Intel Gaming SFF

Gaming rigs, with powerful CPUs and discrete GPUs, tend to produce more heat than standard desktops and HTPCs. Cramming the most power hungry components into a small space poses problems—problems that many newer SFF chassis obviate by getting a little bigger. Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPUs are remarkably powerful while using relatively little juice. Similarly, AMD (ATI) GPUs tend to use less power under load than their NVIDIA competitors. Combine the two and it’s possible to assemble a nearly bleeding edge gaming rig in a slightly larger (13.6” x 9” x 10.8”) SFF system—and no, we aren’t going to put together a dual-GPU beast in the Silverstone FT03 chassis for this build, even if that is an option.

Intel Gaming SFF
Component Description Cost Rebate
Case Lian Li PC-Q08B $101  
PSU Antec TruePower New TP-550 $90  
CPU Intel Core i5-2500K (4x3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo, 8MB L3) $216  
Motherboard ASUS P8H61-I $85  
GPU ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 6850 $155 -$20
Memory Patriot 4GB (2x2GB) PSD34G1333K $40  
HDD Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103JS 1TB $61  
DVDRW LITE-ON DS-8A5S $33  
OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM $100  
Total Price $881 $861

Note: The differences in case, PSU, and other components affect the total price.
If you compare with the AMD build, look at just the CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

Our Intel gaming SFF starts with the Core i5-2500K, a CPU that’s easily capable of running all the latest games (with an appropriate GPU). It uses very little power at idle and is an all around excellent chip. While it’s not quite as potent as the Core i7-2600K (thanks to the lack of Hyper-Threading), it also dissipates less

heat, making it a perfect fit for an SFF. Besides, if you’re planning on gaming and you’ll only be using a single GPU, particularly at higher resolutions there’s very little advantage to getting a faster CPU.

The AMD Radeon HD 6850 is a good match for the i5-2500K. Like the CPU, the 6850 isn’t the fastest GPU, but it’s plenty powerful and capable of playing the latest titles at 1080p and high detail settings at acceptable framerates. The 6850 is slightly slower than the previous generation 5850 (10% or less on almost all benchmarks), but it uses less power and its power connectors are better positioned (on the side vs. on the end) for use in an SFF case. It’s also about the longest video card that will fit in a mini-ITX chassis. At 10.27” in length, it fits inside the Lian Li PC-Q08B with a small amount of breathing room.

Speaking of which, I absolutely love the PC-Q09B case. It’s somewhat large for a mini-ITX SFF chassis, but its airflow and cooling potential are very good and it can accommodate multiple 3.5” hard drives as well as a standard optical drive and PSU. For this build, we recommend a 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 HDD. Once you start installing games, an SSD will quickly run out of space, though you can always go the SSD + HDD combination if you choose. (We’d recommend at least a 60GB SSD, just because games periodically store additional files on the C: drive.) If you have the money, you could also get a larger 120GB SSD for the OS and apps and install a handful of favorite titles there, with any others relegated to the HDD.

Wrapping up our Intel Gaming SFF, I find modular PSUs work best in the PC-Q08B, as cable management is easier because there are fewer cables immediately adjacent to the hard drive cage. The Antec TP-550 is 80 Plus Bronze certified and has a few fixed cables with the rest being modular. If you prefer an alternative, the Seasonic M12II 520W is fully modular and 80 Plus Bronze certified. Both PSUs are very good quality and are more than sufficient wattage to power the components we selected. Just to be clear, the Antec and Seasonic PSUs (as well as other modular PSUs) are a very tight fit against the top drive cage, but with some patience, they will work.

AMD Gaming SFF

Like the HTPC segment, AMD does not currently offer any CPUs that can compete with the Intel offerings in terms of both performance and power consumption. Instead, AMD relies on cost to remain competitive. This AMD gaming system is not as powerful as the Intel system, but it costs a lot less. Here’s what we selected for this build.

AMD Gaming SFF
Component Description Cost Rebate
Case Silverstone Sugo SG05-B $105  
CPU AMD Athlon II X3 450 (3x3.2GHz, 3x512K L2) $76  
Motherboard ASUS M4A88T-I Deluxe $125  
GPU Sapphire 100283-3L Radeon HD 5770 $115 -$20
Memory Patriot 4GB (2x2GB) PSD34G1066SK SO-DIMMs $44  
HDD Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS $45  
DVDRW LITE-ON DS-8A5S $33  
OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM $100  
Total Price $643 $623
AMD Gaming Alternatives (Downgrades)
CPU AMD Athlon II X2 250 (2x3.0GHz, 2x1MB L2) $61  
GPU Sapphire 100287VGAL Radeon HD 5670 $70 -$10
Total Price with Downgrade $583 $573

Note: The differences in case, PSU, and other components affect the total price.
If you compare with the Intel build, look at just the CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

AMD’s Athlon II X3 450 offers tremendous value for the budget-conscious gamer; it uses less power than its

Black Edition Phenom II and quad-core relatives and only costs $15 more than the dual-core X2 250 we’ve recommended twice now. Matched with a Radeon HD 5770, you’ve got a very capable gaming system. At less than $100 after rebate, the Radeon HD 5770 offers astonishing value to gamers on a budget. The 5770 may not seem like much compared to other desktop GPUs, but keep in mind that this venerable GPU would rank near the top of the mobile GPU heap—it has the same number of GPU cores and is clocked higher than the Mobility HD 5870. So if you’re curious about the gaming potential, it would be roughly equal to the GTX 460M notebooks we’ve looked at recently, at less than half the price.

