Hi guys i've decided to get a new itx case reduce the space in my room. I'm thinking about going for the Fractal Nano S case. My current system is the following: MSI P67A-GD53 I52500k EVGA GTX 670 FTW Signature 2
Since the CPU is so old i'm limited with the mobo i can acquire thankfully i've found this on ebay. Will this motherboard work? I've been out of the PC world for a while now but i think it will work and just need to confirm before i buy it.
Also if you would happen to know a nice small case for an ATX mobo then please let me know
The case looks fine and yes an ITX H61 board will work with your CPU. However you might find that it either doesn't support Over-clocking, or you simply won't be able to push it as far.
I think my daughters ITX system has a budget Asrock H61 board with my old i7-2600. It's ok but there is no USB 3, SATA 3 or DVI-D or Displayport out for the iGPU (HDMI and VGA only). It also only supports the RAM at 1333MHz for Sandybridge. So check carefully before you take the plunge!
In hindsight my daughter probably would have preferred a smaller ATX case with my old MSI Z77 GD65 board. My non K 2600 used to run in permanent turbo at 4GHz on that.
I dont really care for overclocking anymore. I pretty much run my current system as it is without any tweaks. HOWEVER just checked the ethernet port and it's only 100! i need 1gbps at least since everything is stored on my nas. guess that mobo is out. it's so hard finding an old board
Ok so looked into getting m-atx and according to pcPartPicker this is the only mobo available. Then i can put that mobo in this case which looks pretty compact.
I currently have £150 and i wanted to get case + mobo for £100 and headset for £50 but if i sell a r9 270x that i currently have i could maybe top my budget to £200-£220. So if i do sell up will an i3 be enough for gaming and can i use the ram i currently have?
Unfortunately you wouldn't be able to use your ddr3 ram, you'd need ddr4 for a new socket 1151 build.
Nothing is ever simple... Just a thought have you checked gumtree for second hand kit? Occasionally people sell parts or complete systems cheaply on there because they don't want the hassle of posting or paying eBay fees etc.
I personally wouldnt recommend to go with the latest core i3. Or with any i3 for that matter, if the rig is ment for gaming. Your current i5 is still significantly better for gaming arround the board. The only problem will be is finding a decently good mini itx board for it. Something like the EVGA Z77 stinger or what not. Another option Asus P8Z77-i deluxe.
I was looking to do the same type of thing a little while back and found the best way to move my 2500k to a small system was a shuttle bare bones system. You might still be able to track one these types of systems down as they are generally overlooked and sit on stock when motherboards are sold out/horribly expensive.
Yeah thats the main problem with EOL hardware. Shops that still have some in stock gonne drive up the price often. At some point being satisfied with what you have, or concidering upgrading to the latest platform could be something to concider. However the 2500K on itself with overclock is still pretty good enough, to drive some of the latest gpu´s on the market. And that is a bit of the point that makes upgrading a bit of a hard decission. New platforms come with newer feutures, Sandybridge platform becomes pretty dated now days.
Yeah shops seem to have an uncanny skill of pricing out of production hardware just at the point it kind of makes sense to upgrade, maybe. I have a 2500K that runs at a high enough speed that upgrading to another Intel quad core is a little less tempting.
Sorry, I didn't properly read this earlier. Yes that MSI H61 m-atx mobo will work with your 2500k and 2 sticks of existing RAM. It does not have USB 3.0, but you could add a cheap PCI-E 1x expansion card for that. It does have 1 Gb/s Ethernet.
Yup... pcpartpicker shows no prices for them which means they aren't available on the big retailers (or at least the script cant find them there). Probably have to go used somewhere... but Z77 would be a great chipset to go with for this application and certainly worth the effort put into finding it. A 2500k is still a perfectly viable chip for gaming imo as from that point on Intel has pretty much stagnated in terms of performance, peripheral connectivity and certain features have evolved but in terms of raw gaming performance there's been very little improvement since that chip.
Keep in mind that if you are trying to reduce the amount of space that the computer is taking up, that the Define Nano is not a very small case. You might want to look at something like a Core 500, or something else if that is really a concern. Of course the hard drive requirements and gpu length requirements and psu requirements will all have an impact on what case you can actually make use of. I just wanted you to think about that if reducing space useage is really the main concern here. Otherwise, what is the point of spending all that money?