx performance motherboards often
actually deliver a pretty compelling value compared to their atx counterparts
even if you were to use them in a full size case and not an matx case but
anyway we went with the g1 sniper m5 from Gigabyte because its optimal pci
express slot spacing allows us to actually install
two dual slot graphics cards running at PCIe 8x gen 3 which is more than enough
bandwidth even for 780 ti's and have a
leftover PCIe forex slot for an additional add-in card of our choice
down the road whatever we want to put in it that's not bad for matx not to
mention it comes with all the latest bells and whistles including swappable
op-amps for the on-board audio one swappable op-amp killer networking
overclocking options galore and all of that at under 200
the green color scheme will also go very nicely with our green graphics cards and
green led lighting effects but of course i'm not that shallow so the color had
nothing to do with it it was all about the technical technological superiority
i like green for the case we went with the bitfenix
phenom m it uses the same internals as the prada gm and while it doesn't have
the same like hardcore water cooling and
hard drive mounting options as the itx version does it still has room for a
large air cooling heatsink for the CPU and the added expansion for pci express
cards is awesome it features five pci slots at the back
for future expansion which is a huge benefit if you ever wanted to say for
example add dual graphics cards or something like that it's also small
enough to easily pack this sli rig around with you to lan parties or
wherever else you might need to take an immensely powerful well-cooled little
rig speaking of cooling it can accept plenty of cooling fans which we can run
at low rpms when we're idling for quiet operation then ramp up as needed we'll
be using spectre pro green led fans for this machine spectre pros are one of the
only really good looking fans out there that also have performance and quiet
operation on their side so there are a couple of other exceptions but for the
most part you gotta choose performance or looks well we chose both
once again guys storage is so personal
but we're gonna go with something pretty standard for this one which should be
applicable to many different people an Intel 530 series 240 gig SSD will act as
our os and key application slash games
drive while a western digital 4 terabyte black will be our storage powerhouse to
handle a massive steam library media
collection and all that kind of stuff and still provide excellent performance
but with huge storage this SSD plus hard
drive configuration has grown in popularity over the last couple of years
a lot and i think we're probably going to be sticking with it for quite a while
for most high performance users i mean
until something paradigm shifting happens with respect to SSD pricing and
capacity or maybe some other new technology comes along it makes a ton of
sense to go with fast small storage and then slower
massive storage so you get the best of both worlds well guys for us
there was really only one ultimate gaming graphics card configuration we've
gone with two gtx 780 ti graphics cards
from evga i really don't know what to say about these other than that they're
the fastest gaming cards on the market
and they're thermal and acoustic performance made them an obvious choice
over the red team this time around for this specific build because of the
constraints we have in terms of space we went with rear exhaust cards versus an
open cooler like evga's acx cooler because we felt we would rather
compromise GPU temperatures a little bit we'll have the GPU running a little bit
hotter for the sake of keeping the rest of the inside of the case cooler
remember that not every component in your system can be read with a
temperature monitor so for things like your power delivery components on the
motherboard lower ambient temperatures inside the system can make a big
difference to long-term reliability so just because you have a couple graphics
cards in there and your CPU temps look okay and your GPU temps look okay that
doesn't mean that an open air cooler is necessarily the best choice for you so
rear exhaust for very small builds is definitely recommended peripheral wise
for this rig honestly guys i'm not sure how much sense it makes to keep
including these since everyone's choices will be so different but tell you what
let me know if you'd like me to keep featuring peripherals that i think makes
sense for each build and we'll see if we keep doing it in the
future anyway we just got our hands on the ducky shine three so for our all-out
machine we are suggesting this all-out keyboard unfortunately ours are blue
backlight so they won't match the rest of the green theme here but don't worry
there's a green one available and it's available in all the main cherry mx key
switch types and in either a 104 key layout or a 10 keyless layout so you can
get something to match your rig for sure for our mouse we are going with the
deathadder 2013. again it's green to
match our build which isn't the main factor here because the main factor here
is the fact that it features one of the best sensors on the market as well as
excellent ergonomics this is an extremely well regarded mouse out there
right now and i have already recommended it in previous build guides but i have
no problem recommending it again
finally for our monitor this is kind of big gotta go get it
we've gone with the benq xl 2420 te if
you saw my unboxing you'll already know that for a 144 hertz monitor it is far
and away the best looking one we've ever
seen in terms of color and viewing angle the one caveat is that it doesn't
support g-sync so yeah until monitors that support
g-sync start arriving i don't know that i can recommend investing in a gaming
monitor right now but if i absolutely had to then that would be the one