The Silverstone Sugo SG05-B mini-ITX chassis includes an 80 Plus certified 300W PSU. This case doesn’t have quite the airflow potential of the Lian Li recommended above, and it’s also noisier because of the plastic construction, but it’s still a very good case. It’s also smaller at 10.9” x 8.8” x 7”. The SG05-B can house one 2.5” SSD and one 3.5” HDD, but since this is a budget build, we’re going with one 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue mechanical HDD to keep costs down. As always, you can go with a larger capacity hard drive if necessary, and you can certainly add an SSD later if you’re interested. The case also supports a slim optical drive, so we chose a DVDRW to fill that role.

Recommended Gaming SFF

Many popular games like StarCraft 2 and World of WarCraft have very modest hardware requirements for enjoyable gaming, especially at lower resolutions and/or detail settings. You could shave an additional $50 or so off the cost of the AMD system by using an Athlon II X2 250 CPU and Radeon HD 5670 GPU instead of the Athlon II X3 450 and Radeon HD 5770. You can see how the Athlon II X3 450 compares with Athlon II X2 255 in our CPU Bench; the 255 is about 3% faster than the 250, so you’re not missing out on much. Similarly, you can see how the 5770 compares to the 5670 in our 5670 review. The 6850 is quite a bit faster, of course, so if you can spare the extra $40 the ASUS 6850 in the Intel system will prove beneficial.

Our SFF Gaming rigs represent opposite ends of the budget spectrum, with the Intel system costing almost 50% more than the AMD system. The Intel system is certainly more capable, but if we remove all the other component differences from the table, the actual cost for the Intel SFF (CPU, motherboard, and RAM) is just under $100. If you only have a modest budget, the AMD system will suffice—you can also see how the two CPUs stack up in our CPU Bench. The AMD CPU may be inferior to the Intel CPU, but pay particular attention to the gaming performance, where the AMD triple core chip still turns out acceptable frame rates. Likewise, the Radeon HD 5770 isn’t as powerful as the Radeon HD 6850, but as you can see in GPU Bench, the cheaper GPU is still quite capable.

SFF HTPCs Closing Thoughts
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  • hsew - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    I'm lost here. What purpose does an overclocking chip do on a platform that can't overclock?
  • Gigantopithecus - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    Resale value, plain & simple.
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    One person posted a build and mentioned that with the K series graphics, plus the ability to overclock the graphics, he was able to keep from using a discreet GPU in his HTPC. It would also give you options if you later wanted a Z68 board.
  • Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    The 2500K and 2700K are the only desktop chips that have twelve shader units instead of six on Sandy Bridge. It's an asinine distinction Intel made, but if you want a competent IGP you have to go for the K series.
  • jo-82 - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    are quadratic Mainboards imho, like miniITX with 17x17cm. It would be mouch nicer to get mobos with 23x13cm.
  • shamans33 - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    it's for backwards compatibility with motherboard standoffs
  • rhyscathym - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    What does the quality of HD playback look like on this machine? It would be great to see this system run through media playback benchmarks.

    Also, will this system support the Audio decoding that a distinct video card such as the ATi 5770 provides?
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    Thanks for doing this article, it's great to see serious ITX machines getting some recognition.

    Now if anyone would bother releasing a Z68 mITX board, I can get on with building something that will outpace even the nicer gaming rig in the guide here.
  • e36Jeff - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link

    I know they are not the easiest to find, and they do run a bit more, but AMD does have a 250e(as well as a 245e, 240e, and 235e) that is exactly the same as the 250 you had selected, but uses 20W less. seems it would be a better fit for the HTPC or the alternative CPU for the gaming rig. Its extra price would, however, likely rule it out for the budget build.
  • MadAd - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link

    My friend bought his ancient 10 yo PC around for a fix up, after explaining how every part in the box was pointlessly obsolete, I did have to pause and say, well you could use the ATX case again.

    Isnt it time to move on? Sure there are smaller boards and cases to buy, but as a standard ATX is like the old dog that still barks at the movements in the yard but should have been put to sleep years ago.

    What was it keeping the standard alive? Motherboards certainly dont need to be that big, hardly anyone uses more than 1 or 2 optical drives these days (infact do we need an optical format going forward anyway? but thats a different discussion), HDDs are not limited to 3.5" anymore and theres NAS boxes springing up if we do need more of either of those, e-sata one of those next to it, perfect expansion system.

    Video cards can still be full height and length, and provision can be made for multiple slot boards- but other than that, its the PSUs that arent changing shape and are hard to find smaller, but if a new standard was bought out they would be remade, without having to pay out the wazoo for 1U type kit

    Time for a change?

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