Jump to content

Phantex Evolv ITX - Built by hunting for deals (mid range?)

RTLooney
By RTLooney
in Build Logs
 Share
Posted
The parts for this system were purchased over 6(ish) months. The process involved regularly checking various forums/reddit/retailers. The choice of parts was dictated by the availability offers, discounts and deals. In the end almost no parts were purchased at full price.

The aim was to build a system primarily for gaming, with some work use (generally running simulations).

 

post-269037-0-28490200-1447015389_thumb.

 

Parts

Cpu


This was the first component purchased, I originally was planning on an i5 4690K, but due to budget and planing a mini-ITX system I debated getting a non-K version which at the time was about £30-£40 cheaper at about £150 vs £180 for the unlocked version.

However I came across A new retailer on Amazon who was selling under-priced components (through a post in the Hot Deals section about a CPU cooler), I checked there store front and found this gem for ~£150 at the time its was ~£210 elsewhere. The retailer pulled their entire stock a few days later and fixed all the pricing. (I guess they were trying to get some feedback to get the ball rolling)

Anyway 3.4/3.8 turbo should serve my needs while the 4 cores are plenty for gaming the 8 threads will help with work! 

This chip having no integrated graphics is not a problem and the slightly lower TDP is welcome. Cooling this CPU was a bit of an unknown so I decided to build with the stock cooler and see if it can maintain its turbo frequency before looking into an after market cooler.

 

----

MoBo


There were 2 major requirement on the motherboard mini-ITX and WiFi.

Around the time I bought the CPU mini-ITX 1150 boards were ~£50 on PCPP, and had been for a while. I wrongly assumed this would not change as about a month later priced started to rise back up to the £80-£90 mark. I managed to grab one before everyone put the prices up.

The blue accents on the board decided a bit of a colour theme for the build...

At build time the budget H81 were back around £50 but hey I wont complain about £5 more for a Z97 board.

Although the board functions perfectly I have a few gripes; the placement of the CPU and AUX1 fan headers feels back to front, the WiFi antennae attaching to the backplate feels flimsy and having only 2 sata cables for 5 ports seems a little cheap (but enough for my needs). 

Finally I prefer a more traditional looking BIOS, but I feel these are becoming a thing of the past.

 

----

Ram


Not owning a DDR3 system yet and with the CPU and MoBo sitting on the shelf I decided The RAM should come next as only then can I test the components I have.

So thanks to reddit for this one, with DDR3 at approx £40 for 8GB at the time, for £36 with blue LEDs this seemed a good deal and started the plan to have far to many LEDs.

In hindsight this is one component that I could have saved on by waiting as DDR3 kept falling in price after I purchased this.

The only complaint is that the lighting effects are obviously designed for 4 sticks not 2.

 

----

PSU


An other great Amazon deal courtesy of reddit a semi modular 620 watt PSU from a reputable supplier for £35, only downside delivery in 2 months. Well at the rate of about 4 parts in 3 months and still needing Case, Storage and GPU this shouldn't be a problem.

The PSU seems to work fine only gripes are the red (whcih are not its fault) and the text being upside-down when mounted In the Enthoo EVOLV

 

---

Case


This is the one part I decided what I want before finding it as a deal. 

Fortunately it made an appearance in Scan's Daily Deals, with about £5 off the current price, furthermore I was looking for an excuse to order the £1 fans below without paying more on shipping than the fans themselves.

I think case looks great, has reasonable room for cable management does exactly what I wanted. Only complaint not properly supporting hidden top mounted fans, but that doesn't stop you fitting them there its just a little tricky.

 

----

GPU


I was never going to spend more than ~£150 on the GPU and intended to buy new. This limited my choices: I did find a reference GTX 770 on overclockers.co.uk for £150 I waited too long and the deal ended.

In the end the 300 series came out and it seemed Novatech had overstocked on this card and it made an appearance in their deals for sub £120 shortly after release. Putting it in the pricing of a high end 750ti/ low end 950!

Only reservation was only 2GB but at this point money was more of a concern and I wanted to build the computer at some point, also I will not be getting a monitor with this build so for now at least its only going to be running 1680x1050.

This card runs a little warmer than I would like in this case, but it has fairly restricted intakes. Basically the temps are acceptable but I wont be overclocking it anytime soon.

 

----

Storage


This was another from Scan's Daily Deals, Reasonable speeds and it was getting near time to build, and I definitely wanted my boot drive when building, mass storage can wait.

 


The only not new part... this was the boot drive that came in my pentium 4 dell 3100. I needed some storage which wasn't the boot drive, the drive had been wiped, I ran chkdsk and there seems to be no bad sectors, pretty impressive for its age, should do the job.

