My $1000 Budget Gaming Mini ITX Build

I'm setting up my spare room with a three person workstation, with identical PC's for me and my two boys for some gaming sessions. In any case this $1000 includes everything from monitor to mouse, keyboard, and OS.

Here's the build:

Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Case
ASRock H170M ITX LGA 1151 Motherboard
Intel i3-7100 CPU
Corsair Hydro Liquid Cooler (for noise, and hey, it's cool)
Zotac GTX 1050 Ti Mini 4GB
Crucial 16GB DDR4 2133 (2 x 8GB) RAM
480GB Sandisk 2.5" SATA III SSD
1TB 72000 RPM 2.5" hard drive
EVGA 500W 80+ Power Supply
HP Pavilion 22cwa 21.5" 1080p LCD
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Logitech Wireless Keyboard K270
Logitech Wireless Mouse M510
Sades SA902 USB Headset
Wired XBOX 360 Controller

This whole thing came in surprisingly below $980.

I'm planning on doing a video/write-up as we build these machines and test them out. We aren't planning on any marathon Battlefield gaming sessions or anything, but probably lots of driving and low violence FPS or adventure type games. Kids are too young to be blowing people's brains out yet and teabagging.

My only concern is network. I have no network cabling up to this room, but am going to try to use the electrical outlet networking. I have one used by my TV and in another room and it works remarkably well for web browsing and file transfers are a solid 10-12 MB/sec. Not gigabit speeds, but plenty good for decent file transfers. Should be fine for us playing locally as well. Just not sure about latency over such a connection.

 

Great build idea! I really like the mini itx form factor.

Do you think there will be any issues with the wireless keyboards and mice interfering with each other?

 

No, I don't think there will be issues with interference. But we'll see. I just hate to have all those cables.

 

I agree with you on the cables, they are a nuisance.

What games will you be playing?

 

Probably Rocket League, Dirt 3, 8-bit armies/hordes/invaders, Portal co-op. I'd like to introduce them to some FPS games, but stay fairly clean like with Titanfall, Overwatch, or Star Wars Battlefront. No hack-n-slash or blood and guts just yet, they're 8 and 9 years old. They'll get into that soon enough.

 

Great build idea!

 

Seems good to me, but is it worth waiting to see what AMD Ryzen CPUs are like? For a start they might be tremendous value for the performance, and hey it would just be plain interesting to have an AMD build for a change (or to see how you get on with it).

 

For this, I've been promising my kids for a while, and the time / cost seemed right so I dug in. Ryzen is only on paper now, and AMD has failed us in the past, so I'd have to wait another few months after they come out to make sure they were up to snuff. I think a 3.9GHz dual core with hyperthreading for $109 at 51W will be fine for the games we'll play.

 

Yeah, hyper threading (HT) makes a massive difference to those dual core i3's when it comes to gaming - that extra thread count really helps improve framerate. I suppose if you wanna buy now then you can't be waiting for Ryzen, would have been interesting though!

 

Still likely to perform slower than an i5 even with HT, but it does offset having two cores enough to make it OK for gaming.

 

If I were planning on the latest AAA games I would opt for an i5. But for the stuff we're going to play and $80 difference between i3 and i5 times 3, I'll pocket the $240 difference. For most games at 1080p with a 1050 Ti, I'm sure the i3 will be more than sufficient.

 

This is true, I forgot how little impact those games have on a system.

 

Yes! I still have my desktop with i7-5820k @ 4GHz and GTX 980 Ti (soon to be 1080 Ti when available) and my new Clevo P650HS-G for "Daddy time" gaming sessions.

 

My i7920 is still going strong as well, I handed it down to my son and tossed a 1060 in it, he is loving the performance.

 

Yes! For most games, if you're not playing the latest AAA titles at highest detail and high resolution 3-4 year old hardware runs most other games remarkably well. Throw in a new video card like you did and you're all set.

 

I hope MSI makes a 1080 TI Sea Hawk, that's what I'm waiting on.

 

I'm looking for an EVGA 1080 ICX,

 

I've seen them for sale. Not sure how many are available though.

