Small Form Factor Gaming PC Build Guide

We’ve reviewed quite a number of small form factor gaming PC components here in B2G including some small form factor chassis and we’re looking forward to seeing some more innovation to change the PC gaming experience. We’ve also gotten a lot of requests from B2G fans and readers asking for spec sheet for our recommended small form factor gaming PC so we’re putting together this guide to help you guys out on building your own small form factor gaming PC.

A new, updated guide can be found here:

• ITX Gaming PC Build Guide December 2016

Small Form Factor Gaming PC Build Guide – The Goal

First up, let’s establish our goal: we want a small form factor gaming PC. Breaking that name further we have small form factor, gaming PC and just PC. We define the terms as follows:

• Small Form Factor – much smaller than a traditional ATX chassis yet spacious enough to accommodate common standard components
• Gaming PC – this is quite a controversial topic but we’ll keep it as general as possible. Our build must be able to deliver a playable gaming experience (by playable we mean above 40FPS, ideally 60FPS+) in most popular titles.
• PC – the system must be usable as a PC for general tasks aside from gaming. Yeah, we’re just trying to cover everything here.

 We also establish 3 key criteria to make our selection as optimal as possible:

• Scalability – the system’s ability to adapt to increasing or decreasing demand for performance, e.g. upgrade/downgrade
• Maintainability – the system’s friendliness to maintenance, to isolate problems and errors
• Compatibility – the system’s capacity to accept readily available components, preferring industry standards vs. proprietary technology

To expand a bit more on what we’ve mentioned above, we want 1) a scalable small form factor gaming PC. The system must be able to remain relevant for preferably 3 generations of new hardware before needing an overhaul. This means the user can pop-in a new GPU, PSU, HDD or other such components (barring socket-constrained CPUs from Intel) without needing major changes to the system and still keep it going.

Moving on to 2) maintainability which is the easy of maintaining the system. We do not want a closed-system like consoles. We want to be able to open up our system to clean our system and inspect for errors or problems. The easier the better.

Finally we have 3) compatibility. Again, we want something that we can just buy from the market without major modification and put it inside our small form factor gaming PC.

Small Form Factor Gaming PC – The Limitations

Going small has always been the challenge for the PC industry and the same applies to many aspects of the entire market. In our small form factor gaming PC build’s case, its the case (pun intended) that’s putting the most limitations to us. Primarily the size and space we have inside our chassis.

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Due to this, we will be noting the specific limits of our hardware of choice if and when they are present or when incompatibilities are present.

The First Decision – Should I go Small?

Only you can answer this question. Many factors play into deciding when to go small form factor (SFF) with the top reason being space constraints and/or wanting a low-profile system that will match the home theatre setup. Others also prefer the ease of carrying and portability of SFF chassis although fully loaded, SFF builds will usually weigh just as much as an ATX system. There are plenty of reasons out there still.

Let’s focus on our goals again: we want a small form factor GAMING PC. You might want to game in your living room so that means the first factor we mention is applicable here. You may also want to play on LAN parties, that makes our second reason also applicable.

You have to figure it out for yourself in the end. To make things simple for you, consider the following:

• Do I want play in my living room TV? or…
• My room/desk is small but I need a PC… or…
• I’m a travelling gamer only staying in places for a few weeks… or…
• I’m happy with a system I want to keep for a long time without much maintenance…

You may have a different reason and that is why we ask you, to ask yourself. If you still need guidance, please feel free to leave us a message and we’ll help you.

The Next Decision – micro-ATX or mini-ITX

Congratulations, you are now at the point where you have accepted to go small. Now here’s another fork in the road you encounter: micro ATX or mini ITX?

If you are wondering what these are, they are motherboard form factors and they are the primary building block in your small form factor gaming PC build. Think of it as the large base in Lego sets in which you start building your houses and buildings, the larger the base the more you can put into it. The same can be said with both motherboard form factors.

Micro-ATX is a cutdown version of the ATX standard. Without being to technical, the standard mATX motherboard will usually have the full upper-half of an ATX counterpart but only retain fewer lower-half components which are usually the PCIe slots, USB ports and SATA ports.

