Posts Tagged Under: mini itx

Building a Compact Gaming PC with the i5-12600K

After spending the last several generations playing it safe and letting AMD enjoy the CPU spotlight, Intel finally decided to provide a more robust competition with their recent 12th-generation Alder Lake chips. New DDR5 RAM support, much smaller lithography, and lots more cores await to provide plenty of gaming and multitasking performance this holiday season.

Today, we’ll be looking at a build including the i5-12600K that focuses on being compact yet powerful—capable of fitting in a tight space, or moving with relative ease from house to office (or from home office to entertainment room). As we’ll see, the i5-12600K is a multitasking master for a great price, so this will be a gaming-workstation hybrid in a nice tight package.

Before we begin, let’s explore the 12600K in a bit more depth so we know what we’re working with!

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Motherboard Form Factor Guide

Computer cases can come in a wide array of shapes and sizes, from a basic box you can order online to a custom-made bust of your uncle Kevin that you can slap a power supply and graphics card into.

No matter what kind of case you gravitate towards, it is important to know what form factor of motherboard will be compatible with it, and the benefits and drawbacks that accompany those sizes. Whether you are building a new PC or simply upgrading ol’ reliable, the form factor of your motherboard is an important piece of the puzzle.

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Building a Budget Mini ITX PC

Mini ITX PCs are famous among builders for being deceptively difficult and expensive to create. The unassuming, small stature of such builds may make them look like smaller projects than mid towers or full towers to newcomers—but the tight spaces in the cases, the higher temperatures of such close quarters, and the specialty parts they sometimes require can balloon the challenge and the cost.

In this article, we take a look at putting together a tiny build for a modest price: building a capable Mini ITX small form factor computer for about $390, similar in price and performance to a larger low-end PC.

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Choosing A (Thermally) Cool Case: My Top Three

top-3-cases-for-cooling

When it comes to selecting a computer case, there are a number of considerations each buyer has to weigh. The placement of USB ports, LED control options, the number of drive bays, and whether the case comes with a glass side panel are just a few elements that can factor into a buyer’s decision.

But there is one part of the case that should be of universal concern: cooling.

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PC Build: $1,200 Mini ITX 1440p Gaming PC

Thermaltake Core V1

Thermaltake Core V1

When putting this build together, I wanted to build a Mini ITX PC that can play almost any game at 1440p at 60 FPS with Ultra settings. I allocated a budget of $1,200 and picked parts accordingly.

This is a Haswell build, but I’ve provided alternative options for Skylake, at a slightly higher price.

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