Hi all Starting to look at building myself a new gaming & HTPC, but its been a few years since I last did it & i'm a bit out of the loop now! I've always fancied doing one in a HTPC case, and am wondering if building one with a mATX board and housing it inside a Silverstone GD06 case would be suitable? Would the case keep everything cool enough? Would a mATX board give me enough performance? Not really decided on the spec yet, but will be something like an i5/i7, a single GTX 670 or 680, no overclocking. Gaming at 1920 x 1080 with some 3d as well. I've had my last build for 5 years, which is still doing pretty well, so would like something again which will last me a while. Many thanks for any advice
MATX boards have pretty much the same performance of their ATX breathen nowadays so no problems there. The GD06 looks like it has 3x120mm fan mounts, so cooling should be fine - the i5 3570k and 670/680 run very cool anyway. The only problem you might have is finding a CPU cooler that can keep your CPU cool if you are overclocking, as most HTPC cases will be height limited. I had a Prolimatech Samuel 17 did an alright job. Good but not great. Do your research and see what others have fitted in a GD06.
Just built an I5-2500 and a 560Ti into a GD05B. Went together well, but I've not thrown any games at it yet. That's on todays plan
That's brilliant thanks guys. Not doing any overclocking, but ill see what coolers other people have used. As long as mATX gives a similar performance nowadays thats cool. Tichinde - Let me know how you get on with the gaming! How easy was it to fit everything in the GD05? I'm limited with depth to 39cm because of the AV stand, so I was looking at the Origen S16V case as it takes full ATX, but it looked a bit of a mission to get everything to fit!
Fitting it all in, easy. Fitting it all in, in a tidy fashion......not so much Was short on time today but threw furmark at it to stress out the 560 Ti. Maybe got a little hot (99C which is damn close to Nvidia's suggested max of 100 ), but I've only got 2 of the fans connected at the moment. The third goes on tomorrow. Stock fan on the CPU and it only hit 70C under Prime. GW2 is all ready for a stress test tomorrow on it though, so we'll see how it holds up.
How many hard drives have you got in it? Just thought last night I'll have 2 x 2tb WD Caviar Green & an Intel SSD in there, not sure if that many disks will create an issue with heat? Cheers
Just so you can see what I mean... That's pretty much as good as it gets for this one I think. So many cables in the "cable tidy area" in front of the PSU.... And they are now tied down. But once the drives are back in it does look considerably better.
I've just moved down from a fully watercooled TJ07 build to a micro ATX TJ08 build. I have to say that I am delighted with it. The performance of the new system is superb and when browsing etc, it's almost silent. I do notice the difference in sound when gaming (BF3 with all settings on Ultra etc). The GPU is pretty noisy but it doesn't run above 72degrees. I have tweaked the cooling profile on the Kuhler 920 and this keeps the CPU below 70deg on full load but it's still pretty quiet (the CPU is overclocked to 4.5ghz too).
It looks really neat when its hidden under the drives The number of disks I've got though does concern me a bit Thanks for all the advice guys, at least I know mATX performance wise is fine. Just got to decide whether to risk trying to sqeeze it all in or stick with my Zalman case
Not sure if the same will apply to the 06, but the 05 manual recommends a single fan GPU which blows air down the heatsink and out the back of the case. Also, gaming on mine is all good
