Gadgetory

about three months ago we took a look at the asus rog g7 52 vs gaming laptop which featured a quad-core skylake core i7 6820 HK mobile cpu 64 gigabytes of ddr4 ram clocked in at 2400 megahertz a 512 gigabyte nvme SSD along with a one terabyte hard drive and the star of the show was the gtx 1070 eight gigabyte GPU powering the 17 inch 1080p GC display the cost of that machine was about three thousand dollars and while many of you appreciated the remarkable engineering of packing so much power into a laptop form factor most of you were reluctant about that price tag many of you brought the fact that you can build a much powerful gaming PC for less than half the cost of the gaming notebook which I totally stand by but how much less expensive could it be well we decided to build a PC that almost matches the performance of the ACS g7 52 gaming notebook but we also decided to add a twist make it as compact as possible without sacrificing pricing and let me tell you that wasn't easy but before we move on quick message from our sponsor the dark bass 900 maybe the most innovative case of the year with a built-in Qi charger interior lighting tempered glass that can be installed on either side and a fully modular interior that can be inverted if you so desire be quiet stepping up their game check it out in the description below as I said before we had three goals to achieve with this gaming PC one it should cost less than $1500 - it should be a compact PC that can easily be transported to LAN events and three it should either match or I perform the GCM 52 in games one mention about this we wanted to make this a gaming focused system and that doesn't mean throwing the highest end processor at it so with the above-mentioned goals in mind this is what we came up with the processor we chose was the Intel Core i5 6500 skylake quad core chip clocked at 3.2 gigahertz it retails for about $200 which is $50 cheaper than the overclockable 6600 K but we chose this because it has plenty of horsepower for gaming now I also understand that some of you will want more powerful multitasking scenarios so to cover those bases I also tested the system with a core i7 6700 K quad core 8 threaded processor that should cover all the bases but if you want to focus more on gaming pay a lot of attention to the results a bit later since the expensive 6700 K really doesn't yield you significantly higher frame rates housing the chip will be the azrog z170 M Mini ITX motherboard that comes in at about $130 which is an absolutely amazing deal it comes with a built-in Wi-Fi module for SATA three connectors a single PCI x16 slot for our GPU and two RAM slots that support up to 32 gigabytes of ddr4 Ram speaking of RAM we opted for g.skill ripjaws 5 series 16 gigabyte kit clocked at 2400 megahertz and while it's a lot less than 64 gigabytes on the notebook there are a few things to take into account here first 64 gigabytes is just overkill for gaming or almost every scenario we can think of a while ago Dmitry did a video comparing 8 16 and 32 gigabyte ram capacities for gaming and video production link will be in the description his conclusion was that if you're strictly gaming you're much better off with either 8 or 16 gigabytes and save the rest of the money for a good GPU my last point is that since this motherboard supports up to 32 gigabytes of RAM you can easily upgrade to that capacity down the road there are no restrictions whatsoever cooling the CPU is our recently tested Noctua NHL 9i and low profile cooler what's great about this cooler is its high clearance at just 37 milimeters not only does that make it compatible with nearly every ITX case on the market but the l 9i is more compact and Intel's own stock cooler and it's plenty enough to cool the core i5 6500 it only costs $50 which is a steal in my opinion and it fits our budget perfectly and on sale it can be found for just $35 let's talk storage we chose the OCZ TL 102 40 gigabyte SSD as our main boot drive while it may not be anywhere near as fast as the nvm en to drive on the notebook it still provides excellent performance and great longevity while costing about 270 dollars that's what the system is about combining performance and value I did however choose to expand the amount of game storage versus the one terabyte drive on the Asus notebook for that I grabbed a Western Digital four terabyte hard drive powering the whole system is the silverstone SD 45 SF small form-factor psu with an 80 plus bronze certification and it retails for about sixty-five dollars and now for the GPU we picked the gigabyte gtx 1070 mini ITX OC remember we wanted to compare the gsm 52 to an actual desktop featuring the same GPU regardless of the processor ram storage etc and while the notebook version of the 1070 has more cuda cores and texture units the cooling efficiency in the g1 GPU should result in better temperatures along with more consistent clock speeds I'm really excited to see how the benchmarks turn out the case of choice is the silverstone SG 13 Mini ITX enclosure this enclosure highlights the strengthens of a compact