Pachx

I think I'll probably just take the safer bet and go with either the NZXT or the H60 with the older style fittings. I think they may be using a lower profile PSU in the picture b/c I thought that my ATX PSU covered the entire socket on my system. Thinking back on it, if the tubes are anything like those on my old H100i from 2015 in my main rig, I really doubt that 2.5" is enough headroom sitting straight up. I'll have to take a closer look at the NZXT AIO, thanks for the suggestion!

I'm planning on dumping the cryorig anyway, I'd rather just get an AIO rather than mess around with getting the AM4 adapter shipped in time for DH. I've gotten it narrowed down to pretty much the H60 and H80i v2 with the only stumbling block being the tube orientation. Here's an image of the case, the biggest problem is the PSU sitting directly overhead giving about 65mm of clearance. If it were maybe an extra inch higher I wouldn't be concerned, but I have yet to find anybody actually capable of bending the tubes enough. I'll have an extra fan at install time, so I'm pretty much looking for the thickest rad and most reliable system sub ~$100. Edit: Just realized that the image is of the older CM 120 and not the 130, but for all intents and purposes the CPU cooler layout is just about identical.

I have a Cooler Master Elite 130 LAN machine build currently housing an i3-6100 on an MSI H110 with my old 970 that I took out of my main rig. Right now it is cooled by a cryorig C7 which sits underneath the PSU acting as an exhaust. I'm planning to bump it up to a Ryzen 5 2600x ahead of DreamHack Austin in two weeks, but I'm a bit concerned about cooling. In the current config, the i3-6100 idles at around 35-45 C with the case lid on, and 30-40 with it off. Under load it will get up in the 90s. I'm wanting to do some mild over clocking with the 2600x, but if my 6100 putters around that high with no load I don't want to imagine what an OC'ed Ryzen would cook at. I'm thinking that the H80i would be a good fit since it will slide in just exactly at the head of the case and have enough tube length. However, Corsair in their infinite wisdom decided to make the pump block fittings fixed straight out of the mobo on the v2 rather than having them rotate like on their other models. Will this tube setup prevent the H80i v2 from fitting in the CM 130 since the PSU sits directly above the socket, or has anybody been able to cram one in? If not, should I bump down to an H60 and throw an extra fan on? I can't use the cryorig for the new build without an AM4 bracket adapter, but I want too thrilled with its performance anyway.

Awesome, thanks for the advice! I also like the PSU being modular or semi-modular, so the CX450M works perfectly!

Hey all, I am preparing to order parts for a SFF ITX dorm and LAN party rig to run my 970 that I am pulling from my current home PC which is getting an upgrade to a 1060. As far as Skylake motherboards go, is there much of a difference between the H110 and H170 chipsets in the gaming department? I am on a pretty tight budget and am looking to go as inexpensive as I can without sacrificing too much reliability. I am just throwing an i3 6100 in there because my only requirement is that it doesn't bottleneck my 970, so that rules out the Z170 chipsets for me. Wifi in the board would be a big plus. I have pretty much narrowed my selection down to the MSI H110 Pro AC, ASRock H170M-ITX/ac, and possibly the Gigabyte GA-H170N-WIFI (rev. 1.0) though going with the last board would be really stressing my budget. In my situation, would there be any real drawback to the MSI board? Would I see any real benefit in an H170 board? Here is my complete parts list as of now if it would help any of you in your recommendation. PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nrP26X Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nrP26X/by_merchant/ CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: CRYORIG C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99) Motherboard: MSI H110I PRO AC Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($88.98 @ Newegg) Storage: PNY CS1311 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg) Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card ($0.00) Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case ($46.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg) Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home Full 32/64-bit ($119.99 @ Newegg) Monitor: Sceptre E225W-1920 22.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor ($79.99 @ Newegg) Total: $575.91 Thanks!

Thanks for all of the advice! I will probably end up going with something very close to what @Aereldor suggested and hopefully grab a few post-christmas sales. Thanks again!

Just to clarify, I got the 970 a year and a half ago at $340 and was my daily driver through high school, it is getting replaced with a 1060 this month.