 

I wasn't sure if they were available yet, I guess I better start saving my pennies.

 

Quite a few pennies from the look of it.

 

No doubt, I haven't seen a firm price yet, I'm expecting $800 USD, which may prevent me from pulling the trigger. I had my current 980Ti with my I7 920 and the CPU was maxed out in games, it's in my new rig and the CPU is at %60 where the GPU is maxed out, I would love to see both at %60. I'm also going to toss my sons 1060 in there one of these days and see the difference.

 

What sort of numbers are you getting with the 980TI? Mine is not maxed out, but that's mainly because it's at 1080p 60Hz.

 

Here is a sample of a BF1 session, I have BF1 set for "competitive settings" full POV most settings at low except of mesh quality, that's ultra. Vsync fast Gsync on. It's a 1440p 144hz monitor so I want 144 FPS and no input lag.

 

I would go with an ITX build, but a Micro ATX build will save me more money with the Motherboard costs and case itself.

 

That makes sense. Any screen upgrade I do will likely come with a video card upgrade.

 

My 980 Ti is maxed at 3440 x 1440. I'm ready for a 1080 Ti. Don't really want to spend $800, but may have to.

 

You could hit the nail on the build with some LED lights, but it isn't necessary. I'm just saying that the side panel for the case could help make the build stand out with LED.

 

Probably need 2 980Tis at that res... Have you looked at selling your 980Ti and getting a 1080 if you can get one at a good price in the meanwhile?

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

My 980 Ti suffices just fine for now. You know, bigger, better, faster, stronger kinda thing. Just would be nice to have a sustained 90FPS. Right now it fluctuates from 50-80FPS in heavy action games. But of course G-sync helps immensely. It's an OCD desire more than a need.

 

I understand that. Knowing there are better video cards out there / on their way makes me want one.

 

Ugh. this has been an adventure. I don't recall having such problems with past builds. But I'm slowly working it out. For one, this case just is too small to use even a small all in one liquid cooler, unless you put crazy bends in the tubes, and I don't want to risk flow problems or potential leak, so I opted for a Zalman CNPS9500AT air cooler. Well, of the three heatsinks, two of the screws are too damn short to even allow you to clamp the thing down. Luckily I had a couple spare screws of same thread and size that was just slightly longer that let me clamp it down. Gee thanks Zalman.

Secondly, after I got the whole damn thing together, it wouldn't POST. After swapping motherboards, CPU's, RAM sticks, power supplies, it still won't POST. My only thought is that this CPU while supported by the mobo BIOS, I found is only supported with the latest BIOS so likely it will need a BIOS update, which I can't do until I get a compatible CPU. So I found a cheap i3-6100 that is listed as compatible with the original BIOS.

Thirdly, I installed the damn power supplies upside down. I couldn't get them to install the other way, but it seems there is a way, so have to go back and switch those around so the fan blows out the bottom of the case instead of up at the motherboard (D'oh!). Sigh.

I blame part of this on the fact that I was using this as part of an experience with my kids who have the attention span of a fly, and then just start rustling things around, and knocking stuff off the desk, etc, all the small screws and parts. Ugh. Maybe not such a good idea after all.

While I enjoy building PC's, I don't have time for this crap any more. I'm hoping that this CPU will allow me to boot and then use it on all the mobos to update the BIOS. If not, I'm back to square one, and not sure what else to try.

 

Haha, a nightmare! I had small nightmares with my PC build too, but it WAS my first one. Maybe your kids are too young to be shown how to do that kind of stuff, so they just disrupted your process, and it does sound more complicated building inside a tiny case - if you stick to bigger cases and don't have kid interventions then you'll probably enjoy your next build, don't give up yet!

 

Was going to way I had solved many of those problems by quarantining my build area from children and pets, and also by largely abandoning small form factors. Though I'm helping a cousin build what I think is intended to be a SFF HTPC unit soon and I may be remembering those words as I curse at it.

 

Yeah, well, I am building these with them for them, and we will be on an eight foot+ wide workbench together, so space is at a premium. But will make for some fun gaming sessions once it's all sorted out. Normally I have a workshop area that I do my stuff at that I can shut the door and keep it closed and locked while away too (it's my second walk-in closet - one benefit of being single I guess, lol). But that's OK. It's always a learning experience.