which leads us finally to our operating system we went with Windows 8 because
that's all you can really get right now for gaming maybe at some point here
steam os is going to be an option but that is still very much in beta right
now in fact we have it running upstairs very much in beta not ready yet Windows
8 for this particular machine when it comes to pre-build safety and
setup basically what you want is to start with a safe static free
workstation and anti-static strap i like to keep mine on my ankle to keep it out
of the way you also want to make sure there's no unnecessary clutter around so
that you can lose screws or trip on something and knock something over
because that would be disastrous next up all we really need for assembly these
days is a multi-bit screwdriver and the last thing is i always recommend
doing your first build and powering it up outside the case to ensure that
everything works while it's nice and easy to reach in case something goes
wrong and you have to take it back to the store or send it back to the manufacturer the motherboard box makes a
very handy non-conductive test bench for this outside the case installation
we'll start with CPU installation after carefully removing the CPU from the
package align the little golden triangle on the corner of the CPU with the
triangle on the plastic cover then what you're going to do is lift the retention
ARM by pushing away then up without
removing the plastic cover that protects the delicate pins inside the socket just
leave that in place for now then what we're going to do is gently place the
CPU in the socket the risk of damage to your system is highest at this point in
the build process so be extremely careful if you're forcing it then there
is definitely a problem once the CPU is in place pull down the retention cover
then pull down the retention ARM lift it out away a little bit and then
lock it under that little clamp right there once you've done that there it goes the
plastic cover will pop itself right off put that in the motherboard box for safe
keeping if you ever need to return your motherboard they will require you to
send it in with this cover because once again those pins inside that socket are
extremely fragile ddr3 installation is
simple pull back the tabs on your motherboard
align the notches on your memory with the notches inside the sockets then
insert it gently and finally press firmly down on the memory on both sides
until the latch clicks back into place on its own
then you're done always install matched memory sticks in
the color matched slots on modern motherboards for dual channel operation
this gives you better performance when it comes to heatsink installation
everyone is a little bit different and
be quiet! mounting systems are not always my favorite but they do have solidly
built products at good prices so that's why we went for it in this particular
case because it's going to fit quite well with the rest of our hardware but
still give us maximum cooling on the CPU so don't be intimidated by all the
little tiny bits and screws and pieces right here we're going to show you how
exactly it all goes together on the board so we start
with the back plate you position the back plate so that the screws on the
back of the little back plate that's already on the motherboard poke through
the much bigger back plate then you're going to take each of these four longer
screws and put them through the board so that we can access them on the top
the next step is to take the little plastic washers
and clip them from the top so that they stay in place and don't fall back
through the board so now they're going through the back plate and they are
stuck in place now that the back plate is securely in
place we can thread on the nuts that will support the CPU hold down use the
included wrench to hold them in place from the front of the board while
tightening them from the back of the board with a phillips head screwdriver
now we're done with our board for a little bit and it's time to work on the heatsink itself simply use the four
countersunk screws to attach the hold downs to the bottom of the heatsink
that's how we're actually going to well hold it down onto the CPU now this next
step is optional but to maintain the awesome looks of this system we are
going to swap out the stock fan which is actually a very good fan with a spectre
pro just remove the metal clips on the stock fan and then put them back onto the new
fan exactly the same way it's actually quite quite simple and now it's looking
good oh yeah next up put a line of thermal compound
which is included with your heatsink onto the CPU and then position the
heatsink with a sensible fan orientation
so we're going for kind of a pseudo push pull configuration so once the
motherboard's in the case the rear exhaust will actually help the fan that
we installed as a push van pull air through that massive heat sink also
don't forget to orient the fan when you're installing it so that the power
lead reaches to the CPU fan header without any extra cable mess you know
lying around all over the place solid cable management starts at every step
making sure that you're maintaining it so you can you can actually plug that in
now we're ready for that i think at this point you'll start to see why we went
with a low profile memory kit from adata for this build tall memory modules can
interfere with large CPU heat sinks in some cases
get it in cases they can interfere because this is a computer and we're
going to put it in a case and oh man i cracked myself up
okay no but seriously we're we actually aren't quite done with this yet uh we'll
use that wrench again from the front and then the screwdriver again from the back
but this time we are tightening nuts onto the top of the hold down
again this isn't my favorite CPU mounting mechanism in the world but the
