Desktop Computers

Same thing as above, if you are gaming at 1080p(1920x1080) or below, the SLI setup would probably out-perform a 670 or above. If you are gaming at higher resolutions than that(or might in the future) going up to 2GB or 3GB of RAM on the newer cards is going to be a huge improvement over dual-1GB cards.

I personally upgraded from dual-4870s with 1GB apiece on them to a 3GB 660Ti. The 1GB on each card was bottlenecking me just a bit at 1920x1200, I regularly see my video card RAM bump up to 1200+ MB used when watching the sensors on GPU-Z.http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/. 3GB is definitely overkill for my 1920x1200, 2GB would perform just the same since I'm not even ever using the full 2GB, but I plan on going up to a 2560x1440 monitor soon.

I'd recommend downloading that utility, play your favorite game in whatever resolution you use, and see if your RAM is getting maxed with your current card, because a 2nd card won't help that at all.

Yeah I've been playing Far Cry 3 this week, with absolutely everything maxed at 1920x1200 I'll see spikes up in the 1100s for MB usage when theres a lot of stuff going on, but it usually hovers around 900-1000MB used. If you have a 1GB card, you're probably hitting the max fairly often if the graphics are cranked up all the way

670 is beast runs these by it self, Farcry 3, Crysis 1, planetside 2, GW2 all maxed across 3 monitors.

So anyone here a fan of small form factor gaming pcs? I have a small place and can't afford the room for an office desk and hardcore gamer setup. So I just use the living room with an hdmi hookup from my laptop hidden in our media cabinet, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, with a big enuf screen that I can comfortably game from 8-10 feet away on my couch. Problem is my laptop is fairly anemic for some newer games (ps2 comes to mind). But some of these desktops are too big, and as some of you with spouses may understand, one of those giant red cases with glowing blue tubes and fins doesn't float well with the wife.

Something i thought might hide reasonably discretely in the living room:
alienware x51 -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399407,00.asp
Falcon tiki -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406536,00.asp

Anyone have any experience with these or know of similar sff gaming pcs?

Can you handle a receiver sized case? If so, you can basically build a full fledged PC inside an HTPC case, full size ATX motherboard and all. This is the one I use, or very similar anyways as mine is approaching 7 years old now:http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=85&area=

Basically looks like a standard home theater component, and you don't have to connect the HD activity LED if you don't want to.

Only thing you need to worry about is the length of your video card, as you might have to remove one of the drive cages to make it fit. And obviously ventilation of the case is important if you've got anything beefy crammed in there. My current setup can pull about 450W under full load from Furmark and Prime95 (670 and i5-750), and stays reasonably cool with a couple fans at the front and back each.

If you are building your own PC and want something that fits somewhat discretely in your entertainment center, I'd recommend this case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-YT11-119-265

Its still pretty big, a little bigger than a stereo receiver, but it's only about a foot tall, much, much smaller than your average case and can easily fit on standard entertainment center shelving

Eomer_sl said:

Can you handle a receiver sized case? If so, you can basically build a full fledged PC inside an HTPC case, full size ATX motherboard and all. This is the one I use, or very similar anyways as mine is approaching 7 years old now:http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=85&area=

Basically looks like a standard home theater component, and you don't have to connect the HD activity LED if you don't want to.

Only thing you need to worry about is the length of your video card, as you might have to remove one of the drive cages to make it fit. And obviously ventilation of the case is important if you've got anything beefy crammed in there. My current setup can pull about 450W under full load from Furmark and Prime95 (670 and i5-750), and stays reasonably cool with a couple fans at the front and back each.

Click to expand...

This is decent looking but still quite a bit larger than the custom pc's i linked. I don't think there are build-it-yourself cases that are close to compact as the tiki or alienware - if there are i'd be happy to give that a shot instead of paying a premium. The alienware especially is gimped by the weak external power brick, though there are some youtube heroes who claim they have a gtx670 operating with the 330W version.

http://pcpartpicker.com/b/z43
More pics, yes I know I need better cable management, was just pumped to get it up and running will fix that later.

Here's my new PC I just built past week. i5 3570K, ASrock Z77 Extreme 4 mobo, Corsair H100i Water Cooler, Seasonic 750W Gold PSU, 32GB 1833 RAM, Intel 180GB SSD, Geforce 660Ti, and some other random drives.

