What Are You Running?

[Birds]

The shoebox is up and running! This was designed to be a portable/LAN gaming rig on a budget (<$1900k incl. all peripherals).

Specs:

CPU: i5 3570 (3.4ghz-3.8ghz)

MB: ASUS P8H77-I

RAM: Ripjaws 8gb (4gb x 2, 1600mhz)

GPU: Gigabyte GTX770 Windforce OC 4gb (1137mhz base, 1189mhz boost)

HDD: Samsung EVO 840 SSD 120gb, Seagate Barracuda 1TB x 2

PSU: Corsair HX650v2

Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 MITX

Monitor: ASUS PB278Q (27" 2560 x 1440 PLS)

Keyboard: Logitech G510S

Mouse: Razer DeathAdder 2013

I was curious to see how Gigabyte's bells and whistles 770 would go up against the mighty 780ti that Leigh had installed previously, in essentially the same system. Given nearly $400 difference between the two cards, I'm pretty happy with being ~2000 points shy at 9739, versus his original 3dmark11 of 11899. This is unclocked, so maybe we can pick up some of the slack with some card tampering...assuming Gigabyte left us enough headroom. Everything stayed very cool during the benchmark - surprisingly cool and quiet, in fact, for an MITX case - but it probably helps having 3 huge fans on your GPU. Two of these cards in SLI would be killer for the money (my exact intention when games get too much for the single card).

The 3dmark result isn't anything spectacular by gaming PC standards, but neither is the $$$$ spent, and this unit is a piece of piss to lug around (see pic below; it's literally just a heavy shoebox). The real test will come when I run up BF4 on 1440 - if she can do that with playable FPS, then I think we've built a little winner. Props to Leigh for helping out with the build.

[UNR33L]

The shoebox is up and running! This was designed to be a portable/LAN gaming rig on a budget (<$1900k incl. all peripherals).

Specs:

CPU: i5 3570 (3.4ghz-3.8ghz)

MB: ASUS P8H77-I

RAM: Ripjaws 8gb (4gb x 2, 1600mhz)

GPU: Gigabyte GTX770 Windforce OC 4gb (1137mhz base, 1189mhz boost)

HDD: Samsung EVO 840 SSD 120gb, Seagate Barracuda 1TB x 2

PSU: Corsair HX650v2

Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 MITX

Monitor: ASUS PB278Q (27" 2560 x 1440 PLS)

Keyboard: Logitech G510S

Mouse: Razer DeathAdder 2013

I was curious to see how Gigabyte's bells and whistles 770 would go up against the mighty 780ti that Leigh had installed previously, in essentially the same system. Given nearly $400 difference between the two cards, I'm pretty happy with being ~2000 points shy at 9739, versus his original 3dmark11 of 11899. This is unclocked, so maybe we can pick up some of the slack with some card tampering...assuming Gigabyte left us enough headroom. Everything stayed very cool during the benchmark - surprisingly cool and quiet, in fact, for an MITX case - but it probably helps having 3 huge fans on your GPU. Two of these cards in SLI would be killer for the money (my exact intention when games get too much for the single card).

The 3dmark result isn't anything spectacular by gaming PC standards, but neither is the $$$$ spent, and this unit is a piece of piss to lug around (see pic below; it's literally just a heavy shoebox). The real test will come when I run up BF4 on 1440 - if she can do that with playable FPS, then I think we've built a little winner. Props to Leigh for helping out with the build.

Good to see it up and running! the 780ti is 'only' $320 more not $400 but yeah high end cards always have and always will pull a bit of a premium in the old price vs performance battle it just depends on how far you want to go down that path. The 280x is great bang for buck or GTX760 but yeah wouldn't quite give you the performance on our high res monitors that you'd want You gotta look at the graphics score in 3dmark, obviously being the same CPU going to be the same physics score (CPU based, 3dmark overall score does rely a fair bit on the CPU & clock) 11500 on graphics score definitely a great result for a standard out of the box card - run it for a few weeks to make sure it's not defective and chuck a couple more clocks in it hehe.