Hello all, I am currently sourcing parts for a new budget gaming build that will live in my college dorm room of ideally under $350 without the GPU and OS (I have a Win key that I will try and pull from a laptop and Linux Mint to hobble along until then). I am going to be upgrading my main rig back home from a GTX 970 to a 1060, so I am going to repurpose the 970 in this new rig. My biggest priority here is the overall cost. I would also like to keep future upgradability in mind, so a Skylake CPU and Mobo would be fantastic, but I'm not sure if it can be done at this price. There are bi-weekly LAN parties on campus as well, so a small form factor and semi-portability (as portable as a desktop can be) would also be important. As far as overall power goes, my only requirement is that the hardware won't bottleneck my 970. Again, future upgradability would be a plus here allowing me to start with a barebones Z170/ Z97 system and upgrade components over time. In terms of basic specs, I am looking at a 500GB HDD and at least 8GB if not 16GB of RAM. My home system is an X99 machine with 32GB of DDR4 which I could nab 8GB from to start with if I went the Skylake route. The form factor of the rig would need to be at least an MATX case/mobo if not ITX. TL;DR Priotities- 1. Budget under/near $350 (without GPU or OS) 2. Upgradability 3. Portability to/from LANs 4. Enough power to not bottleneck my current 970 Tentative parts list that is so far pretty over budget- PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kRhwyf Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kRhwyf/by_merchant/ PLACEHOLDER- CPU: AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($74.89 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Newegg) PLACEHOLDER- Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard ($66.98 @ Newegg) Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($51.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($37.34 @ Amazon) Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (Purchased For $340.00) MOST LIKELY NOT- Case: Thermaltake Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($70.98 @ Newegg) Power Supply: EVGA 550W ATX Power Supply ($51.19 @ Newegg) Total: $383.36 Can anyone make a recommendation as to a chipset, processor, and motherboard to start from? The price and availability of motherboards will most likely determine the case I go with, can anyone recommend a decently sturdy yet sexy MATX/ITX case for under or very near $50? NOTE: I am a sucker for cubes. Any tips for component selection overall to maximize performance on a college student budget? Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

So I finished my first PC build in August in 2015 and have had little to no problems since. In the past month and a half, I have had a series of very odd and random restarts every now and again along with display issues. My three-monitor setup will occasionally set each display to one solid color, generally a shade of black, white, or light red/yellow and completely lock up, only fixed after a hard reboot. The very odd thing about these lockups is that they only have ever happened between 12:00 and 12:30 at night. In the past week, I have had two unprompted restarts under very light load (editing a Word document), both caused by error 10016 (found in Event Viewer). I have Win10 loaded currently and it is fully updated. No other versions of Windows have ever been loaded on it. To my knowledge, all mobo and GPU drivers along with the BIOS are all up to date. These restarts seem to have worsened after I added an additional 16GB (now 32GB in total) of RAM to the system, but as the mobo drivers and BIOS are up to date I can't see why this would be the issue. I have reseated each card multiple times, but the problems still persist. Can anyone help me out as to a cause of these problems? Here is a list of all components in the system in case the problem is related to that. PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Yw2xMp Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Yw2xMp/by_merchant/ CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler Motherboard: MSI X99S Gaming 7 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 32GB (8 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory Storage: Intel 730 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive) Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card Case: NZXT Phantom 820 (Black) ATX Full Tower Case Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Optical Drive: Asus BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) Case Fan: Corsair CO-9050012-WW 37.9 CFM 120mm Fan Monitor: LG 22MC57HQ-P 60Hz 21.5" Monitor Thanks!

Just as I say it is working like normal again, it dies once more. I would not wish Windstream on my worst enemy.

We have and their customer service was less than helpful. They sent a technician out to the area to check the lines and it seems to have improved a bit since then. The speed is considerably slower than it should be (about half), but I guess that is to be expected with a copper network spanning 5-20 miles between the house and the nearest routing facility. They are still using copper lines over long distances, so rain water would have easily damaged them and will probably do so again in the future. Thanks for the advice! The entire house runs off of a copper wiring system that both the internet and phone lines share. This system is linked to the main phone box thingie outside by the highway that links to the phone company's network. The phone line was cutting in and out with persistent static in the background. Every three to five hours, the line would go dead entirely for up to an hour. Interestingly enough, these cut-outs didn't coincide with the internet going our or requiring an admin login to access. We have tried the connection with wired connections to the router with three different Ethernet cables and a wireless connection, but all would go out at the same time during a cut-out. They just replaced our modem about three months ago, and it seems to be working fine now that they sent the technician out, though the speed is still slower than it should be. I have been monitoring the router constantly through the whole ordeal, and nothing has shown up in the fault log to indicate a router failure. I also browsed the settings and there is nothing that I could find that would indicate the admin login requirement that I have been getting. This requirement has since stopped appearing since they sent the technician out. It seems odd to me that damaged wiring to the routing facility would cause a credential check to come up at odd times nearing a cut-out, but stranger things have happened.

