Please forgive me, of the many things I’ve forgotten…this is…one of them. I could’ve sworn there used to be an updated rolling sticky with 3-4 (maybe more?) build suggestions from ‘meh’ to ‘super ultra mega I can’t afford space kraken’ posted and maintained by people way smarter than I am, somewhere on the main page/sidebar of PCMR.
I’ve got a ~6 year old mini-ITX AMD build that I’m hoping to replace with something similar, and I’d used those suggestions last time with great success. I’m hoping to build something that’ll last another 6 years. If anyone has any idea what the heck I’m talking about, I’d appreaciate you pointing me the right direction.
Thanks in advance!
There’s always Logical Increments, but I disagree with a lot of their pairings. You don’t NEED a 13900K to run a 4090, a 7800X3D will do just fine, and their usefulness for Mini-ITX is limited.
I’m not aware of any similar sites or guides for Mini-ITX, and that’s as a Mini-ITX enthusiast myself. It’d be difficult to translate since different cases require different parts. The best I’ve found is browsing people’s builds in PC Part Picker for whichever case you want to build in.
Some examples, here’s some builds for the Tower 200, the Dan C4, or the Fractal Design Terra
Note: Gamers Nexus just did a video on the Terra, it has some important caveats regarding that specific case
I think this is what I used last time! Thank you!!! The UI seems very familar, and IIRC this is how I figured out the GTX1060 could fit in the Thermaltake Snow. I can’t believe I forgot pcpartpicker
I liked it at first, but I find myself disliking Logical Increments the more that I look at it…if only they did a better job of being more flexible, like showing me other hardware that’s similarly priced. Yes, I could pair THIS EXACT processor with THIS EXACT graphics card, but what if something similar is on sale or I just want to see other stuff available in my price range, and see how it compares?
For example, imagine I’m a shopper that thinks ray tracing and DLSS are very important (I’m not, but bear with me). They’re recommending mostly AMD cards, with no indication of what Nvidia RTX cards have a similar price/performance ratio. Specific features might be a little more important to me than just a benchmark score and a dollar value.
Ugh, went to look at the site, and you’re right. This obsession with “avoiding bottlenecks” is stupid. The goal should always be to maximise FPS with the budget on hand. If that means a slightly bottlenecked pairing, go for it.
Not sure it’s exactly what you are referring to but Logical Increments sounds similar. I check it from time to time to get a ballpark number on new builds.
Thank you for this, this is great info!
Really cool! I wish they’d let you plug in your own build to analyze it.
