63 replies to this topic

[Mul.]

For a number of reasons, mainly convenience I saw fit to downsize my gaming setup. I'd been planning this for a while but put it off because decent mATX cases either aren't much shorter than my existing Antec Sonata II mini tower case or had the motherboard sitting on the floor of the case meaning it actually consumed more space on the table than my existing case. Looking around there's a new range of ITX motherboards and cases that'll make this quite a simple move, except for the slight issue that there aren't any Socket AM2+/AM3 boards that have a PCI-E 16x slot. Instead, I've jumped back on the Intel Core 2 Duo bandwagon and sidestepped to the Core 2 Duo E8400, which I managed to get off eBay for £90/$130. So here's the plan.

Current

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition @ 3.60GHz getting rid of
Biostar TA790GX3 AM2+ Board getting rid of
2GB Patriot PC2-6400
GeForce 8800GT 512mb
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB HDD
Samsung DVDRW SATA getting rid of
Antec Sonata Case + 500W OCZ PSU getting rid of
Scythe Ninja Plus Cooler getting rid of

New

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz
Zotac GeForce 9300 ITX "WiFi" Motherboard
Silverstone Sugo SG05 Black w/ 300W 80PLUS PSU
Samsung Slimline Laptop DVD+/-RW SATA
Akasa Vortexx Neo Graphics Cooler
Scythe Shuriken heatpipe cooler

to go along with the existing-

2GB Patriot PC2-6400
GeForce 8800GT 512mb
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB HDD

The move should hopefully result in similar performance but with a desktop just 22cm wide, 17cm tall and 27cm in depth.

The CPU arrived yesterday. It's an SLAPL C0 chip but googling it's "Q746A" batch code gives me hope that it's a decent overclocker. That being said, I'd expect the motherboard to cave before the CPU hits it's max but hey, I might be surprised.

All the parts will arrive tomorrow and the build log will follow. I shall be writing a review for the case and motherboard for a later release to anyone that's interested.

[bigflyersmallbyer]

Should be interesting. I imagine the size of the case would affect temps?

[Mul.]

One would think so but ultimately it's down to the quality of airflow in the case. The front of the case is predominantly occupied by a single 120mm fan pushing cool air in. The Power Supply Unit acts as an exhaust fan and the sides and top of the case is vented. It goes without saying that everything inside should run at safe temperatures, but how comfortably I do not know yet!

[_TW_]

Sounds very interesting Mul.  Shame to see you get rid of the AMD system, but hey; the E8400 aint too bad either!  Hope everything works out smoothly.  Looking forward to the build log.  By the way, are you using the stock Intel cooler on the E8400?

[Invisiblemoose]

Looks like fun.

Still, I think the SG05 is too big for a mini-ITX case... You lose the advantage of going mini-ITX in the first place.

Any reason to go this route over a Shuttle? An SN78SH7 is the same size, and wouldn't have required completely switching platforms...

[VFR_Pierre]

Oh, wow. As Toby said, sounds interesting. Trying to conserve space? Seems like a nice computer for those size dimensions!

Hope you get to OC well.

[Mul.]

Toby Werner, on Apr 30 2009, 10:06 PM, said:

Sounds very interesting Mul.  Shame to see you get rid of the AMD system, but hey; the E8400 aint too bad either!  Hope everything works out smoothly.  Looking forward to the build log.  By the way, are you using the stock Intel cooler on the E8400?

Yeah, I had to think hard about parting with the Phenom II X3. It's been a long time since I've owned a CPU that felt like a true overclocker's chip. Every variable I changed in BIOS as subtle as it were had a different outcome. It reacted differently to different HTT base clocks and CPU Multi's and I could see it improving clock for clock when ramping up the Northbridge/Memory Controller frequencies. A nice change from the last two boring years of dropping a memory divider down, ramping up the clocks and using some GTL tweaks here and there to squeeze more out of the FSB.

Then again I had to think about the practicalities. For the next few years as a student, I'm going to be on the move a bit and amonst getting rid of useless clutter and being more organised, downsizing and rationalising any tech equipment I have is becoming a priority too. This is made worse by the fact that I won't be living anywhere with substantial space. To be frank, the main thing that swung it back to Intel was that I caught an E8400 in an eBay auction with just a few minutes spare at a bargain price. E8400's retail between £140 and £160 here, pretty much Phenom II Quad Core territory!

As far as cooling solutions go, I was originally going to fit the mammoth Coolermaster GeminII to operate passively inside the case before I came to the conclusion that I was doing it more for comic value and opted for the Scythe Shuriken.

http://www.scythe-eu...r/shuriken.html

I also decided to replace my fairly loud 8800GT cooler with one of these
http://www.akasa.com...k_vc03_bluv.htm

Invisiblemoose, on Apr 30 2009, 10:25 PM, said:

Looks like fun.

Still, I think the SG05 is too big for a mini-ITX case... You lose the advantage of going mini-ITX in the first place.

Any reason to go this route over a Shuttle? An SN78SH7 is the same size, and wouldn't have required completely switching platforms...

It's a fair point actually and I was thinking exactly that when considering the cons of opting for this sort of setup. On the flipside, I've had experience with Shuttle XPC's and I'm actually quite fond of them in terms of size and the general quality of the chassis'. I also think their ICE cooling setups are splendid too. What bothered me however was their proprietary form factor design and while I know my range of ITX boards are limited anyway, if it fails I can just buy a direct replacement for less than an entire shuttle unit, install it and RMA the broken one. At least I can retain some versatility when going the ITX route. Another issue is that a lot of the Shuttle's PCI-E slots sit on the outer side of the board meaning graphics cards with dual slot coolers will not fit. Finally while it's silly for it to influence a decision, I just felt like doing something a bit less conventional.

