ITX compatibility help...

[GriffinLord]

Budget (including currency): $2000 CAD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Light video editing and gaming

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): I'm building my girlfriend her first PC and she insists on getting it in the Fractal Terra (Jade). I recently Upgraded my personal rig and she's getting a lot of second hand parts from me. 

I'm giving her my old i5 13600k, Corsair vengeance 32gb, 5600MT/s ddr5 memory, Intel arc A770 16gb. As for peripherals she's inheriting my old 29" 2560 x 1080 75hz LG ultrawide. She has her own mouse and I'm making her a custom keyboard.

I've never done a ITX build before and I'm really concerned about the ram clearance for the low profile air cooler I'm pretty much forced to get.

I've had my eye on two particular coolers. The alpenfohn Black ridge, and the Noctua NH-L12S. As far as I know she won't be doing any overclocking but 13th gen intel chips spit out heat like no-ones business, and I know that boost clocks may be a problem, so I want a beefy cooler to handle the heat. And of course my Corsair vengeance ram isn't exactly low profile. I'll also get additional 120mm noctua fans as needed to help performance.

I'm planning on getting the Seasonic Focus SPX-750 Platinum for upgrade potential down the line.

I'm also torn between getting a B760 or Z790 motherboard for her, since i've always had the z series motherboards, I don't know the drawbacks of getting a lower end one. (problem is itx z series motherboards a super expensive)

My Girlfriend isn't a super gamer by any stretch, but she's been interested in the hobby for a while. She mainly plays OSU and Overwatch, but she's big into Star wars, so I want her to be able to play gams like Jedi Fallen order, its sequel and KOTOR at at least high-ish (maybe medium) graphics at or above 60fps. 

[venomtail]

20 minutes ago, GriffinLord said:

Corsair vengeance

Be more specific, vengeance series has either normal model (which is low profile) or RGB version close to dominators which aren't low profile. So which ones do you have?

 

I'd get the Alpenföhn cause why not. If you're having overheating worries just undervolt the CPU so it can't sprint as fast. Not like it'll turn unusable. Though it's more complex and you need to read up on it. More here

 

 

24 minutes ago, GriffinLord said:

I'm also torn between getting a B760 or Z790 motherboard

I'd just get the B760. Why do you want the top of the spec line? Do you need to OC your CPU for extra performance? Need all the lanes for storage that you'll be utilising? 90% of the people buying K series processors are just fine with a B series board for their need.

[GriffinLord]

2 minutes ago, venomtail said:

Be more specific, vengeance series has either normal model (which is low profile) or RGB version close to dominators which aren't low profile. So which ones do you have?

 

I'd get the Alpenföhn cause why not. If you're having overheating worries just undervolt the CPU so it can't sprint as fast. Not like it'll turn unusable. Though it's more complex and you need to read up on it. More here

 

 

I'd just get the B760. Why do you want the top of the spec line? Do you need to OC your CPU for extra performance? Need all the lanes for storage that you'll be utilising? 90% of the people buying K series processors are just fine with a B series board for their need.

Thanks for the help, My ram is the no-nonsensed plain Vengeance, no RGB or anything. I'm not opposed to getting new ram that's more low profile if push comes to shove though. 

I usually do overclock my CPU on my personal system and have a ton of old hard drives and ssd's for storage so I usually go with the z series. Plus they typically give more IO on the back which is nice, but I'm not too concerned about my girlfriend running out of rear IO. 

[filpo]

10 minutes ago, venomtail said:

vengeance series has either normal model (which is low profile) or RGB version close to dominators which aren't low profile

in the ddr5 flavours there is no low profile version. And they stated they have 5600 mt/s ram

 

41 minutes ago, GriffinLord said:

I've never done a ITX build before and I'm really concerned about the ram clearance for the low profile air cooler I'm pretty much forced to get.

I've had my eye on two particular coolers. The alpenfohn Black ridge, and the Noctua NH-L12S. As far as I know she won't be doing any overclocking but 13th gen intel chips spit out heat like no-ones business, and I know that boost clocks may be a problem, so I want a beefy cooler to handle the heat. And of course my Corsair vengeance ram isn't exactly low profile. I'll also get additional 120mm noctua fans as needed to help performance.

I'm planning on getting the Seasonic Focus SPX-750 Platinum for upgrade potential down the line.

I'm also torn between getting a B760 or Z790 motherboard for her, since i've always had the z series motherboards, I don't know the drawbacks of getting a lower end one. (problem is itx z series motherboards a super expensive)

My Girlfriend isn't a super gamer by any stretch, but she's been interested in the hobby for a while. She mainly plays OSU and Overwatch, but she's big into Star wars, so I want her to be able to play gams like Jedi Fallen order, its sequel and KOTOR at at least high-ish (maybe medium) graphics at or above 60fps. 

So is this build for you or for your girlfriend?

[GriffinLord]

2 minutes ago, filpo said:

in the ddr5 flavours there is no low profile version. And they stated they have 5600 mt/s ram

 

So is this build for you or for your girlfriend?

It's for my girlfriend but I'm the one building it for her since she has no experience with PC building and and ITX isn't the place to start for a newbie. Plus she's using some of my old parts that I replaced in my PC.

[filpo]

24 minutes ago, GriffinLord said:

It's for my girlfriend but I'm the one building it for her since she has no experience with PC building and and ITX isn't the place to start for a newbie. Plus she's using some of my old parts that I replaced in my PC.

So that 13600k, ddr5 ram and that a770 are going to be passed to her? And are these the only parts that won’t need to be bought? Also which games specifically?