Cables got a little jumbled at the bottom, had so many fans in the system I had to add a few power lines just for them, and there were too many to hide on the other side of the case behind the mobo, case wouldn't shut so had to leave a few at the bottom of the case near the PSU


Heres a closeup of the H100I water cooler radiator mounted in the top of my case. Used 4 silent fans rather than the 2 stock fans, so it's pushing and pulling cool air across the radiator. Can get my i5 3570k to 4.7 ghz and at full load under Prime 95 for an hour it doesn't go over about 66 degrees celsius. Plus it's quiet as hell, about the only thing I can hear out of my case are my older 7200RPM storage drives when they rev up

Pasteton_sl said:

This is decent looking but still quite a bit larger than the custom pc's i linked. I don't think there are build-it-yourself cases that are close to compact as the tiki or alienware - if there are i'd be happy to give that a shot instead of paying a premium. The alienware especially is gimped by the weak external power brick, though there are some youtube heroes who claim they have a gtx670 operating with the 330W version.

Click to expand...

It's all going to be dictated by the graphics card, really. Most SFF boxes can't accommodate a decent GPU due to size and power restrictions.

Pasteton_sl said:

So anyone here a fan of small form factor gaming pcs? I have a small place and can't afford the room for an office desk and hardcore gamer setup. So I just use the living room with an hdmi hookup from my laptop hidden in our media cabinet, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, with a big enuf screen that I can comfortably game from 8-10 feet away on my couch. Problem is my laptop is fairly anemic for some newer games (ps2 comes to mind). But some of these desktops are too big, and as some of you with spouses may understand, one of those giant red cases with glowing blue tubes and fins doesn't float well with the wife.

Something i thought might hide reasonably discretely in the living room:
alienware x51 -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399407,00.asp
Falcon tiki -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406536,00.asp

Anyone have any experience with these or know of similar sff gaming pcs?

Click to expand...

Just built my first micro atx system, it wasn't bad at all. It took about twice as long, more planning, make sure the video card can fit, and the cpu heatsink has enough room. Cable management is a bit of a pain, a modular psu is mandatory. Other than that build went fine. 15 days uptime on windows 8 as of right now.

edit: attached a pic of the interior so you can get an idea of how cramped it's going to be. This is the build:

intel i7-3930k
samsung 16gb 30 nm ram (seriously, I have to plug this ram again, there is no reason to buy any other ram unless you need 8gb sticks, it's superior to everything else on the market, an evolution in ram fabrication)
evga gtx 690
corsair m4 512gb SSD x2 in RAID 0
WD caviar black 2tb spindle drive
cougar fans (4 120mm, 1 140mm)
corsair H80 cooler
lian li v-354b case
LG blu ray
asus rampage gene IV
and a partridge in a pear tree

all that nerdy power in a case not much bigger than 2 xbox360s side by side

I can't tell if that PSU is ridiculously huge, or if the perspective is just skewed because of the small case. I guess the case is deeper than it looks in that pic though, from looking at how wide it is in the first pic. That bottom pic makes it look like the PSU is taking up over 1/4 of the entire case and is resting on the motherboard, lol.

joeboo_sl said:

I can't tell if that PSU is ridiculously huge, or if the perspective is just skewed because of the small case. I guess the case is deeper than it looks in that pic though, from looking at how wide it is in the first pic. That bottom pic makes it look like the PSU is taking up over 1/4 of the entire case and is resting on the motherboard, lol.

Click to expand...

I can see that lol. It's a tight fit no doubt. You can see the end of the video card and the two power cables plugged into it right past the psu for a little more perspective.

Nice, I've got my 660Ti overlclocked at +70/+500 and its completely stable at that. I was running it at +70/+700 for a while but I kept getting a crash in Far Cry 3 every couple hours, so I backed the memory overclock back down to a reasonable speed. Honestly going from a +500mhz to a +700mhz memory clock was only like a 2-3% performance gain using the Heaven benchmark, so I just backed it way back down, no use burning the thing out for minimal gains.

Not sure if this should be in the desktop or laptop section...

In either case:

Looking for a 256GB SSD.

Either an Intel or a Samsung (from what I been reading, they are pretty good, even if a big expensive).

I wont be able to actually use it until the end of February, however, I can purchase it at anytime.

Any good time to buy or ugprades coming out in the near future I should plan my purchase around?

Riser card for an itx board. Thoughts?