good news is that once they're all on there it is extremely solid and it's not
going anywhere now my friends it is time to start
working on the case so we're going to begin by taking off both side panels by
removing the four thumb screws at the back what i really recommend doing is
taking these side panels and putting them back into the case box for now
because we won't need them until a bit later the phenom m is a little bit
different from most cases though in that we will need it at some point during the
assembly process here because you can see that the front i o is actually
located on one of the side panels where we have our power and reset buttons as
well as our front audio ports and our usb 3 ports one little trick for this
case as well that we're going to actually do is we're going to switch
sides and we're going to put the side panel with the i o on the left hand side
of the case and we're going to take this side panel move it over to the other side i found that when i was working on
this case recently that it was a little bit easier to do cable management that
way and the only drawback is that the logo on your power and reset buttons
will be upside down in the finished product
now that the case is open undo the twist tie that's holding the accessory box in
place that box contains all the screws you need to assemble your system so um
please don't lose it and for that matter don't lose that twist tie twist ties are
a handy dandy reusable way of doing cable management later on you can even
cut them to size according to what you need if you have nice long ones like
this next you'll need to remove the brace that's across the side panel just
take out the four countersunk screws and pull that out and put it somewhere safe
make sure you also put those screws somewhere safe i recommend the accessory
box that already contains all of your other screws
now it is time to replace all the fans that came with your case if you want to
the ones that come with it are decent but we're throwing inspector pro so yeah
it'll be much more difficult to try and do this later so make sure you do fans pretty much first we'll start at the
bottom by removing the air shield that comes on the case i don't plan to
reinstall this because we're going to need that airflow space next we'll
remove the four screws that are holding in the bottom fan
take off the stock fan and then we're going to reuse those screws to replace
it with our spectre pro i also changed the orientation to turn this one into an
intake to bring fresh air to both my CPU heatsink and also up to my graphics
cards we then repeat that same procedure for the rear fan replacing it this time
with a 140 millimeter spectre pro just to get a little bit more airflow just a
reminder here guys make sure you're checking your fan orientations as you're
installing each of them it's nice to have logos the right side up in the
finished build but it's even nicer to have short easy to manage runs to the
fan headers on your motherboard once everything's installed now we would have
liked to install more fans in the top of this case two 120 millimeter fans up
there would have been absolutely perfect for fresh air for those graphics cards
but unfortunately the fans don't quite fit between the metal of our chassis and
the plastic outer layer and when given the choice between a board with tight
spacing between the graphics cards which would cause one of the cards to be
starved for airflow but it allow top fans to be installed for even better
airflow to the other card and then going with this board which offers much better
graphics card spacing but doesn't allow for those top fans to be installed on
the other side um i think we that was a sacrifice we were
willing to make not to mention of course having the graphics card spaced out like
that gives us a future expansion and the ability to install another pci express
card here power supply installation starts by taking out the thumb screw that holds in
the power supply bracket here at the front of the case
the holes on this bracket do allow for the fan on the power supply to face
inward towards the components or outwards towards the front of the case
where it can take in air from these little vents on the side at the front
here but the design of the case favors
inward facing for my build however i don't have much air intake because i
wasn't able to install those top fans so in order to keep my intake and exhaust
as balanced as i can which is optimal for cooling i wanted to install the
power supply with the fan facing towards the front of the case so it could pull
in its own fresh air then exhausted out the bottom of the chassis without
affecting the pressure of the inside of the case the air pressure
so i had to do a quick double check to make sure that all of my cables would
reach with acceptable cable management to the places that they needed to go and
then i was ready to commit and screw the bracket into the power supply in my
chosen orientation now i'd like to take this opportunity to point out that the
pure power 700 watt power supply we're using is by no means the only option for
this build in fact it's not even really that high end for something that's like
an ultimate build i was just trying to make a point that modular power supplies
like this Corsair ax860i aren't always
the best option especially when you're planning to use all of the connected
cables anyway because modular power supplies tend to be larger to
accommodate that modular interface so as long as we can manage the cables or use
them all we're not really getting any benefit out of the modular interface the
other point i was trying to make is about the power efficiency of the
components we're using this 700 watt power supply will handle it i'll show
you guys that at the end of the video but with all that said it's only an 80