In the case of ITX, it is much smaller than mATX and ATX. It cuts down the motherboard to its barest form with usually only a single 16x PCI Express slot which is good enough for a discrete GPU.

This is primarily your choice, but as you’ll see from this as we proceed you’ll have plenty of options regardless of what you pick.

Considerations:

• Number of GPUs you want to use
• Chassis accommodation

Finding a Home – The Chassis

Now’s the time to find a home for our chassis and there are plenty out there right now. Again, we reiterate what we have learned so far:

• We need something scalable, something that can grow with our build
• We are limited by the size and capacity of the case
• The number of GPUs we can use is limited
• The motherboard factor we choose is a primary consideration for the chassis, can it accommodate our board?

From personal experience, there are also plenty of considerations in choosing a case. Here are some of my personal list of should have features:

• Radiator support (240, 280)
• Removable drive trays
• ATX PSU support
• Pump and reservoir space
• Long GPU support
• Dust filters and removable vent covers
• Tool-less design

Some noteworthy brand to consider which are leaders in this market space are BitFenix, Corsair, Lian-Li and Silverstone. The latter two brands specialize in more exotic chassis which go against our goal of having a compatible chassis so we’ll restrict our selection to BitFenix and Corsair. That said, Corsair has yet to release their SFF chassis, ultimately bringing us down to BitFenix. We won’t stop you from checking out the other options but in the interest of relevance, we will focus on what’s readily available in the market that meets our goals.

You can check out our library of chassis reviews for reference.

[singlepic id=17379 w= h= float=left] Now on to the builds! In the interest of keeping in general we’ll take a single mainstream build and show you multiple upgrade paths and considerations. We won’t be highlighting performance here but we will occasionally mention the expected margin here as we’ve mentioned earlier and that’s a playable experience.

The primary build:

• Upper mid-range ITX/mATX motherboard
• Intel Core i5 processor
• 8GB of RAM
• Upper mid-range GPU

Considerations for this build are:

• Depending on your budget, we can expand our options to to a Core-i7 processor but we will focus our budget on CPU as the most basic Core-i5 is more than enough to provide a fluid gaming experience in modern titles.
• A more powerful GPU. For our particular build, we will start off with a GTX 750 or GTX 750 Ti. You can see the performance of the said card in our Titanfall – GTX750/750Ti performance review.
• If you can afford it, get more RAM. 8GB is ideal, more is better.
• Tower coolers are nice but to reduce weight and improve airflow, we recommend closed-loop watercooling or AIOs.

Secondary Build – Pure APU

Here’s a bonus for the budget-conscious builders out there. If you’re a bit held back by your budget, or don’t want a full-pledged high-end small form factor gaming PC then AMD has your back. APU systems are widely available and can be used for gaming just as well as our primary system. The latest A88X chipset and other models come in many form factors from motherboard vendors making it a friendly option should you opt out of going the discrete GPU route.

Where to Go From Here

Now that you have a built system. What can do you with it? Well… game. Come on! That’s what we’re here for. DOTA2, League of Legends, Battlefield 4, Titanfall, etc. the list goes on. You scale your build to the requirements of your games or you cutback on your details so the game runs well on your system. Its easy.

But seriously, what else can we do with our system? Well, you can venture into the world of watercooling. If you have the budget, scale your requirements. An ITX build can house a dual-GPU Titan Z should you afford one or an R9 295X2 complete with the integrated AIO cooling. mATX builders can go dual-GPU, heck even quad, as long as their wallets can handle it. You are limited only by the chassis and motherboard that you pick.

Closing Words

[singlepic id=17341 w=300 h=220 float=right] As you may have noticed, this is not a build guide per se but more of a conceptual guide to what goes into and what to consider in building and choosing a small form factor gaming PC. This is by no means done. We still aim to deliver our own personal build guides on creating a small form factor gaming PC that should be able to handle modern games and many to come with the right choice of components.

We aim to open up interest in this maturing segment of the PC enthusiast scene and hope that it has piqued your interest as well. Look forward to our upcoming build guides focusing on this segment ranging that should cater from budget gamers all the way to extreme enthusiast class builds.