ITX design plus at $50 you just can't ask for more there's plenty of room for proper airflow although you won't find dust filters which is a bummer and the included hard drive bracket only supports a single three and a half inch hard drive or two two and a half inch SSDs in my case I mounted these sideways to fit the SSD and the four terabyte drive which I think turned out pretty great but just keep that in mind so now that we've taken a closer look at the parts list for the build along with the operating system the total price rounds out to about $1500 with taxes if you're looking for an inexpensive gaming monitor the AOC g20 460 PG 24-inch g-sync display will be a perfect fit it features a 1080p TN panel with a refresh rate of 144 Hertz and when paired with the cooler master master keys like combo keyboard and mouse you're looking at an entire killer desktop setup for $2,000 without taking any sales into mind so are you guys ready for the benchmarks here you go starting with some basic synthetic tests the Mini ITX build with the 6700 K took the lead in every situation while the g7 52 held second place and the i5 6500 taking the last spot this isn't a surprise to me because the i7s are hyper threaded and they feature more cash compared to the 4 thread core i5 so if you're into content creation or heavy data processing that requires a faster CPU you should probably avoid the core i5 crystal this mark loved the nvme SSD inside the g7 52 notebook whereas the OCC TL 100 inside the Mini ITX build dished out respectable numbers the mechanical hard drive on the g7 52 was also faster than the 4 terabyte drive and this is due to their specs the desktop driver was spinning at 5400 rpm whereas the notebook driver was spinning at 7200 rpm now on to gaming modern titles at 1080p were performing outstandingly well on the Mini ITX build with the 6700 K even with dx12 enabled what surprised me was how well the Asus notebook kept up with the desktop the difference was about one to two percent between the two which isn't a big deal in my opinion but check out the build with the i5 6500 at a lower resolution like 1080p it does trail behind the g7 52 by about 4 to 6 percent but in titles like overwatch Call of Duty infinite warfare it trades second place right beneath the 67 under K variant do note that the 1070 becomes the bottleneck in mini games at 1080p so the extra money spent on a faster processor may not make much of difference switching to 4k things start to shift around a little bit the 6700 K variant of the Mini ITX build and the Asus notebook play a cat and mouse game fetching for the lead whereas the i5 6500 variant takes last place but the difference between each of these systems is so minimal it won't make a difference in gaming I'm actually really surprised with how well the i5 6500 did and it goes to show that paying hundreds more for a faster processor mean be money well spent in a gaming system as for the graphics cards from our tests the notebook 1070 ran at a consistently lower speeds compared to the desktop configuration and there were times where the extra cuda cores and the texture units likely played a significant role in closing the gap between it and the Mini ITX build but the desktop GPUs hire clocks usually one out now let's take a listen to how each system sounds so at the end of the day I think we achieved our goals that were mentioned in the beginning of this video just to reiterate we built a very portable PC for less than $1500 or under eighteen hundred dollars with the basic 24-inch g-sync monitor it was also extremely compact which means it can easily be transported to LAN events and finally we were able to match the performance of the Aces g7 52 notebook by a slight margin I'll be it the notebook still performed better than the i-5 6500 variant by a slight amount but you have to take into account that the notebook is rocking an i7 processor with more cores and faster cache that being said if you're willing to spend an extra hundred seventy dollars on the build pick the 6700 K because it is a very powerful chip for both gaming and video production if you're into that at the end of the day I find myself struggling to find the benefits of a massive gaming notebook over a compact ITX system for most situations gaming notebooks can't be easily upgraded but they cost a small fortune and they're anything but light and compact I'd hate to carry around the Asus g7 52 in my backpack that's for sure but just to give you a rough idea of how much one costs we were able to build a comparable IKEA system with a monitor and still have enough money left over to buy a fully equipped Dell XPS 13 slim and light notebook or any other ultra book that would give you the best of both worlds performance and portability guys let us know your thoughts about this mini ITX build + do you see yourself using expensive gaming notebook that would suit your situations better also would you have used different components for the build let us know in the comments down below i'm eber with hurricane axe thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one you