Building a mini-ITX Haswell System with ASUS [video]

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• sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  I like this machine for a NAS. I'd get a low power Haswell i3 and the board has quite a few SATA ports.

• rhangman - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  Bad choice for a NAS. No ECC RAM support and you aren't going to be overclocking, so just a waste in that respect.
  
  Intel's server chipsets in the past (SB and IB) supported i3's with ECC, no idea about C22x boards though.

• JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  From what I've seen, the best current Haswell board for a NAS would be the Supermicro X10SL7-F. In addition to the usual complement of SATA ports (two 6.0Gbps + four 3.0Gbps), this board has an onboard LSI 2308 controller that supports *eight* additional SAS ports (which are also compatible with SATA devices). That ought to be enough for almost any home or small business NAS. And since it's a server-grade board, it supports ECC RAM and the usual complement of server features like IPMI. It is built on a micro-ATX form factor.

• Hixbot - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  I'm dissapointed this is a video review. I like to able to find the information at my own pace and study benchmarks, overclocking results, temperature and sound measurement.
  I always skip the video reviews.

• Razorbak86 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  Pro-tip: If the article has "[video]" in the title, then truly skip the review. Don't jump into the thread and immediately comment that that you "always skip video reviews."

• Hixbot - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  It's feedback. How else would the staff know that I always skip the video articles if I don't tell them?

• epobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link

  There is this thing they measure called 'hits.' They know how many people are coming to the site and how many are viewing the video. They even have a good idea of how many are link directly to the video. A public declaration of your disinterest really isn't needed.

• Hixbot - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link

  Hits, or lack there of, don't give an explanation. I'm very interested in the topic of this article but dislike the format. My feedback is valid.

• cjs150 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link

  Love the small factor GPU. Love the motherboard but not the way the SATA sockets are set out. but other than that looks perfect as a reasonably powered gaming rig. Water cooling the GPU and CPU will be simple as that close together.

• epobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link

  This was interesting because I did my first mini-ITX build just a few days ago. It started with an older Lian-Li case model on a blowout deal. (Not that much older, as it has front USB 3.0 ports.) At the same time I was offered a deal on an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K ($90). I got the Asrock Z77 mini-ITX board and a mini 450W PSU from FSP that includes an ATX mounting plate.
  
  The case is designed to take an off the shelf ATX PSU but this struck me as very difficult to work with and severely lacking in air flow. So I picked up the much smaller PSU, even though it has greater capacity than what it replaced. (The first one was such a tight fit I had to take off the company logo stickers from the sides to get it in!)
  
  So it's all together and is pretty nice. I'm planning to use it with the public beta of Windows 8,1 coming out in a few days, since it has no assigned purpose yet and won't be painful when it needs to be wiped and reinstalled with the final release. The only thing that is lacking is a GPU upgrade. The built-in HD4000 video is adequate for a lot of stuff but I'd like to get something more powerful in there. The card in the video won't work because it requires two slots and I've only the one. And that one is right up between the PSU and the hard drive. (An SSD lives under the HD. The mSATA slot on the underside of the Asrock board turned out to be useless because it's only SATA-2. WTF, Asrock?)
  
  So I'm looking for a video card that is short and narrow, while having enough performance to be worth installing. Any suggestions? It may be something meets the need over the next year as existing GPUs get die shrinks and are offered in suitable packages for this machine.