plus bronze power supply and all that so an ax860i or something similar would
also be a great choice for this particular build i guess the other thing
is whoops excuse me we always use modular power supplies so i'm shaking
things up a little bit anyway to finish up the power supply installation we
align the little notches on the bracket slide the power supply now connected to
the bracket back in put the thumb screw back in place and then flip the case
over so that we can plug in the pass-through
cable that allows the power supply to be installed in the front of the case it's
a little bit tricky it's a little bit of a tight fit but uh we managed to get it
in there now is also a good time to flip that power supply switch to the on
position if it has one to save yourself some headache later when you finish the
build press the power button on the front of the system and it doesn't turn
on and you're like oh what's wrong with that it's just the power button on the bottom
of the power supply but you didn't think of it because it's on the bottom of this case
so before putting in the motherboard there are a few things that we're going to need from the motherboard box grab
your i o shield your sli bridge and your SATA cables we'll need the i o shield
now but the other two you can put aside for later installing the i o shield is a
little bit tricky in this case remember that the motherboard is 180 degrees off
the normal upright orientation so your io shield will go in upside down
compared to normal make sure you get that right at this stage
next find the motherboard standoffs in your box of case screws they look a
little something like this then grab the little included tool that
adapts your phillips head screwdriver to a standoff socket there are four
standoffs already installed but you'll need to use that little tool to install
four additional ones here here here and here
now guys you can see that our power supply is actually already in from our
test fit but don't worry we're going to show you the whole installation process
in just a moment in really small cases like this it can
be handy to pre-connect some of the cables to your motherboard before
actually lowering the motherboard into the case particularly the 8-pin CPU
connector is going to be hard to reach with that large CPU heatsink nearby so
we pre-connected the 8-pin and the 24-pin atx connector it's important here
though to note that we aren't able to fully install the power supply until
after the motherboard is screwed in place due to space constraints
particularly with that large heat sink screwing in the motherboard is pretty
easy but make sure guys that you're using a long enough screwdriver and i
would highly recommend using a magnetic one so just put the eight screws into
the eight different places where they go and again please use a magnetic
screwdriver because otherwise screws can fall into little nooks and crannies in
the case where they're extremely difficult to retrieve a magnetic
screwdriver will not damage your components the magnets are not nearly
strong enough we'll take this chance now to put our
power supply back in but don't worry guys the details for that are coming in
in a second so just sorry don't don't mind the power supply don't mind the man
behind the curtain um and now is also a good time to connect our fans to the
appropriate headers we could plug them directly into the power supply but i
prefer using the onboard connectors on the motherboard to enable BIOS and
software level fan control once the system is up and running
now normally we do cable management as a finishing touch but the way we're doing
this build forces us to do it now while we can actually still get it anything
the first step is to figure out exactly which connectors we're going to need
from the power supply and jam all the extra ones behind the power supply where
it can be completely out of sight and out of the way of our airflow we'll use
some zip ties to keep them in place because they're so tight that i don't
think twist ties will do the trick in this case next we'll position the side panel with
the front connectors next to the case on the left hand side
remember not the side it came on then we'll pass all those cables through to
the front first we'll plug in the front panel hd audio then the front usb 3
these connectors are both keyed and or missing pins so they'll only go in one
way just be gentle with them and then finally the front power and reset
switches as well as the front power and drive activity leds now bitfenix doesn't
color their positive wires which gives it a very clean look but also makes it a
little bit difficult to figure out which one's the positive wires so you will
need to match up the wire indicated in your manual where it needs the positive
one with the tiny little arrow on the
corresponding front header so guys look
really carefully at it and make sure you get these right in fact at
this stage even though there's no graphics card in here you can do a quick power on test and make sure that the
leds illuminate because if you get this wrong now you'll be tearing out your
graphics cards if you need to fix it in order to get at that little spot
speaking of graphics cards next we can tuck our pci express cables out of the
way we will need those soon though when we install the video card so just a
twist tile do the trick to to make sure that you know they're just out of our
way so we can figure out what we're doing and then the next bit is just
one way of doing this okay so if we were using the included cross brace with the
case we could simply install our three and a half inch drive and our two and a
half inch SSD on here throw that into the case and that would work just fine
that's the way it's intended to be used we came up with a bit of a different
idea though i wanted a cleaner look to the internals so i had to grab a couple
of longer SATA cables and i'm going to be running them down to the bottom of
