hi welcome back to PC Builder I'm Jason mini ITX builds have massively increased in popularity
in recent years their compact Sleek mobile and they deliver amazing performance and they're
just plain cool too but they can be quite a bit more expensive and harder to build than
a typical ATX or Micro ATX PC build are they worth it? well today we'll go through everything
that you need to know to make the best mini ITX build 2023 and put together this amazing
small form factor gaming PC remember if you get value out of this video give it a like
this makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe click that Bell icon
that way you get notified when we release cool content with that let's jump into it
before that this video is sponsored by VIP SCD key say goodbye to crazy expensive Windows
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free to Windows 11. use the links in the video description below let's start off talking
about the real star of the show here the mini itx case the great news is that we've seen
a huge number of new Mini ITX cases hit the market in just the last couple of years so
while picking the best mini ITX case in 2023 might be more challenging than in past years
the competition has driven down case prices in 2023 the best mini ITX cases basically
break down into three categories the first is a smaller version of an ATX case just shorter
like the NZXT h210i then we've got Mini itx cases in a tower style configuration like
the height Revolt 3 or the phantek's Evolve shift too finally we've got horizontal cases
like the fractal Terra and the one that we build built-in The Cooler Master nr200p there
are even cases like the fractal Ridge which can be used in a tower or horizontal orientation
similar to a gaming console in terms of his Statics some mini ITX cases come with a glass
panel like the phantek shift 2 some come with just perforated metal exterior panels like
the fractal Terra the lien Lee combines both and has a half glass panel and a half mesh
panel on the front and our Cooler Master and r200p comes with both a metal front panel
and a glass front panel to allow you to choose the look that you prefer we'll list some of
the most popular Mini ITX cases in 2023 down in the video description for you to check
out pricing and availability in your region we decided to let Cooler Master nr200p for
the glass front panel and because it allows us to vertically Mount the GPU and a big thank
you to Cooler Master who sent over both the case as well as the PSU which we'll cover
later let's talk about the best CPU and GPU combo for your mini ITX build now this is
going to depend a lot on the number of factors related to the mini ITX case that you choose
like the maximum GPU length and Slot width as well as the power efficiency of the parts
themselves if we're focused just on gaming we generally just want to get the fastest
GPU that we can afford and then get a CPU that just won't bottleneck our GPU we cover
specific recommendations for every budget level in our best CPU and GPU combo 2023 video
so check that out for a deeper Dive Right now the most relevant CPUs are Intel's 12th
13th and upcoming 14 generation processors as well as the ryzen 7000 series CPUs and
older 5000 series CPUs ryzen CPUs tend to have much lower power draw for their performance
level and thus require less cooling well in particular Intel 13 gen draws quite a bit
more power and the unlocked and overclockable i7 13700k and 13900k in particular draw huge
amounts of power and may not be suitable for a mini ITX build unless you can engineer substantial
Cooling and airflow we ended up going with a ryzen 7700x because this is both a gaming
but also a Creator PC and it's going to see a lot of professional level use in Adobe Premiere
Pro which will benefit from the added course but if this was just a gaming build we probably
would have just gone with a ryzen 7600 instead for the CPU Cooler we went with the ID cooling
SI 55 which is a relatively high performance and very low profile CPU Cooler we needed
that as with the vertical mounted GPU we only had 76 millimeters of total height to work
with and that would have put the CPU Cooler fan right up against the GPU pack plate so
it needed to be as Slim as possible to get that nice cool air into the CPU heatsink we
also ended up going with very low profile Ram a 2 by 16 gigabyte kit of gskill ripjaws
ddr5 5600 cl36 as our cooler just barely cleared the top we went with the argb version of the
cooler to give some backlight to our GPU and provide some case illumination now let's talk
about the best GPU for your small form Factor gaming PC because this is where things tend
to get interesting the first thing is that your GPU has to physically fit in your case
obviously and not just the length but also the slot width of the GPU now in our case
we were using a top GPU vertical Mount which can fit a lot of gpus under three slots in
width we went with the RTX 4070 gigabyte windforce model for its compact design and great cooler
design which keeps the GPU very cool under load the second thing to consider here is
the power usage of the GPU itself as that power will be turned into heat which could
become an issue if we don't have enough case airflow speaking of case airflow it's critically
important to the best mini ITX build in 2023 with modern gpus and CPUs requiring significantly
more power and cooling now one critical area here is fan clearance and in fact in our build
we ended up going with slim thermaltake argb white fans at the top due to the low amount
of clearance from both the CPU Cooler and the cables if cables might be an issue issue
you can of course use metal fan grills that come with a Cooler Master nr200p or you can
buy your own they're dirt cheap and you can get a four pack of them for less than eight
dollars and they come in either black or metal finishes meanwhile at the bottom of the case
we went with my favorite 120 millimeter Cooler Master Halo argb fans these fans both perform
really well providing a bottom to top airflow and they look amazing which was important
given the glass side panel I also wanted to make sure I had higher airflow fans that could
spin at higher RPMs without a lot of noise given that our RTX 4070 GPU is vertically
mounted pretty close to the glass which means that the temps might take up just a little
bit without the additional airflow now note that if you're building an entirely metal
case or if we use the perforated metal side panel on this build instead of the glass panel
we could have also mounted additional fans on the side panel for extra airflow and there
probably wouldn't be any reason to use argb fans either one other thing to note is that
if you are using a a riser Cable in your build either to vertically mount it like this or
