Cheap and Chearful: An ITX Build

[jon23]

This is my second time building a PC. My goal of this build was to make something, as the title suggests, that is cheap and cheerful. I needed something small enough that I can throw the system into a bag or a backpack but still capable of handling games at 1080p reasonably well. I have been accumulating parts over the past year so the build its a bit mismatched, but hey, it works!

 

Specs:

 

CPU- Athlon X4 750k

MoBo- Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WiFi

GPU- Powercolor Radeon HD 7770 Ghz Edition (1gb)

RAM- Gskill Ripjaws X 8gb @ 2133mhz

HDD- WD Caviar Green 1 TB 7200rpm

PSU- Corsair CXM 750M (I know this is massive overkill but I had a BestBuy gift card and that is all they had in store!)

Case- Cooler Master Elite 110

OS- Windows 8.1

 

In the end I am really happy with the build. I absolutely love the Elite 110. Its the perfect size for what I need and I was surprised how tidy you can get the system if you work at it! All in all it cost about $600 with the OS. I plan on getting a Seidon 120 seeing as the stock AMD cooler isn't that great and space is pretty tight in the case for air cooling. I'm also getting an SSD as well as upgrading to a 750ti. The 7770 that I have, though performing really well for what I want, is a bit loud. I've heard the 750ti is a much less noisy and is a cooler running card as well.

 

And yes, my keyboard and mouse are pretty crappy. I had just enough left on my bust buy gift card after buying the PSU so I picked up a Dynex wireless mouse and keyboard. The keyboard is actually fairly nice (I like shorter keys for some reason) but the mouse is terrible. Could anyone recommend a decent wireless mouse for under $50?

[tryphaa]

You show off that Athlon sticker.

 

#athlonsunite

[flibberdipper]

I like it.

 

Do I count? Since I have an unlocked Sempron (effectively an Athlon II X2 4450e)...

[jon23]

Lol. I'm more of an Athlon user out of financial necessity, but it serves me well!

[AHaskin14]

Excellent Job. I like how the psu just dominates the inside.

[ozziee]

Casually sitting in the corner, it's quite cool. I've been growing an interest for ITX-builds since I've decided my next build is going to be one.

 

Did you find it noisy under load or while it's idle as well?

[jon23]

Under load the GPU is pretty loud, nothing terrible, but its loud enough I want to get another GPU that's more quite. Otherwise when its idle is fairly quite. I swapped out the standard CM fan for one I stole out of a prodigy and its much less noisy. Once I liquid cool the CPU and move to an SSD I am sure the case will be near silent. I have the standard heatsink blowing air into the PSU so it will exhaust out the back of the case, the problem with this is it makes the PSU ramp up its fan a bit more than it would otherwise need to. Using a crappy decibel meter on my phone, at idle the noise is around the low 20's.

[Guest]

Beautiful build. Great case as well.

 

If your 7770 is a reference card, then that's completely understandable. AMD reference shrouds are terrible and so are Nvidia's to an extent.

[ozziee]

Under load the GPU is pretty loud, nothing terrible, but its loud enough I want to get another GPU that's more quite. Otherwise when its idle is fairly quite. I swapped out the standard CM fan for one I stole out of a prodigy and its much less noisy. Once I liquid cool the CPU and move to an SSD I am sure the case will be near silent. I have the standard heatsink blowing air into the PSU so it will exhaust out the back of the case, the problem with this is it makes the PSU ramp up its fan a bit more than it would otherwise need to. Using a crappy decibel meter on my phone, at idle the noise is around the low 20's.

That's not too bad at idle. You have some pretty neat ideas, I'm looking forward to seeing an update in the future