Will a MSI Z77IA-E53 have enough room for 2 g.skill ripjaws ram, a xigmatek dark knight night hawk edition and EVGA GTX 760 ACX in a bitfenix prodigy?
i think it should fit fine. the only thing is the darknight maybe,but i think it should all fit.There is a bit of space between the ram slots and cpu socket. The prodigy case is big enough, and the darknight is not that huge.
But which cpu do you use? and are you going to overclock? because at that point the msi, might probably not your best choice. if you use a i5-3570K or i7-3770K i would personaly recommend, the Asus P8Z77 i-Deluxe, for overclocking, this board has a full sized vreg. 8 powerphases for the cpu.
grtz Angel ☺
ive got a 3770k the only reason i'm looking at the msi is their beautiful bios that i have come to love and the fact that it's on sale for $120
I pretty sure you will have to put the dark knight over the ram for it to fit. But other than that it should all work fine.
my ram heatsinks are like .5 cm above the sticks, i just need to know if the gpu, ram and cooler will all fit together.
also, will this board be able to acheive a 4.5ghz overclock? i've seen people who have but angel is making me a tad worried.
The cooler should fit fine. I've used g.skill ripjaws and it fit under a hyper 212x with little room to spare.
It should do 4.5ghz fine. I've seen someone get 4.8ghz on it. I think the board starts having problems with windows 8 around 4.5ghz. With win7 you should be fine. But if you wanted a even better overclocking board i would go for the one MisteryAngel suggested.
i've got w8. as long as i can get 4.4 or 4.5 i'll be good.whats the issue with w8?
We've learned to expect 4.6 to 4.7 GHz from this specific Core i7-3770K sample, but that was under Windows 7. With Windows 8, we encountered errors in some services at clock rates greater than 4.5 GHz
This is what i saw in this article not sure if it apply to all motherboards they were testing.
Read it your self and it might be clearer to you. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-itx-z77-motherboard,3389-20.html
after reading on some other websites it says that the msi is for media pcs and the asus is the only option for gaming?
will the dark knight's backplate have any trouble with the components on the back of the board?
I'm not sure it would fit. This screw here is looking to close for comfort to how close it would come in contact with the backplate.
Considering this is how big the backplate is, it might not work. You could always cut the part that is in the way of it.
by the way i personaly allways recommend a LC cooler in a mitx system, because the pump´s are small and only cover the cpu socket., you never run into issues wenn installing, and the radiator with fans, there is more then enough space to mount that. in a mitx system. i recommend a Corsair H80i.
Posibly looks like the smartest thing to do in this situation.
logan's honeybadger has an asus and is using the dark knight, maybe it is worth an extra $80.
but at that point it may be worth it for me to look into some midtowers as i've only got 1k in the bank and no job atm.