The role of this PC that it will take over my Gigabyte P27Gv2 as the beside rig and letting this PC take the reins. It'll hide at the corner crevice below the Projector so I can use the HDMI port with the Vankyo Leisure 510 Projector or the Taihe Gemini 15" Screen.
COMPONENTS:
Ryzen 5 1600 with Wraith Max Cooler
16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz Memory
Coolermaster Elite 120
720GB SSD, 2Tb Toshiba
AsRock A320I Motherboard
nVidia GeForce GTX 1070 (Zotac Mini Version)
Silverstone SFX 600W PSU
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600.
The first Ryzen 6-cores are still great for most tasks and it was cheap when I bought it. It did come with a Wraith Cooler which is actually big for a stock cooler which saves on cost a bit. For a 6 core, it was and is still the better value proposition than then 1600X.
Chassis: Coolermaster Elite 120
This is an old case, but I still like the look of these cause' till now they still look pretty sleek for what they are. In fact I still prefer this case over the newer 130. This came from the guts of my brother's rig that had a Pentium G3258 overclocked to 4.5 GHz. Still love the case, with the Small Desktop oblong chassis ideal as a HTPC or SFF ITX gaming build like this. I'll still be using the Optical Bay. But bad thing is it is just a bit too short as an ATX power supply mount barely clears and just touches the Wraith Stealth Cooler. But it's still short enough for me to use as a bedside HTPC and I can plop my Gemini on it. And the height is way more suitable than the Dell Precision T3500.
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| Power Supply mount just barely clears the Wraith Stealth Cooler |
GPU: Zotac nVidia GeForce GTX 1070 MINI
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| The Zotac GTX 1070 in its new home with the 3GB GTX 1060 as backup |
This one, oh man, what a roller coaster ride. I intended to use an R9 290 that is handed from a friend and at the time was one of my most powerful GPUs I had in hand. This belonged to Dr Matt, and I gave the GPU a good dust down a couple years ago and applied Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut. Initially it was working over the first couple weeks till I get random blank screens which signals overheating of the card which was weird. I currently have a GTX 1060 3GB as a placeholder but I intended to get an even better GPU anyway, so I found this for just over 200 SGD, 160 USD which is a nice upgrade over the R9 290. I may repaste it with Arctic Silver MX5 but let's see the temperatures first.
In comparison with the R9 290 and the GTX 1060 (Mine), GTX 1070 Max Q and my Zotac Mini and some notebookcheck scores. Just for giggles I also decided to include an old score with my GTX 970s in SLI, Overclocked with an OC i7 2600K at 4.7 GHz.
Score:
R9 290: 9808, 10799 OC
GTX 1060: 11134
1070 MaxQ: 12058
GTX 970 SLI: 14558, 16582 OC
GTX1070: 14764 Mine, 15906 OC
GPU Score:
R9 290: 11079, 12399 OC
3G GTX 1060: 11965, 12837 OC
GTX 1070Q 14869
Mini 1070: 17171,18906 OC
GTX 970 SLI: 20818, 24116 OC
The scores are interesting in a way that my GTX 1070 paired with a R5 1600 when overclocked has a better overall score than stock 970 SLI at its very worst stock scores and the GPU is not far away from it either. The old 970 SLI with a 2600K rose a lot when I overclocked both but that still suggests a bit of a CPU bottleneck.
Back to current tests though, my mini GTX 1070 is:
Stock:
- 54% better than a stock R9 290, 38% than a R9 290 OC
- 43% better than a stock 3GB 1060, 33.7% better than a 3GB GTX 1060 OC
- 15% better than a GTX 1070 Max Q
Overclocked:
- 70.6% better than a stock 290, 52% than a 290 OC
- 58% better than a stock 3GB 1060 47.2% better than an OC 3GB GTX 1060
- 27.1% better than a GTX 1070 Max Q
Having said that the R9 290 can trade blows with a 3GB 1060 given the right circumstances, but still can get outclassed.
PSU: Silverstone GX-600 SFX PSU (80+ Gold)
The PSU may be a little dated at this point, but it's still a good enough power supply to use. It may be notorious for having a bit of a ripple problem but nonetheless it was considered the best 600W SFX units in the market and has proven that efficiency can be almost consistently be 90% rather than 80% at optimal loads as reviewed by JohnnyGuru and AnandTech in 2014/2015. So it's kinda close to Platinium / Titanium Standard than Gold. I got this new from Shopee for 130 SGD, about 100 USD which is good for an SFX Form Factor PSU, especially when other units cost 40-60% more of that same wattage like the Corsair SF Series and the newer generation of Silverstone SFX PSUs. That form factor benefits the already cramped nature of the case and gives the extra inch for at least everything to breathe.
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| The PSU can be secured to the top of the mount But best to be used with the bracket. |
But with the cables stuffed in there, it was difficult to make room for some open area around the Ryzen 5 1600 to get that airflow it needs.
16GB 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Now I am abit sketchy for this one, but I'm praying for the best because of some mixed reviews on the units arriving either DOA or as chunks of plywood inside the package. But if it's the true thing, then the Corsair Vengeance should be okay as far as quality goes. I still have Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz DDR3 RAM running on my Dell Precision T3500 with modules dating as far back to my gaming rig. But we'll see. The motherboard can only take 2933 MHz but it's not far from the advertised 3000MHz and it's still plenty to run it. Got it at 100 SGD and it works.
720GB COLORFUL SSD
The SSD was bought new from EBay for 93 SGD, 68 USD. 720GB is absolutely plenty for an SSD and the speed is not really an deal breaker for me. Hence I'm okay with a SATA 3 based SSD than an M.2 one as my boot drive. And I rather have a good amount of space on an SSD for as little money as possible and keeping to 2.5" Drives makes it a bit cleaner and less bulky in weight. I do have a 256GB M.2 2242 SSD but that will be for the miniBook which is on its way.
MASS STORAGE: 2TB TOSHIBA P300 Drive
As much as Hard disks are less relevant these days and SSDs can be found
How the setup will be like?
The TaiHe Gemini makes a nice Low Power Bedside monitor while saving on Power Cables. And 15.6" is just right to plop it on the chassis next to the bed.
POTENTIAL UPGRADES
The only 2 pieces of upgrades that I may potentially see in the future, is a replacement board to a B350 one that has integrated WiFi on it. The other component is an R7 1700X that may be also be possible if that can be secured at a good price. But these components can wait as soon as they come down in price and I'll only do it if I can sell my GTX 970 SLI and my PIQO Projector.
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