Thinking of doing a PC build again

So I've been doing some thinking and I've been toying with the idea of doing a PC build again.

My laptop is 4 years old and is about to kick the bucket. I'm going to reformat it and keep it as a general surfing/download machine until it dies.

For the PC I'm going to build I was thinking of doing a mini-ITX build since it would give me the portability I need for recording purposes but will be more powerful and like 500-1000$ cheaper than a high end gaming laptop with somewhat similar specs.

I'll post some specs later. Probably going with an i7 Ivy bridge for sure, 16GB of RAM ,SSD boot and multiple HDD combo. No video card to start...might add one down the line if I feel like getting into gaming.

my bro's laptop actually kicked the bucket today and I'm doing him an AMD APU build

with this case with carrying handle

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119196


ram prices sure have shot up like 30+bucks from the last time I looked =/

Yeah the case I'm looking at has handles as well though it's even smaller than the one you listed. Here's the one I want. I just don't know what Color I want.

white http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345017
or
orange http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345021

it also comes in black or red but I think I like white or orange better.

Tentative Specs

Case: BitFenix Prodigy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345021

Mobo: ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe mITX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131932

PSU: Seasonic 80+ Gold 650W modular http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118

CPU: Intel i7 3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501

RAM: G Skill Ares 16GB (2x8) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231560

Boot SSD: Samsung 840 250GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147186

HDD: Western Digital Black 2TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792

Cooler: Corsair H100i http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181032

I'll probably add another 2TB drive down the line and I'll probably add a nice GPU eventually too. I might do a mild overclock to 4.0GHz hence the cooler. I'll probably wait till Christmas to get a GPU since this will be used primarily for music recording and editing.

What do y'all think of my portable rig of doom?

I'll probably pull the trigger sometime around May when I accumulate a bit more cash.

looks really nice

3770k does not overclock too well, even with great cooling, so dont be disappointed if you cant OC too much.

Also, you sure you will be able to fit that CPU cooler in the case, with GPU later on the line? That thing is pretty big, as I have seen in the store the other day.

yeah if I ever wanted to overclock I should of went with the 2500k instead of ivy bridge,heard they made them crappy compared to the sandy bridges.


>__> although I don't see a need to overclock for quite some time for me.

StormEye wrote:3770k does not overclock too well, even with great cooling, so dont be disappointed if you cant OC too much.

Also, you sure you will be able to fit that CPU cooler in the case, with GPU later on the line? That thing is pretty big, as I have seen in the store the other day.

Yeah like I said I'll just be doing a mild overclock. I looked up some reviews of mITX motherboards and most of the Z77 boards will handle a 4.5GHz stable overclock on a 3770K in windows 7.

Also about the cooler...I watched a video on youtube of someone building a system with the case I have in mind and they were able to fit a GTX Titan and an H100 in there no problem.

With the case I picked the Mobo actually lays flat horizontally instead of vertically like most mobos. So that makes the GPU stick up vertically which relieves alot of stress from the mobo and gives alot of vertical space to install bigger coolers. You could actually fit two 240mm rads in this thing if you remove the HDD cages and optical drive bay. There's place to mount on the front and on top.

On my system, I have pushed it to 4.4Ghz, but it did not feel stable. I am running 4.2, which is rock solid.

Although, I do not currently have it as WC, so with WC it can probbly reach 4.5. But since you are doing encoding, which requires your CPU to never ever hick up (or you lose quality) I would not push past 4,4 at max.

StormEye wrote:On my system, I have pushed it to 4.4Ghz, but it did not feel stable. I am running 4.2, which is rock solid.

Although, I do not currently have it as WC, so with WC it can probbly reach 4.5. But since you are doing encoding, which requires your CPU to never ever hick up (or you lose quality) I would not push past 4,4 at max.

Yeah I'm not going to push it hard I'm perfectly ok with 4.0 or something close to that.