due to the case design itself you will likely need to go into the BIOS and manually set
the pcie speed for the GPU slot to match the speed of your cable rather than allowing the
motherboard to Auto Select it which can cause issues in our case while we got a signal without
changing the settings the GPU wouldn't properly run until we did this but it just takes a
moment to fix the nr200p comes with a gen 3 cable which works just fine seeing as you
can run an RTX 4090 on gen 3 easily but you can always get a replacement pcie 4-speed
cable if that bothers you for about fifty dollars let's talk about the best ITX motherboard
for your mini ITX build now because many ITX motherboards they're very similar to each
other small feature differences that might tip the balance when you're deciding on which
one to get and honestly there's not that many models as Asus gigabyte and MSI usually only
make one Mini ITX board chipset well ASRock sometimes makes two since we went with the
ryzen 7700x we selected gigabytes aorus b650i Ultra primarily because it comes with an extra
m.2 SSD slot so three in total versus the competing boards and honestly it's the cheapest
b650 or x670 chipset Mini ITX motherboard at 259 gigabyte agreed to send over the motherboard
so big thank you to them but as is common with many ITX motherboards one of those m.2
slots it's actually located on the back of the motherboard again this is pretty common
on many ITX boards and that's why we installed our silicon power a82 terabyte SSD on that
backslide m.2 SSD slot because honestly once we put the Build Together we'd have to tear
the whole thing apart just to get to it so you might as well use that slot right now
and never have to touch it again that way adding storage in the future is way easier
on the front side m.2 slots now virtually every ITX board also comes with Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth which are nice features we covered the best ITX board for ryzen 7000 in our recent
ryzen motherboard 2023 video and plan to do the same around the launch of Intel's 14th
generation CPUs so check out those videos linked down in the video description finally
let's talk power supply and cable management remember of course most of these builds will
require an sfx PSU a small form factor PSU just make sure to check the case requirements
before you actually buy your PSU for our build Cooler Master sent over their v850 sfx 850
watt PSU which is right on the a tier the PSU cultist list and they sent over the white
version of the PSU which came with white cables which is a great touch because while we often
recommend cable extensions for larger ATX and Micro ATX size builds the fact that you
have so little room for any cable management makes cable extensions almost a no-go with
this kind of mini ITX build because extensions plug into the existing cables not into the
PSU remember the connection is on the PSU side of the cable differ by manufacturers
so don't blow up your PC by mixing and matching cables and honestly where would you put all
those extra cables in this build speaking of where cables go while you can pretty much
do anything you want with an all metal sided build as long as you don't hurt the airflow
of course with a case like this it has a side glass panel there really isn't a lot of place
to hide cables so you do need to get creative and have an ample supply of patience I actually
completely re-cabled this build three times before I was happy with it and even now there's
one maybe two things that I still might change so keep that in mind we actually built this
PC on our Channel member live stream and it was a ton of fun if you want to join our monthly
live stream you want to get cool stickers you want to get access to our Discord server
then click the join button below the video now let's roll the music and build this amazing
Mini ITX gaming PC and then check out how it performs in our benchmarks they're perfect
all right let's do this
[Music]
this is Miles everybody everybody say hi
[Music]
look at this thing this is crazy [Music]
[Music] So eventually he wants to play [Music] thank you [Music] hey
jumping in benchmarks of our system and it performs really well GPU temps are quite cool
even under load CPU attempts for the ryzen 7700x under load or is expected for ryzen
7000 X CPUs which pretty much eat all the available Cooling and pushes CPUs to Max temp
but without thermally throttling the CPU if we wanted we could of course run this in eco
mode instead in cinebench R23 we scored 19 355 in the multi-core test which is pretty
great given 360 millimeter AIO cooled versions only scored about three percent higher in
Creator workloads specifically Adobe Premiere Pro we scored 846 overall and in Photoshop
we scored 1648 putting us above many simile spec systems in puget's public database moving
over to gaming in Horizon zero Dawn using the built-in Benchmark on prefer quality preset
and dlss turned off we got 147 FPS at 1440p with 1 lows of 113. and at 4K we got 77 FPS
with a one percent low of 63. in Shadow the Tomb Raider the Rosetta Stone of gaming benchmarks
using the high quality settings with dlss turn off we got 172 FPS at 1440p and at 4K
with the same settings we got 97 FPS now let's talk price our high performance 1440p gaming
and Creator build came in at just over 1650 but we could easily drop another 100 by going
with a ryzen 7600 instead and even cheaper by going with a competing AMD GPU if you're
more in a budget it's easily possible to do an amazing budget 1440p Mini ITX build for
just under 900 and we'll leave both parts list Linked In the video description so should
you build a mini ITX build or go with something larger well if you're someone who really wants
the look of a very small footprint PC you don't mind paying just a little bit more and
you're up for a more challenging build process then honestly a small form factor gaming PC
might be right for you if you've never built or owned a gaming PC see before then I might
recommend that you look at a Micro ATX or ATX size build instead but on the other hand
I also think that if you have a good amount of patience it's definitely something that's
doable about just about anybody we had quite a lot of fun building this on the channel
live stream and I really love the way the build came out remember all the parts are
linked down in the video description for this build and alternative parts and if you got
value out of this video give it a like it makes a huge difference in the channel especially
this guy right here and of course subscribe click that Bell icon that way you get notified
when we release cool content speaking of cool content are you looking for the best CPU and
GPU combo in 2023 check out this video right here we go through everything that you need
to know and he's out of here we'll catch you on the next one