The size of the SG05 was compromised due to Silverstone incorporating Mini DTX compatibility too but personally I'm glad as it does allow for respectable cooling solutions for the graphics card to fit. I still think the dimensions are far more respectable to it's mATX equivalents which are as much as 7cm wider and a few cm longer.

[Invisiblemoose]

Nah, I hear you about being unconventional. Those Zotac boards certainly have an appeal to them. Looks like a fun build. Take plenty of pics!

[Mul.]

Right, to summarise the good news and bad news

Good news

- Everything arrived
- It all looks fantastic
- It's alive! Ish

Bad news

- The rest of my parts are in my halls of residence so I can't do a thing till then
- I need a Mini SATA to SATA adapter to connect the slimline optical drive
- I need an appropriate screwdriver to fit the slimline optical drive (tiny screws!)

And photos as promised.



















So yeah it's all looking good so far. The Front fan, PSU fan and the Scythe Fan are all very quiet although I'm unable to comment on temperatures. BIOS seems to be pretty loaded for a board of this size, offering

- CPU FSB up to 625FSB
- Memory Linked/Unlinked
- CPU VCore up to +0.3
- Memory VDimm up to +0.3 V
- NB VCore up to +0.3V
- Overclock support for integrated GPU.

Taking the PC back to halls with me where I'll then add the HDD, Graphics Card (+ new cooler), RAM and get a screwdriver to properly mount the Optical drive.

[tropicalfish]

You're running the graphics card on the 300W PSU?

EDIT: Aren't the PSU and CPU fans pulling against each other in a small amount of space?

Edited by tropicalfish, 02 May 2009 - 09:24 AM.

[Mul.]

Yep, 300W should be ample.

Yes the PSU fan and CPU fan are pulling against each other. Shall see if it causes an issue or not though I don't think it will.

[VFR_Pierre]

Wow, that really looks like an awesome build. Looks pretty fun too.

Looks sorta cramped, but with a lot of fans. Hopefully cooling will do well.

[bigflyersmallbyer]

That's tiny .

[Mul.]

Well it's up and running. As expected it all runs rather warm inside that little box. Around 40-45c loaded and up to 60c loaded. Overclocking should be possible but anything that involves a considerable voltage increase is going to make it run a little too hot.

[-Dexter]

Wow! I'm impressed! This has turned out to be a fantastic little project. Will we be looking at some overclocking at some point? Or are we just going to have it on stock speed for a while? And what size are the fans on the case? Perhaps they could be swapped out for some 3rd party fans that might spin up a bit faster to increase that air flow (because I suppose airflow is the key in a cramped little space like this).

[iKettles]

pwn247, on May 4 2009, 11:22 PM, said:

Wow! I'm impressed! This has turned out to be a fantastic little project. Will we be looking at some overclocking at some point? Or are we just going to have it on stock speed for a while? And what size are the fans on the case? Perhaps they could be swapped out for some 3rd party fans that might spin up a bit faster to increase that air flow (because I suppose airflow is the key in a cramped little space like this).

120mm fan on the front and 120mm fan on the CPU. The Scythe fans push a decent amount of air, and what I presume is a stock Silverstone fan on the front also pushes a good amount of air. I reckon Mul has hit the limits with cooling on this case, the only other option would be water cooling which theoretically is possible with a 120mm radiator and a compact pump.

[tropicalfish]

About how much space is there between the motherboard and the power supply?

[Mul.]

pwn247, on May 4 2009, 11:22 PM, said:

Wow! I'm impressed! This has turned out to be a fantastic little project. Will we be looking at some overclocking at some point? Or are we just going to have it on stock speed for a while? And what size are the fans on the case? Perhaps they could be swapped out for some 3rd party fans that might spin up a bit faster to increase that air flow (because I suppose airflow is the key in a cramped little space like this).

It wouldn't be me if I didn't attempt any form of overclocking. See below for results

It should be possible to lower temperatures with faster fans but to be honest I wanted to keep noise levels down too.

iKettles, on May 4 2009, 11:39 PM, said:

pwn247, on May 4 2009, 11:22 PM, said:

Wow! I'm impressed! This has turned out to be a fantastic little project. Will we be looking at some overclocking at some point? Or are we just going to have it on stock speed for a while? And what size are the fans on the case? Perhaps they could be swapped out for some 3rd party fans that might spin up a bit faster to increase that air flow (because I suppose airflow is the key in a cramped little space like this).

120mm fan on the front and 120mm fan on the CPU. The Scythe fans push a decent amount of air, and what I presume is a stock Silverstone fan on the front also pushes a good amount of air. I reckon Mul has hit the limits with cooling on this case, the only other option would be water cooling which theoretically is possible with a 120mm radiator and a compact pump.

Yeah and this was my original thought. Was looking at compact 120mm rad based watercooling kits. Could've worked but I was concerned about whether I'd have enough room for a radiator AND a fan up front. It doesn't look like it would've fitted unfortunately so I'm glad I didn't opt for that.

tropicalfish, on May 4 2009, 11:39 PM, said:

About how much space is there between the motherboard and the power supply?

78mm

Well frankly I'm very impressed with what this motherboard has managed. The maximum FSB I could hit with sensible northbridge volts was 405MHz



I was hoping for around the 3.6GHz mark so I'm quite happy. I'm going to back down to a round 400FSB and verify stability overnight.

Edited by Mul., 04 May 2009 - 05:54 PM.

[VFR_Pierre]

Doesn't get too hot?

[Mul.]

It's been priming for just over 35 minutes and temperatures are around 62-65c loaded. I'm happy with those temperatures and knock on wood, it'll be stable too.