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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). 

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CPU:24/7-4770k @ 4.5ghz/4.0 cache @ 1.22V override, 1.776 VCCIN. MB: Z87-G41 PC Mate. Cooling: Hyper 212 evo push/pull. Ram: Gskill Ares 1600 CL9 @ 2133 1.56v 10-12-10-31-T1 150 TRFC. Case: HAF 912 stock fans (no LED crap). HD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB. Display: Dell S2340M IPS. GPU: Sapphire Tri-x R9 290. PSU:CX600M OS: Win 7 64 bit/Mac OS X Mavericks, dual boot Hackintosh.

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Nice

Project Cobalt: 

CPU: AMD FX 8370 Motherboard:

Asus M5A97 R2.0

RAM: G.Skill Ares 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2133 GPU:

Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming Case: NZXT H440 (Blue)

Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 256GB +  2x 1TB WD Cavier Blue

PSU: Corsair 750G2 

CPU Cooler: Swiftech H220X

Keyboard: Model M + a lot of others 

Mouse: Logitech G502
 

Vintage Gaming PC: AMD Athlon T-Bird 800Mhz, Gainward nVidia Ti200 128MB, 512MB Crucial RAM DDR, Compaq ASPEN 2 OEM Board, Soundblaster Live! 5.1, Windows 98SE

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

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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

60FPS Microwave

Intel Core i5-4670K | Galax GTX 970 EXOC | ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac | Team Elite 8GB 1600MHz | Gelid Black Edition | Samsung slowdown + WD Blue 1TB x2 | Cooler Master V550 | Corsair K65 + Logitech G100s | MasterCase Pro 3

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

| CPU: Core i7-8700K @ 4.89ghz - 1.21v  Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING  CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i V2 |
| GPU: MSI RTX 3080Ti Ventus 3X OC  RAM: 32GB T-Force Delta RGB 3066mhz |
| Displays: Acer Predator XB270HU 1440p Gsync 144hz IPS Gaming monitor | Oculus Quest 2 VR

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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. :)

 

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CPU:24/7-4770k @ 4.5ghz/4.0 cache @ 1.22V override, 1.776 VCCIN. MB: Z87-G41 PC Mate. Cooling: Hyper 212 evo push/pull. Ram: Gskill Ares 1600 CL9 @ 2133 1.56v 10-12-10-31-T1 150 TRFC. Case: HAF 912 stock fans (no LED crap). HD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB. Display: Dell S2340M IPS. GPU: Sapphire Tri-x R9 290. PSU:CX600M OS: Win 7 64 bit/Mac OS X Mavericks, dual boot Hackintosh.

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