Very compact, beasty LAN / gaming rig and nice peripherals - now get dat dere cat5 cable ran, enough of the wireless!

Edit: Keyboard looks good without the wrist riser thing.. might take mine off and sus it out. And I'm mad jelly of dat dere samsung evo.

Download the logitech software and get the back light to match your mouse

Edited December 9, 2013 by UNR33L

[HR31_RB20DET]

My 280x graphics score is 11449, where as physics is only 4473 lol.

[bozodos]

nice pc Birds, if I didn't have a $180 case and 4 hard disks, I reckon my next build would be Mini ITX as well.

Good luck with BF4 @ 1440p on anything above High lol.

[Birds]

Get an external for your media

Comparing results in 3D mark, there are a few guys on there who have obtained 780 (and close to unclocked ti) performance, clocking their Gigabyte 770s to 1250mhz. Will give it a go in a couple weeks and see where it ends up.

Mini ATX and their motherboards have come a long way, especially the latter, where features of larger boards are making their way onto a much smaller form factor. There's no reason you can't put a 780ti/Titan and an i7 in my case, with 16gb DDR and a 750w PSU, should your budget permit. I've got room for 3 hard drives and a DVD drive, which for most is plenty and there's always external media storage options.

[UNR33L]

Get an external for your media

Comparing results in 3D mark, there are a few guys on there who have obtained 780 (and close to unclocked ti) performance, clocking their Gigabyte 770s to 1250mhz. Will give it a go in a couple weeks and see where it ends up.

Mini ATX and their motherboards have come a long way, especially the latter, where features of larger boards are making their way onto a much smaller form factor. There's no reason you can't put a 780ti/Titan and an i7 in my case, with 16gb DDR and a 750w PSU, should your budget permit. I've got room for 3 hard drives and a DVD drive, which for most is plenty and there's always external media storage options.

The guys clocking their base clock upto 1250mhz are probably increasing voltage and running on water dont forget, careful you don't want to fry your card (I don't know much about the 770s though so might be alright dunno, it does run a different chipset than the 780s/ti/titan thought - the GK104)

And yea I had 3 hard drive and my SSD velcro-ed underneath the bay worked mad.

How are you liking the SSD?

Edited December 11, 2013 by UNR33L

[Birds]

Think you're forgetting I have 3 windforce fans

Haha nah fair warning. I won't be going nuts on it, but a little boost shouldn't hurt. 1250mhz is also only 50 more than Gigabyte have boost clock set to.

[Birds]

P.S. SSD is great, though I have a shitty basis for comparison, given my previous computer was an 8 year old Dell laptop...

[Frosty]

Antec High Current gamer which is mint.

this! made the choice to run one on mine and was money well spent!

[Frosty]

The shoebox is up and running! This was designed to be a portable/LAN gaming rig on a budget (<$1900k incl. all peripherals).

Specs:

CPU: i5 3570 (3.4ghz-3.8ghz)

MB: ASUS P8H77-I

RAM: Ripjaws 8gb (4gb x 2, 1600mhz)

GPU: Gigabyte GTX770 Windforce OC 4gb (1137mhz base, 1189mhz boost)

HDD: Samsung EVO 840 SSD 120gb, Seagate Barracuda 1TB x 2

PSU: Corsair HX650v2

Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 MITX

Monitor: ASUS PB278Q (27" 2560 x 1440 PLS)

Keyboard: Logitech G510S

Mouse: Razer DeathAdder 2013

I was curious to see how Gigabyte's bells and whistles 770 would go up against the mighty 780ti that Leigh had installed previously, in essentially the same system. Given nearly $400 difference between the two cards, I'm pretty happy with being ~2000 points shy at 9739, versus his original 3dmark11 of 11899. This is unclocked, so maybe we can pick up some of the slack with some card tampering...assuming Gigabyte left us enough headroom. Everything stayed very cool during the benchmark - surprisingly cool and quiet, in fact, for an MITX case - but it probably helps having 3 huge fans on your GPU. Two of these cards in SLI would be killer for the money (my exact intention when games get too much for the single card).