Anyhow currently my steam library is ~100GB so I've got a little time before upgrading.

 

----

Fans


One little indulgence, purchased around full price looks pretty runes fairly quietly and move a reasonable amount of air. Luckily the LEDs in this fan match are a very good match for the Ram LEDs.

 


Decided to add more LEDs by replacing the front fan, sadly the LED colour doesn't quite match the rest of the system, may swap back to the stock fan if this gets too annoying.

 


Scan is selling these quiet RGB fans for £1. There is a good reason why, They look and feel cheap and the awful fan controller, each fan requires a expansion slot from your case for its personal ugly controller. Each controller takes a molex connection and has a decently long cable running to the fan.

Luckily this fairly large controller has a reasonably small PCB in. After dismantling I fitted two of the PCBs to a plastic 2.5 to 3.5 HDD converter which cost a few pounds. and hid them in the spare HDD slot along with the molex connections.

The fans themselves work well and with a bit of fiddling I installed them out of sight above the radiator mount in the top cavity. 

 

----

OS


Brought from a company who dismantles old computers and makes entry level systems. They also sell Certificate Of Authentication stickers from dead systems. Not sure if its above board but they gave a good service and it upgraded to windows 10 just fine.

 

----

Cables


Another little indulgence £20 worth of cable extensions, The 24pin a 4+4 for the MoBo and 2 6pin for the GPU.

The cables are good quality and a good budget option for improving the look of a system. However I feel like I wasted money as the 6pin extensions are generally hidden as the GPU is long enough for them to be hidden by the cases mid plate.

In the end the 6-pin extensions were removed for the sake of better cable management.

 


 


 

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  (Purchased For £148.57) 

Motherboard: ASRock Z97M-ITX/AC Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  (Purchased For £56.99) 

Memory: Avexir Core series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (Purchased For £36.99) 

Storage: Sandisk Z400s 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For £32.39) 


Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card  (Purchased For £119.99) 

Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX Mini ITX Tower Case  (Purchased For £44.39) 


Power Supply: SilverStone Black/Blue 1 x 8pin to EPS12V 8pin(4+4) connector (Purchased For £4.99)

Power Supply: SilverStone Black/Blue 1 x 6pin to PCI-E 6pin connector (Purchased For £4.99)

Power Supply: SilverStone Black/Blue 1 x 6pin to PCI-E 6pin connector (Purchased For £4.99)

Power Supply: SilverStone Black/Blue 1 x Motherboard 24pin connector (Purchased For £8.87)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM (64-bit)  (Purchased For £19.99) 

Case Fan: Enermax UCTVS12P-BL 76.0 CFM 120mm  Fan  (Purchased For £14.99) 

Case Fan: 200mm Cooler Master MegaFlow BlueLED (Purchased For £4.99)

Case Fan: Xclio 256 Colour LED Quiet Fan 120mm (Purchased For £1.00)

Case Fan: Xclio 256 Colour LED Quiet Fan 120mm (Purchased For £1.00)

 

Total: £539.70

 

The final total was approx £550 including various postage charges.

 

So how much did I really save?



So around £300 if I wanted these exact parts (the avexir ram is pricey in the UK at the moment)

Or around £125 if a similar build would do...

 

Final thoughts:

  • I'm undecided if this was the best way to go about buying components.
  • The fun of hunting down deals and ending up with a build i'm happy with was well worth it.
  • As purchasing the parts took months some stores returns windows wouldn't have lasted until building the system without going via manufacturers RMA. Buying parts In such an order than they can be tested gave some peace of mind.
  • No one should ever use the XClio fans unless they rip apart the controller and even then I wouldn't really recommend them.
  • LEDs are Pretty
 


 

For those interested the UK based forums/reddit/retailers I checked almost daily were:





and of course LTT Hot Deals

 

I also kept an eye on PCPP prices and the US buildapcsales

 

When it came to finding a GPU I had to dig deeper and started checking retailers deals more often








 


 

So with no more ado here It is...

post-269037-0-38936000-1447015633_thumb.

 

Still to do..

Upgrade HDD - not urgent as at the moment my steam library fits on the 160GB

Cable Combs for 24pin extension - It just looks messy at the moment... got my eye on E22 black combs

PSU - Figure out a way to hide the label as it doesn't match

Screen - Upgrade to 1080p once I find a suitable one for the right price

Other Peripherals - What I have works but it's old and could be upgraded

(+take some better photos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

Me likey!

Intel Core i7-6700K | Corsair H105 | Asus Z170I PRO GAMING | G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB | 950 PRO 512GB M.2

 

Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB STRIX OC | BitFenix Prodigy (Black/Red) | XFX PRO Black Edition 850W

 

 

My Build | PCPartPicker | CoC

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing Build Logs

×