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Sean Faust
Gallente
Super Batungwaa Ninja Warriors
Waterboard
Posted - 2008.12.19 16:44:00 - [1]
 

Since the motherboard in my old rig died, I'm thinking of building a completely new one from scratch. I'm thinking of going with a Small Form Factor setup for ****s and giggles, specifically based on a Thermaltake Lanbox case. Now I'm not expecting to build something that could match up to an HP Blackbird or an Alienware or anything like that with this, just something that could play EVE and some of the newer FPS/RTS games out. I have a few requirements of it..

Must be AMD-based, preferably with a Phenom cpu.

Must use a Thermaltake Lanbox/Lanbox Lite case.

Any suggestions on which motherboards I should go with and how I should go about doing this? I've built systems before but never worked with a small form factor setup before. Is there anything unique to dealing with SFF rigs I should know about?

KingsGambit
Caldari Provisions
Posted - 2008.12.19 21:15:00 - [2]
 

The one consideration you will need to bear in mind, is that you're unlikely (or at the least very hard-pressed) to find a decent, high-quality GFX card to fit the small form factor. You may be able to find one specifically, but you will be trading size for processing power and it's likely that the choice is quite limited. Any SFF mobos will also lack many slots (although with reasonable quality on-board sound and the prevalence of on-board gigabit NICs, this may be a non-issue). A quick google search turned up some possible, low-profile GFX cards.

I don't know if your case choices inlclude a PSU, but choice on SFF PSUs is also limited when compared with standard ATX. Mobo may also lack RAID controller if that is something you're otherwise used to. Saying that...a quick visit to overclockers turned up some reasonable mobo choices you could consider.

Best advice I would think is pick out the GFX card you want, make sure you find an appropriate case and PSU (powerful enough PSU is very important!), then pick the mobo, CPU and RAM. You might consider and after-market HSF for your CPU if you plan to overclock (though with a SFF case it's probably best not to). Also it's probably best to go with just one single HDD and optical drive (for power, space and heat reasons) so buy a big enough HDD to start with. There's no differences in any of the technologies except for size (and choice?) so just pick your parts carefully. One of those mobos, your choice of case/PSU, suitable SFF GFX card, one HDD, one optical drive, Vista 64-bit and DX10, 2-4GB of decent, dual-channel DDR2 and your choice of multi-core processor, you should be running Eve premium and the rest reasonably well.

All that aside....go ATX, you know you want to!

Atomos Darksun
D00M.
Northern Coalition.
Posted - 2008.12.19 22:26:00 - [3]
 

Yeah, go Nvidia. ALL ABOARD THE FAILBOAT!

I kick anyone who chooses the 9xxx/2xx series cards over ATI's 4xxx series. Unless it's the 280 for shear GPU power. Then I kick them for being stupid enough to spend so much on a video card.'

But you won't be able to get much out of small form factor, again, you need a decent sized case to get a GFX card in there. And btw, you could easily build your own Alienware-level computer at 2/3-3/4 price. The only thing you're not buying is the case and hype. With a mixture of fail.

Meiyang Lee
Gallente
Azteca Transportation Unlimited
Gunboat Diplomacy
Posted - 2008.12.19 23:34:00 - [4]
 

You could try checking out the [H]ardOCP Small Form Factor Systems section of the forums: here. That should provide atleast some basic info and probably quite a lot more.

Super Whopper
I can Has Cheeseburger
Posted - 2008.12.20 03:37:00 - [5]
 

Not a gaming rig but can't get smaller than this.

Kessiaan
Minmatar
Vagrants Inc
Posted - 2008.12.20 06:58:00 - [6]
 

I made the mistake of buying an Alienware laptop once.. overpriced piece of shoddy garbage. I don't care if Dell owns them now or not, I'll never buy that brand again.

Which is odd since I've nothing but great experiences with Dell's XPS line (even if they are a bit overpriced.. but I'm lazy and will pay an extra couple hundred to not have to put the thing together and deal with inevitable piece that doesn't work out of the box)

If you want high performance in a small form factor though you'll probably be best off buying the components and constructing a case yourself - use either nonconductive material or plastic standoffs to mount the motherboard, you can stick the hard drives and powersupply anywhere you want. You can also save some space by not using ginormous heatsinks and installing a liquid cooling system instead, though that will drive the price up.

Sean Faust
Gallente
Super Batungwaa Ninja Warriors
Waterboard
Posted - 2008.12.20 14:28:00 - [7]
 

One of my reasons for choosing to go with the Thermaltake Lanbox series of cases is because apparently they can accomodate normal sized graphics cards. What inspired me to undertake this whole project was that a guy in my corp, a little over a year ago, built himself a rig that (at the time) was considered high end using a Thermaltake Lanbox Lite case. I'd be going to him with all of my questions except for two things:

1. He's an over-the-road truck driver, which means he can go up to a month without being able to get a hold of because he's out on the road.

2. I don't know what might have changed about SFF system building since he put his AMD X2 based-system together (this was back when it was about the highest end from AMD)

Super Whopper
I can Has Cheeseburger
Posted - 2008.12.20 15:10:00 - [8]
 

Edited by: Super Whopper on 20/12/2008 15:12:10
I suggest looking into Gigabyte as they make some good SFF motherboards. The TT one is a good case and accomodates full size (not 4870X2 size) video cards. To be honest cases are all about beauty and that's in the eye of the beholder. Other than this I know nothing about SFF PC's.

I recommend creating an account on the following forums and asking here Guru 3D. Guru 3D is a very reputable hardware review site with some professional staff and posters.

I just posted the address without linking it. It has been corected now


 

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