Greetings and salutations! It's been a while since I've been active on the forums. Hope I haven't missed too much! I think I'm finally ready to pull the trigger on a new build. My current machine (see sig) is a very dated first-gen Intel Core series. This time around I think I want to go with an mATX or ITX build. Since I clearly tend to squeeze as much life out of my hardware as possible, I am both way out of the loop with what's new and hot and also I need this new rig to be as future-resistant as possible. This is primarily a gaming rig. I will probably reuse my video card, power supply and possibly CPU cooler (case limited) for now, so I'm mostly looking for suggestions for a motherboard, CPU, RAM, M.2, and case. Ideal price point is sub $800. Show me what you got!
Honestly you have picked the worst possible time to build a gaming PC. Due to overhaling demand and miners there are no GPU's at anything close to RRP. Your $800 will be what you need just to buy a half decent GPU in today's market. You best off buying a prebuilt, i know that sounds filthy coming from bit-tech but it's the reality we are living in.
If this is meant to be a gaming rig and you want it to be future proof, the HD7970 is not going to cut it for much longer. You can buy a 3060ti for about £650 but that is sayonara to your budget. https://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi...ay-tracing-graphics-card-4864-core-1410mhz-17
If your PSU was bought with the rest of your 1st gen rig, don't reuse it. It won't have the cables you need for new GPUs (when you can get hold of one) for a start. And it's getting old. It may well be fine, but the last thing you want is for it to let go and take out your new hardware with it. I find it easier to pick a case you like first and work from that with components. You then know what your restrictions are on mobo size, cooling and PSU size.
Very sound advice. PSU has the potential to take everything with it and is well worth the peace of mind it to replace it. Matx has kind of been forgotten and left to rust, with more focus put on itx, but there are a lot of compact cases that once would have been matx proportions, capable of holding full atx boards; fractal meshify c/meshify 2 compact, nzxt h510 flow, Thermaltake divider 300 air, be quiet 500dx. If you do want as small as possible, the cooler master nr200p is a good itx case. Not so small that it's a nightmare to work with, capable of taking a 280mm aio and a big GPU. Thermaltake v21 is a little bigger, but also a big more flexible in terms of layout and cooling. Then there's more traditional layout cases like the Phanteks Eclipse P200A, JONSBO V9. As VB said, pic a case you like and then build around it. That way you know how big you can go with PSU, CPU cooler etc.