the case where i'll be kind of ghetto mounting the SSD on top of the hard drive i'll show you all that in a minute
but it's up to you which way you want to do it one other thing i like about this
approach with not having the cross brace in there is that it gives me the option
to add a side panel window as like a diy mod later on in the future so it's
totally up to you anyway i grabbed those data cables plugged them into the
motherboard one little trick that i use is because i can never remember for
stacked SATA cables for stacked right angle SATA cable connectors which one is
zero and which one's one like which is the first port is i'll usually plug them
into completely different stacks so that it's easy to
figure out which one is the first one in the boot order by default in the BIOS
and i'll plug my SSD into that one so that if i ever reset my BIOS i don't
have to remember to go and manually reset my SSD as the boot device it's
just a nice little building trick for you anyway once that's done you've got
pretty much everything plugged into the board and it's time to tuck everything
nicely behind that left side panel and close it up don't force this if it's not
closing check what it's stuck on readjust and
try again clean cable management is not worth damaging something so just take
your time and go slow once you do get great cable management going on though
it's very satisfying and having the pci express slot area nice and tidy is great
for airflow for your graphics cards and will help them run cooler and last
longer all right so here it is guys the
not really recommended way that i'm installing my drives into the machine i
am going to put both of them rather than here
right down there under the CPU heatsink there's
lots of airflow from the fans around there but obviously there is a problem
there aren't enough mounting points for two drives more on that later anyway
first we're going to mount our hard drive these rubber grommets and screws
will do nicely for that so just put the grommets in from the bottom of the case
then position the drive in place with the SATA connectors towards the side
panel then screw it in from the bottom alright so there wasn't really any
trouble there well no this is where the magic starts guys i'm going to put my
SSD right here on top of the hard drive how
you might ask well with a very famous canadian invention
velcro just put this stuff on the back of the SSD stick it to the top of the
hard drive and you are ready to rock next install the SATA power cables and
say the data cables onto both drives and then run them along the bottom of the
case for better cable management now that we've done so much work to
prepare ourselves for GPU installation it's actually pretty straightforward all
we do is turn the case around and we find oh this has a tool-less pci slot
mounting mechanism so just undo the screw there lift it up you're going to
have to remove the pci slot covers that are already in there because they're in
the way for us to install our graphics cards then
grab one graphics card i'd probably recommend doing the top one first and
then carefully maneuver it into the case what you'll probably have to do is put
it kind of butt end in first into the five and a quarter inch bay that of
course we can't use because our system is so full of other gear in spite of the
fact that it's in there and in spite of the fact that the front of the case
actually doesn't even have a spot for it you know that's the that's the phenomenon for you anyway uh so you go
ahead and put that in and then press it down firmly then follow up with the
second card pressing it down firmly then go around to the back put that last pci
cover in unless you have another expansion card such as a sound card or
raid card or you know i don't know like a red rocket
card or whatever you want to do with this awesome little machine that is
aside from putting in additional slot covers put the screw back in place and
then just plug those bad boys in since you
put the pci express power cables exactly
where you were going to need them earlier on in the build they're right there so one eight pin and one six pin
connector for each of the graphics cards and we are pretty much done here folks
okay well we're not quite done we're finished the hardware which brings us to
software number one is in a system with two drives i've seen Windows do this
stupid thing enough times that i recommend physically unplugging the
drive you don't want any of your Windows files on so go ahead and unplug the hard
drive from time to time it stores the boot manager on one drive and then the
actual os on the other drive so the system can't boot without both of them
in which is ridiculous so that's just one little tip for you guys then when we
get into the BIOS there's a couple little configuration tips that are just
even just basic stuff like not overclocking or anything like that so just make sure that hci mode is enabled
for all of your SATA ports and ensure that all of the components are detected
correctly your memory is running at the correct speed and all of that good stuff
next up Windows installation is a snap if you know how don't worry about the
lack of a disk drive in this machine you can just grab all the files off of a
disk copy them to a blank usb drive and boot from that it's faster and more
convenient in fact most of the techies i know just have a dedicated usb drive for
doing os installations just like that drivers are the next thing and there's
something that many people struggle with but it's not too overwhelming if you
break it down even devices that already have drivers
installed so Windows update will grab drivers automatically for a lot of this
stuff i would recommend grabbing the latest ones directly from the
manufacturer website so you can start with Gigabyte they make your motherboard