Our internet crashed twice during the making of this post. It is getting very frustrating.

Over the past three to four months, I have been getting random internet disconnections and crashes. For the first time ever, I have also been getting this login request randomly in google chrome and on my smartphone when connecting to our wireless network: During the past four weeks things have gotten worse. At least once every 1-3 hours the above message pops up, but even after entering the default information (admin for user name and password for password, as these are the default credentials that I have set for modifying the router's settings in a browser) it declines them and gives me a 401 Unauthorized error and does not allow me internet access until it has finished its hissy fit. Starting today I have also begun getting 400 errors just as frequently as the 401s. Our telephone lines have also stated to get disconnected somehow at least twice a day and always have a quiet static hiss whenever we use them. We live in the country and have a DSL ISP, as there are no other alternatives. It has rained heavily here in the past month, and our neighbors on the same ISP have reported similar issues. The general consensus is that rainwater leaking into the copper wiring the ISP uses damaged connection lines, disrupting communication through both phone lines and internet. Is the credential authentication popup something that has gone wrong in the ISP's side of things? I never set up this on the router we have and checked to confirm that nothing is set earlier today. Is there anything that I can really do to fix this other than wait for the ISP to get it in gear and do something? They have been out to my house twice this month to check things and are scheduled to come out again later this week, but they haven't done anything that worked. I am employed by the telephone company in a town about 20 miles away and we have just recently started offering radio internet using a long-range antenna that is installed at the house that is receiving the signal over a range of up to 10 miles from the main tower. There is a new tower that has just been set up in another town about 7 miles away. Should we just port our home phone number to a cell phone and change our service to the radio ISP? It has unlimited access, unlike satellite internet from companies like Dish and DirecTV. We are currently paying $80 per month for 3 (really 2.5 after distance and copper wiring interference is accounted for) Mbps and phone service. It is nearly impossible for me to do any online gaming for long periods of time with a ping below 150 ms and would really like a solution with some cooperation from our ISP. Would this change be worth it? Thanks!

I have looked into the DX Racers, and think I will probably just up my budget for one of those. As the Formula series is the least expensive, I think that I will go with one of those. The orange and black color scheme should go very well with the room it is going in and the orange accent lighting I am getting on the case. Is there any real difference between the FE08, FE00, and FE11 other than the design and type of face material and the $25/50 price?

I will recently be beginning my transition from laptop to full desktop working and gaming. Currently I am operating off of a high-performance ASUS laptop, a very good keyboard sitting on top of the laptop's keyboard (stock ones suck anyway), sitting in an armchair with the right arm cushion as my mouse pad. Pretty much as ghetto as it gets. I will be beginning the desktop build in a few weeks, and seeing as I can't easily fit a monitor vertically in my lap with the keyboard and everything hooked up to the case on the floor with any comfort, I will also need to get an accompanying desk and chair. The desk will go in the corner of the room that I am putting it in, so something like this: http://www.target.com/p/techni-mobili-modern-l-shaped-computer-workstation-mahogany/-/A-10907364#prodSlot=medium_1_6 would work just perfectly (minus the 2003-style printer and magazines). Now comes the hard part. I am looking for a fairly good quality chair with vertical seat adjustment, tilt adjustment, preferably armrest adjustments, 250+ weight capacity, wheeled (duh), and a tilt lock wouldn't hurt. I don't want to invest much more than $150 into the chair, but many of the office chairs that I have found at places like Target, Staples, and Office Depot have pretty poor life length and performance. I would want something that doesn't start squeaking and leaning to one side after a few weeks. Does anyone have any suggestions as to a specific chair or a good place to find one? It doesn't have to be very fancy, just a simple black office/gaming chair with the above features of good quality with a bit of style. The room it is going in has orange and dark grey walls, so any orange accents would be a big plus. Also, if anyone has an idea for a similar desk to the one above of good build quality & longevity for $150-225 and would like to share it, that would be awesome. This one was just pulled off of Target's website. Thanks!