 

I would swap out the a770 for something different though

[venomtail]

30 minutes ago, filpo said:

in the ddr5 flavours there is no low profile version. And they stated they have 5600 mt/s ram

34vs35mm height is still low profile. Sure a new generation is taller by a whole millimeter but it's not the massive 44+mm tall RAM sticks I'm worried about. @GriffinLord Unless you cooler specifically has a 34mm height max clearance, if it just says good for "low profile" I'd class normal DDR5 Corsair memory still as the old standard low profile sticks. 

 

36 minutes ago, GriffinLord said:

Thanks for the help, My ram is the no-nonsensed plain Vengeance, no RGB or anything. I'm not opposed to getting new ram that's more low profile if push comes to shove though. 

I usually do overclock my CPU on my personal system and have a ton of old hard drives and ssd's for storage so I usually go with the z series. Plus they typically give more IO on the back which is nice, but I'm not too concerned about my girlfriend running out of rear IO. 

If you have these you should be good to go. The terra case allows you to move the middle panel for more motherboard clearance or GPU clearance. The Arc cards (dunno which model you have) should be pretty slim 2.5 at most. You could slide the case for max motherboard support and if either cooler is not enough, take the Noctua cooler and swap out for a T30 fan, basically those thicker than normal fans that should by force simply move more air through the fins. Maybe the extra few degrees compared to included fan might be worth it but I haven't done and research on this specific combo of cooler and fan.

[brob]

Noctua lists Corsair DDR5 Vengeance (non RGB) as compatible with the NH-L12S. These modules are 35mm tall so should also be compatible with the Alpenfohn. I'd pick the NH-L12S.

 

Given the possible CPU coolers there is no reason to get a Z790 motherboard. You'll want to use a B760 motherboard and set the power limit to 65W.

 

[GriffinLord]

9 minutes ago, filpo said:

So that 13600k, ddr5 ram and that a770 are going to be passed to her? And are these the only parts that won’t need to be bought? Also which games specifically?

 

I would swap out the a770 for something different though

My original Post has some of the games at the bottom, Overwatch is the big one but that's not too demanding. Star wars Jedi Fallen order and Survivor are some big games I know she wants to play. It takes two is also on our wishlist, and I'll probably try and get her to play Elden ring with me. otherwise the only games I can think of that she would play would be games like Hollow knight, Stardew valley, and Ori and the blind forest. 

I know the A770 isn't the best GPU but I got it as a bit of an F-U to Nvidia with their absurd prices. My previous GPU before that was a 1070 and she's gaming on an old Dell laptop so we're not complaining about the upgrade. Besides, it's mainly a free placeholder GPU until she wants to get something more beefy when prices finally normalize again. But for 1080p ultrawide it should be fine right?

And yeah, the 13600k, ram and a770 are the only things that I don't have to buy. My old rig is ATX with a 280 mil aio so the motherboard, cooler, and psu won't fit in the Fractal terra.

 

19 minutes ago, venomtail said:

34vs35mm height is still low profile. Sure a new generation is taller by a whole millimeter but it's not the massive 44+mm tall RAM sticks I'm worried about. @GriffinLord Unless you cooler specifically has a 34mm height max clearance, if it just says good for "low profile" I'd class normal DDR5 Corsair memory still as the old standard low profile sticks. 

 

If you have these you should be good to go. The terra case allows you to move the middle panel for more motherboard clearance or GPU clearance. The Arc cards (dunno which model you have) should be pretty slim 2.5 at most. You could slide the case for max motherboard support and if either cooler is not enough, take the Noctua cooler and swap out for a T30 fan, basically those thicker than normal fans that should by force simply move more air through the fins. Maybe the extra few degrees compared to included fan might be worth it but I haven't done and research on this specific combo of cooler and fan.

I do have those, although a second look at the Alpenfohn says they only support 33mm ram in it's base configuration and with the Fan on top. On newegg the noctua fan says it can clear 35mm but the noctua website says it's incompatible with the asus rog b760 motherboard. 

I've got the limited Limited edition A770 instead of any aftermarket card. 

[venomtail]

1 hour ago, GriffinLord said:

the A770 isn't the best GPU

Don't worry, for the games your girlfriend wants to play it's more than good enough. Had a look on YT and the 770 in Fallen Order at 1440p Ultra could easily do 70-80fps. You found yourself a demanding one, the ones I know have their most demanding game be Sims 4 :DD 

[GriffinLord]

3 hours ago, venomtail said:

You could slide the case for max motherboard support and if either cooler is not enough, take the Noctua cooler and swap out for a T30 fan, basically those thicker than normal fans that should by force simply move more air through the fins. Maybe the extra few degrees compared to included fan might be worth it but I haven't done and research on this specific combo of cooler and fan.

The t30 seems a little too big for putting on either size of the if I still want 35mm tall ram or want to fit it in the fractal. Although do you think that strapping two Noctua NF-a12x15 fans to the cooler (one on the top and one on the bottom) will drop my temps? Or is using 2 of the same fan redundant?

[SorryBella]

15 hours ago, GriffinLord said:

I've had my eye on two particular coolers. The alpenfohn Black ridge, and the Noctua NH-L12S. As far as I know she won't be doing any overclocking but 13th gen intel chips spit out heat like no-ones business

What case youre looking at? NR200 can handle standard height 120mm tower coolers easily.

[GriffinLord]

10 hours ago, SorryBella said:

What case youre looking at? NR200 can handle standard height 120mm tower coolers easily.

It's the Fractal Terra ITX (Jade color)