 

My son is 15 now and throughout the years I have tried to do many things with him, some of them he likes some, not so much. I'm sure they will take away a lot more then they let onto.

 

That's a great idea actually. I'm using a basement room with a half door. It's childproof but not pet proof. If I had a walk in, that would be perfect.

 

Not huge, but it's 8ft x 7ft, so have a six ft wide workbench and a bunch of shelves in there for all my PC and electronic crap and tools.

 

I need shelves in mine, right now it's just a workbench and a chair.

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner (oh, man, that's an old man saying, I *AM* getting old. )

Got my Pentium Skylake in today and that was it. The BIOS needed to be updated to accept the latest Kaby Lake CPU's. Now all flashed and updated and now hopefully can finish getting these built this weekend. Whew.

 

Now there's an expression I haven't heard in a long time.


Cool that it was as simple as a BIOS update though.

 

Yay. Finally got them built, everything POSTS fine. Now I just have to finish cleaning the room, doing a bunch of cable management, and installing Windows.

 

Excellent, looks like you'll be able to have some good gaming sessions with your kids now!

How's the CPU & GPU perform? Are you gonna overclock? My philosophy is overclock from first day of ownership - extract maximum value & enjoyment from Day one!

You got the Intel i3-7100 CPU, Corsair Hydro Liquid Cooler, & Zotac GTX 1050 Ti Mini 4GB right? The fact that you've got 3 seperate identical systems it would be pretty interesting to see what the max overclocks are of each of them - wondering if they'll be much variance?

 

Nice Job! No matter how cute they are/were they will peek at your screen if you let your guard down, lol.

 

I ditched the Corsair liquid cooler for a Zalman air cooler. The Corsair liquid cooler just wouldn't fit well in this case. The tubes had to bend too tightly and I was concerned with flow and possible leak.

I don't know that I will overclock. Undervolt most likely, just keep them as cool and quiet as possible. Don't need the room to heat up with us three hot heads in there and three rigs. : The goal here was low cost and balanced performance at 1080p/60 medium settings. Granted we likely won't be playing the latest games either. They're still a little young for most of those (8 and 9 years old) because most have way too much violence and gore.

The i3-7100 runs 3.8 GHz with two cores as it is, so it's reasonably powerful, especially for a 1050 Ti. I might fiddle with it a bit though, because if I can gain a few hundred MHz with little to no temp increase, why not? Not sure if I can even overclock the i3 though.

No doubt! I'm sure there will be lots of yelling going on, lol.

 

At least overclock the GPU though, gotta get that free performance! ;-) These 3rd party small chip Pascal's will overclock pretty well I think, they normally have a lot of cooling overhead - I don't know about your particular model, but in general the cooler is overkill at stock. Let us know how the undervolting/overclocking goes. I remember undervolting the CPU in my Dell M1530 laptop years ago using RMClock & then Throttlestop later on to undervolt but also to enable 'Dual IDA' (a poor man's overclock) - I remember running that CPU (T7250) at something like 0.9V while running Dual IDA, I think down from 1.15V or so, it was a major temperature win as it shared heatpipe with GPU thereby allowing a big GPU overclock - undervolting is a pretty fun & useful thing to do.

 

I generally get hardware that's way more than I need, and then incrementally OC over time, but for lower end hardware this is a good idea.

 

Or if you have a 144Hz monitor and you want to maintain a minimum framerate at/or very close to 144fps - this I found to be the case!

 

I like to have a lot of space but the desks like that are just way more pricty then I want to spend on a desk at this point in my life so made one out f a 8' section of counter top from Lowes, I propped it up with some desk legs and metal cabinets. I don't feel bad about drilling cable management hole in it either.

 

That works too. I thought about doing a fancy DIY project like a suspended desk or something like that, but I'm more into small hardware and don't own any tools you might use to build a shelf/desk.

 

I used this desk building option when I went to college and had no tools, it was a bit more sketchy but all you would need is a screw gun and a saw.