Planning a major upgrade into mini ATX format.

[PopsicleHustler]

Good day/evening/whatever ladies and gents. Its time to help me brainstorm my miniATX build.

 

Why do I want mini ATX build? Because I always wanted to build a mini ATX PC. And since I'm planning an upgrade, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for it.

 

Main question you will ask - Price. Doesn't matter. Any reasonable ideas are welcome. I'm building myself a top tier gaming rig, there are no shortcuts here.

Here is the situation and what I'm looking for:

I need a case, RAM, PSU and motherboard recommendations. Main focus - Gaming. Nothing else.

 

I'd like to go Ryzen for future upgradeability. So I'm probably going R9 7900 or R7 7700. Will see in a bit. 

 

One thing I have to decide is CPU cooling. I will be doing moderate overclocking. Currently I have Dark Rock Pro 4. Its a decent air cooler. Do you think it will handle slight overclock on Ryzen 9 7900? If not, the case will have to support a chunky AIO that can cool the CPU.  And I'd like a recommendation for that too.

 

So here is the list

 

The case itself - I had a few options: Torrent Nano, Lancool 205M. Corsair's dual chamber cases also look appealing. Ease of cable management and options for an AIO. Open to suggestions. But I need something with great cooling and ease of use. Forgot to mention, I only have x2 SSDs, so don't worry too much about space for storage.

 

CPU - Ryzen 7700 OR 7900 (Will do more research and decide which one is better for me

 

Motherboard - Here I'd like to hear your thoughts. There are a decent amount of B650 and X670. I have a bias towards Asus, so TUF B650M-Plus looks like a decent option. I'd say a board up to 400USD would be a good limit. 

 

GPU - I have Reference RTX 3090. Not planning on changing it any time soon. Will probably skip 4000 series cards and buy 5000 when they come out, or maybe AMD will have some good discounts on 7900xtx. Will see

 

RAM - Need a decent 32 gig set that pairs nicely with Ryzen chip. Nothing crazy, something that won't hold it back in games.

 

PSU - A decent 1000W unit should do.  Again, not looking for 80+ Titanium that cost 500+   I haven't been following hardware as of late, so you give me good options for 300 ish USD

 

 

 

I think thats it. Waiting for your suggestions and ideas.

 

 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

So before anything, I just want to know, are you referring to mini ITX or micro ATX? The first line says Micro ATX and you talk about the B650M TUF, so I figure that's what you're referring to (AKA the forgotten form factor because it generally doesn't make sense), but then you go on to say mini ATX for the rest of the thing and talk about cases like the Fractal Torrent Nano which only support Mini ITX boards. These are two very different form factors with very different design philosophies, so I just want to be sure which one exactly you're referring to before suggesting anything. 

[mariushm]

There's EATX (extended ATX - wider than regular ATX) , there's ATX (standard), there's mATX (a bit shorter ATX, usually max 2-3 pci-e slots) and there's ITX which is shorter than mATX and kinda square, and usually has only one pci-e slot and only 2 memory slots. 

Cases will support motherboards according to their size .. small cases may support only mATX and ITX, bigger cases may also support ATX, even bigger cases (actually deeper) support also EATX. 

 

If you want to go ITX there's few options on AM5 right now .. PC part picker lists 5 : 

MSI MPG B650I EDGE WIFI AM5    Mini ITX    64 GB    2    Black / Silver     (0)    $239.99
Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI    AM5    Mini ITX    64 GB    2    Black     (1)    $329.99
Gigabyte B650I AORUS ULTRA    AM5    Mini ITX    64 GB    2    Black / Silver     (0)    $269.99
Asus ROG STRIX X670E-I GAMING WIFI    AM5    Mini ITX    64 GB    2    Black / Silver     (0)    $459.99
ASRock B650E PG-ITX WIFI        AM5    Mini ITX    64 GB    2    Black / Red     (1)    $289.99

 

The Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI but if your budget is tight the Gigabyte B650I Aorus Ultra is a good deal at $270 

Those extra $50 get you pci-e 5.0 x16 slot for video card and a a couple extra usb 10gbps ports on the back and optical out and that's about it, gigabyte board has better VRM and 3 M.2 ports instead of just two on Asus board, and really there's no video cards out there that can even do pci-e 5.0 so it's not really a big deal. 

The Asrock board is not worth it.. yeah you get pci-e 5.0 x16 slot, but you get the older (still excellent alc1220) and one of the m.2 slots is on the back of the board.

 

Go for 7900 if you can... 7700 is kinda bad price/performance compared to 7600 and 7900

[PopsicleHustler]

13 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

So before anything, I just want to know, are you referring to mini ITX or micro ATX? The first line says Micro ATX and you talk about the B650M TUF, so I figure that's what you're referring to (AKA the forgotten form factor because it generally doesn't make sense), but then you go on to say mini ATX for the rest of the thing and talk about cases like the Fractal Torrent Nano which only support Mini ITX boards. These are two very different form factors with very different design philosophies, so I just want to be sure which one exactly you're referring to before suggesting anything. 

@mariushmYea I messed up with the namings, sorry about that. Ended up confusing myself and you lads.

 

mini ITX is what I'm referring to, the "square" boards with 1 PCI-E slot and 2 RAM slots.

 

But if you can give me suggestions for Torrent nano build, that would also be great. Same idea - AM5 board for 300-350USD to run Ryzen 9 7900, 32 gigs of RAM, reference 3090

 

Thats why I'm here, to learn more about "non standard" builds and sizes.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

42 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

@mariushmYea I messed up with the namings, sorry about that. Ended up confusing myself and you lads.

