Greetings fellow forum dwellers, So I'm looking into a major upgrade of my 5+ year old system. Let's start with, I know it's not a required upgrade nor it's something that will happen "soon". More like entertaining an idea that I'll slowly research and materialize by saving up the budget for the next month or two. What I'm looking for is small form factor. Not too small, but something that can fit, say, a Silverstone FT-03... Something perhaps cubic and conspicious enough that regular folks will say "what? That cool little black box is your PC?? wicked!" No need for dual-graphics, compactness and functionality is more important than performance, and something that can last me yet another 5 years. Aesthetic? I can deal with that later. So far I'm looking at ASUS Maximus Gene Z87 ($210 I want to be able to overclock my CPU), a cheap Haswell that I can upgrade in the future, and 2x8Gb Kingston HyperX red c10 (it's $70 a stick). I got a pair of WD Blacks I can still use (and perhaps an SSD donated in the near future) and a 660Ti for the graphic workhorse, and that should complete the build. So go at it. Please discuss your thoughts and critiques. Cheaper mobo? i5 vs i3? Haswell vs Sandy? Or even recommend me a nice, compact, mod-able case? (I'm a sucker for Silverstone product though) Hold off the build until end of year? Any kind of input is appreciated. Thank you.
Totally. Getting it as soon as it's out and a pair of 4GB sticks and I'm off to my mini-black-box mod project. Any recommendation on CPU?
yes, i did mention this in the OP. FT-03 is what i was looking for, and i LOVE the design... but i want to make something even shorter so it's more like a cube. Short of building it from scratch, might just have to buy an FT-03 and chop half of it...
oh wow, wait. Andy said FT03-MINI. I was just looking at FT03, which I wish a little smaller. Then I saw the MINI Problem is... it fits only mini PSU Can't really afford buying another PSU at this point... So I think I'll still grab the FT03, then probably make some cuts or "re-arrangements" to make it more compact Yes, FT03 (non-Mini), Asus Impact, 660Ti, 8/16Gb of RAM, and a few drives. Cut off the legs, shave a few inches here and there to make it as cube as possible, and pretty much clean off all sides. Not sure the CPU and cooler though, but that Zalman Reserator 3 Max looks pretty neat...
You could always have two power supplies, one dedicated to the graphics card only. A little modding should work.