so they should have the latest Intel chipset drivers lan or network drivers
and sound drivers but then when you're finished with that you can just do a
double check and you know head over to Intel's site bigfoot site real tech site
or whoever else manufacture might manufacture the actual chips on the
board itself but as a catch-all the Gigabyte website should be fine and then
you'll also need to go to NVIDIA's website to get the latest drivers for your graphics cards you can pick up
GeForce experience and it'll continue to keep them up to date on its own now if
there's something that you're having trouble finding a driver for here's a
little trick that i use go to the device manager right click the component in
question then just go to details and use the drop down box to go to hardware id
then google the then underscore number
number number and device underscore number number number string and it will
usually tell you exactly what that device is so then you can google that
and you can find a driver for it so now it's conclusion time guys i'd
like to talk about a couple things so one is some performance numbers and some
temperature numbers for our system small systems no longer need to perform
any differently from big systems this right here has a core i7 4770k perfectly
capable of overclocking it also has two gtx 780 ti's it will perform as well as
a much larger system that has that same hardware and in terms of temperatures
honestly considering the size of this little beast i think you guys will be
pre quite impressed by the numbers that we're showing you right now this is
under a gaming load so a real world load
scenario so let's talk about an overall trend as
well aside from this is a great performing reasonably quiet actually
that kind of impressed me i'm quite impressed by that you want to go into the BIOS and configure fan control if
you want to make it this quiet but you know even running at full speed i
think it probably won't bother most people anyway very very quiet so aside
from the performance and the quiet and the compactness let's talk about the
trend towards comportability and smaller
size in the industry in general i think the mac pro is a very interesting
comparison here now this isn't as powerful as a mac pro particularly one
with a 12 core CPU in it i mean the mac pro is more um
workstation oriented it supports quad channel memory it's got dual workstation
grade graphics cards in it as opposed to consumer grade graphics cards although
we could put workstation grade graphics cards in here but it's also
very very very small on the other hand this system is a
little bit bigger it's a very heavy hitter for its intended use which is
heavy gaming and light video editing or other content creation and in my mind
it's much more flexible it's much more
upgradable especially right now this is this is another trend that may
or may not take off but apple's certainly banking on it
less internal expansion and more external expansion i talked a lot while
we were doing this build guide about why i liked this particular board for its
ability to allow us to expand and put dual graphics cards in it and then even
expand further and add an additional pci express slot in it
apple has not given the option at all to expand either
via pci express or even the internal
drives of the device you can just get a bigger single pci express SSD and that's
pretty much all you can do they want you to use Thunderbolt an external expansion
option in order to get things like high throughput storage uh professional grade
expansion cards like capture cards or red rocket cards or other devices um and
they want you to do all that outside the the case so you can actually get like
Thunderbolt to pci express enclosures and things like that and i just have to
wonder a little bit if this isn't a better middle ground because we're
getting that compactness although so it's small enough to sit next to your
monitor without being so small that it's you know really really tiny and
impressively small but we actually get some internal expansion i gotta wonder
if the person who wants a tiny little mac pro
wants an octopus of Thunderbolt cables coming out of it connected to their
monitor and then you know external storage box one and two and three and
four as they end up needing more things i mean we could still put a couple more
drives in this thing without even resorting to anything external
whatsoever just by putting this bracket back into the machine so
there you go guys this to me is a fantastic option it's a pc of course you
could probably find a way to hack and tosh it if you really wanted to run os 10 and i'll be interested to see where
we go from here now we focused a lot throughout this build
guide as well on the high end potential of this system how it's got 4770k and
like dual 780 ti's and it ended up being very expensive but i want to also talk
about some recommended ways to scale back and get better bang for the buck
out of it by going with a 4670k
a single gtx 770 or 780 and a smaller
SSD and hard drive you could actually build a system quite like this but push
the price point down to the point where it really doesn't cost any more than a
regular desktop machine and still offers great expandability for the future so
maybe it's not the kind of thing where you're going to chuck your current pc in the garbage and go buy one of these but
next time you're shopping for a pc whether you move it around a lot and
attend lan events or you don't it just sits in one place you may want to
consider a small machine do you need all that expansion or is this the
interesting middle ground between something like the mac pro and something
like a full-fledged atx desktop tower anyway guys until next time thank you
for watching this ultimate compact gaming system build guide like the video
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