 

mini ITX is what I'm referring to, the "square" boards with 1 PCI-E slot and 2 RAM slots.

 

But if you can give me suggestions for Torrent nano build, that would also be great. Same idea - AM5 board for 300-350USD to run Ryzen 9 7900, 32 gigs of RAM, reference 3090

 

Thats why I'm here, to learn more about "non standard" builds and sizes.

 

OK, that's how I thought you were going to go, but there was enough conflicting in the first post that it was just best to confirm. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FThDv3

 

For a Torrent Nano build, that would be how I'd go. At least here in the US the 7900X is cheaper than its non-X counterpart, so going for the -X variant makes more sense. The MSI B650I Edge is a solid value motherboard, it's cheap but a good feature set considering it's mini ITX with a VRM that's fine to power a 7900X. If you really want to go ASUS for the motherboard, the B650E-I Strix exists, though spending an extra $100 on it doesn't really seem like a good idea since you pretty much just get ASUS's name on the board and PCIe Gen 5 capability which nothing uses anyway. DDR5 5600 is fine for a Ryzen 7000 system, they don't really seem to scale much with memory clock so spending much more to go with a 6000 CL30 kit (what AMD recommends) seems kinda pointless IMO, the memory subsystem on those chips is very FCLK bottlenecked so going for faster settings doesn't really get much more performance. The Torrent Nano is a mini-ITX case that still takes full sized components (not a true SFF case where you are making sacrifices to get everything to fit, but still SFF to some degree), so the PSU is just a full size RM1000e, a 1000W unit that's pretty well rated. 

[PopsicleHustler]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

OK, that's how I thought you were going to go, but there was enough conflicting in the first post that it was just best to confirm. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FThDv3

 

For a Torrent Nano build, that would be how I'd go. At least here in the US the 7900X is cheaper than its non-X counterpart, so going for the -X variant makes more sense. The MSI B650I Edge is a solid value motherboard, it's cheap but a good feature set considering it's mini ITX with a VRM that's fine to power a 7900X. If you really want to go ASUS for the motherboard, the B650E-I Strix exists, though spending an extra $100 on it doesn't really seem like a good idea since you pretty much just get ASUS's name on the board and PCIe Gen 5 capability which nothing uses anyway. DDR5 5600 is fine for a Ryzen 7000 system, they don't really seem to scale much with memory clock so spending much more to go with a 6000 CL30 kit (what AMD recommends) seems kinda pointless IMO, the memory subsystem on those chips is very FCLK bottlenecked so going for faster settings doesn't really get much more performance. The Torrent Nano is a mini-ITX case that still takes full sized components (not a true SFF case where you are making sacrifices to get everything to fit, but still SFF to some degree), so the PSU is just a full size RM1000e, a 1000W unit that's pretty well rated. 

That looks like, pretty much everything as I needed. 

 

I like Asus boards because of their Bios. I feel right at home there. But if saving 100 bucks means I will get same value minus the Asus Bios, I will take that.

 

Ryzen 7000 pricing is all over the place. Here in the EU its the same story. 7600x is currently cheaper than 7600 non X, 7900x and non X are the same price.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, PopsicleHustler said:

I like Asus boards because of their Bios. I feel right at home there. But if saving 100 bucks means I will get same value minus the Asus Bios, I will take that.

 

To be fair, on AMD boards all BIOS layouts are pretty similar. AMD has a ton of pressure on all the board vendors so that for the most part, their BIOSes all look and feel about the same aside from some subtle nuances here or there and what background art they want to put in place. It's not like on Intel boards where one BIOS setting is in two completely different spots on an ASUS board than it is on say an ASRock board, the only things that change are relatively minor (say whether you have a drop down or just type in something like memory or FCLK frequency for overclocking, the order of the main BIOS tabs, the things that take about 2 seconds to figure out and get used to). 

[PopsicleHustler]

14 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

To be fair, on AMD boards all BIOS layouts are pretty similar. AMD has a ton of pressure on all the board vendors so that for the most part, their BIOSes all look and feel about the same aside from some subtle nuances here or there and what background art they want to put in place. It's not like on Intel boards where one BIOS setting is in two completely different spots on an ASUS board than it is on say an ASRock board, the only things that change are relatively minor (say whether you have a drop down or just type in something like memory or FCLK frequency for overclocking, the order of the main BIOS tabs, the things that take about 2 seconds to figure out and get used to). 

Here is a little turn of events. My friend offered me a barely used 12700k for 250. The performance at 4k sub 120 FPS shouldn't be any different, yet price is only half of 7900x.

 

Now I'm wondering if I should take that instead of AM5. Yes its older gen, but still on par with 7000 ryzen, and an option for 13000 chip if I need more performance in the future.

 

Would the same RAM be suitable for it? And as for the board, which one would you recommend?

[RONOTHAN##]

35 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

Now I'm wondering if I should take that instead of AM5. Yes its older gen, but still on par with 7000 ryzen, and an option for 13000 chip if I need more performance in the future.

I wouldn't. If you do want to go the Intel route, the 13600K is just $50 more and as a gaming chip is a lot faster, plus with some overclocking headroom if you want to get it even faster. Plus 12th/13th gen is a lot more power hungry, so in a small form factor rig they're pretty hard to keep cool. 

 

37 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

Would the same RAM be suitable for it? And as for the board, which one would you recommend?

If you did go for it, yeah that RAM kit would be fine, though Intel does scale quite a bit more with memory performance so stepping up to a 6400 CL32 kit or similar is not a bad idea if you can afford it.