The 3dmark result isn't anything spectacular by gaming PC standards, but neither is the $$$$ spent, and this unit is a piece of piss to lug around (see pic below; it's literally just a heavy shoebox). The real test will come when I run up BF4 on 1440 - if she can do that with playable FPS, then I think we've built a little winner. Props to Leigh for helping out with the build.

the big factor with these is heat due to lack of space in and around the case. what options are you going for cooling if you decide to O/C?

[Birds]

Can't OC the CPU or RAM unless tampering with BCLK and then I'd see maybe 4ghz in the top end, but that's not really worth it. There's no need for games anyway. I'd only be touching the card clock, which I've done a bit of gaming with and it's never even felt warm. These cooler master cases aren't the prettiest, but they do have a fair bit of space inside, particularly around the GPU and CPU. Only area that gets crowded inside is the hard drive bays and power supply with the SATA cables. Being a modular PSU it's still pretty good. I should take a pic with the case cover off to show.

There's actually a fan to the side of the mobo that is unplugged at the moment, because it's quite big/loud, so if temps get up I can switch that back on and should help.

[Birds]

P.S. G510S keyboard is sick...gives me news on an LCD through an RSS feed lol

[BrynDETT]

im not to sure how good overclocking with the bclk is.. i never tried at lower clock speeds but at a 48x multi even 1mhz more then stock makes it unstable

dont forget about the volume wheel on the keyboard haha.. my fave feature.. u should get aida64, cool app fr putting clocks,temps, volts .anything on the screen

[Frosty]

i really should start playing my PC. built it and have barely touched it haha. I turned it on last night for the first time in like 2 months :s

[BrynDETT]

here is my screens from aida 64

i should really play some games, built this pc rarely play game.. bought xbox one, played it like twice hahah.. just dont have time

[UNR33L]

I use precision X's monitoring for my GPU only, I kinda want one that will monitor both GPU and CPU well.. I'm sure there's one out there but I'm too lazy to bother, I do enjoy watching dat dere boost ~1200mhz though on my 780ti

[Leroy Peterson]

downloaded 3D mark demo via steam and ran it, but gfx card was just idling, not heating up, not boosting GPU clock or memory clock ??

[UNR33L]

downloaded 3D mark demo via steam and ran it, but gfx card was just idling, not heating up, not boosting GPU clock or memory clock ??

Updated your gfx card drivers? and update 3dmark to latest version too

Edited December 13, 2013 by UNR33L

[Leroy Peterson]

maybe my card doesnt runn dx11...? should be latest version, its through steam. might be drivers.

[Birds]

The 3dmark result isn't anything spectacular by gaming PC standards, but neither is the $$$$ spent, and this unit is a piece of piss to lug around (see pic below; it's literally just a heavy shoebox). The real test will come when I run up BF4 on 1440 - if she can do that with playable FPS, then I think we've built a little winner. Props to Leigh for helping out with the build.

So I conducted this test lastnight, and the results were very surprising. With ultra 2560x1440, without using software to track an average, I hovered ~45-60fps and nothing dipped below 35-40fps in the heavier action (granted, I wasn't on big servers with huge maps). This is surprising, because most BF4 tests I'd seen of the GTX770 show a 40fps average on these settings, dipping down into high 20s at times, which is borderline unplayable. Granted, that is probably based in a stock reference card, so maybe my Gigabyte's overclocking and the extra 2gb vram (4gb) are a huge help with the higher resolution. Either way, it's comforting to know the game is very playable at this resolution and quality of graphics! Bumped it down to high settings at 2560 x 1440 and without anti-aliasing; saw ~65-75fps average. Very satisfied with the build now!