Gigabyte Mini ITX GTX 970 impressions

[deathjester]

Seen a lot of people asking about this card so I thought I would share (pics included of build). Temps are in CLOSED case and this is a real world scenario you may be looking at. Build it as a present for my sister for use on a 1080p TV. Finally can play with it again as the family is not visiting anymore.

 

System: CPU I5-4690k MB  H97M-ITX/ac (needed bluetooth/wifi). Microcenter has special on the K/combo so it was cheaper than a non K (cpu 179.99, mb 44.99). Cooling STOCK. 

GPU :GIGABYTE GV-N970IXOC-4GD. Newegg. If I remember right was 319.99 with a promo/rebate. Don't know if they still have it.

Ram. Cheapest CL9 1600 2x4 I could find. Was like 55 bucks.

HD. WD Blue 1tb.

Case. Thermaltake Core V1 (best mini itx case I ever worked with and was 37.99. Linus should definitely review this thing. Literally as easy as building in a full sized tower). You could fit a bigger card, but this was a bang for buck build with stock cooling, no overclocking and I wanted decent airflow. Temps would prob be better with 2 80mm fans for exhaust at the rear. Temps are brilliant on the CPU. Barely hitting 60C on multicore cinebench R15.

OS Win 8.1 64 bit.

PSU. Complete overkill 750 modular EVGA. It was on sale for 49.99 and they had no deals on little modular's worth a damn at the time.

Was a little over 800 with Windows.  

 

Valley Benchmark Extreme HD preset. Temps stabilize at 69 C max. You should have quite a bit of headroom to OC the card a bit. No coil whine. Not silent, but not loud either. I would say it is as loud as my Sapphire Tri-x 290 at stock, which isn't bad at all. You could also loosen up the fan speed as the temps are very good. May OC it later and add some 80mm fans to back of case (did not expect temps this good in a closed case), but loading up stuff and setting up emulators in Steam Big Picture (want it to act like a console, so prob going to use XBstart etc). 

[Mattr567]

Nice

[TdotRaptor]

I bought the same GPU. Could I use it in a normal tower without a problem? 

[sugalumps]

I really like the look of it, so much power wrapped up in there. I do however think that asus's model is better as it comes with a backplate and looks so damn sexy:

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/207609/asus-readies-geforce-gtx-970-directcu-mini.html

[MeltingPoint]

Wow that thing is so small and it packs a mighty punch. I'm glad to see that we are now able to shrink such powerful GPUs into a small PCB.

Who knows, we could be seeing dual GPU cards in these sizes soon. 

 

 

I bought the same GPU. Could I use it in a normal tower without a problem? 

I dont see why not. Its even fits in tiny cases so there should be no problems fitting it in a regular tower. 

 

 

I really like the look of it, so much power wrapped up in there. I do however think that asus's model is better as it comes with a backplate and looks so damn sexy:

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/207609/asus-readies-geforce-gtx-970-directcu-mini.html

 

I think the Gigabyte has a better cooling solution. The Asus has a dinky little vapor chamber and a relatively smaller fin array compared to the Gigabyte

[i_build_nanosuits]

it's truly impressive that they can pack so much hummph in such a little monster...way to go!

[deathjester]

Playing on it with my brother in law. They got the gift early as I didn't want them wasting money on a "next gen console".  This little pc packs a punch and Nvidia DSR is pretty darn nice when you are on a TV and want to do everything with a console controller. I have games like Trine rendered at 4k and they look beautiful. Still waiting for the wireless Xbox receiver for the wireless controlle (had to order one from Amazon) so they have to use a wired controller for now. When they saw it on their TV their heads about exploded lol.  I really am loving how far things like M ITX/Steam has come in the last couple years. Now we can show people what they have been missing and that a PC can be every bit as easy to use as a console.