Gadgetory

you the objective with our ultimate compact gaming build guide was to build an extremely powerful basically as good as it gets gaming rig within the confines of an extremely small chassis we wanted to have the option to overclock this beast we wanted to maintain acceptable thermals and we wanted to have it not be too loud this truly is a have-your-cake- and-eat-it-too machine as usual we're going to start with the rationale behind each of the components why we chose that particular part and some of the other considerations that you may want to think about if you're going to undergo a similar project and then after that we're going to show you guys the actual process of building the machine with nice close-ups of what we're doing so you can follow along and then finally we are going to show off the finished machine including some performance numbers which I think you are going to find to be quite impressive before we begin though I would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor Thank You Intel for making this build guide possible we can't do these videos without the support of great companies like Intel they're the ones who are actually providing us the budget to set aside a week to plan shoot and edit this video so there's there are some guys over there huge thanks again to Intel for making this happen now when you cram a lot of components into a very small enclosure the biggest considerations are usually the actual physical size constraints and keeping thermals at acceptable and safe levels for that reason part selection is absolutely critical when the individual components in your system run too hot you are left with basically two undesirable options so number one is you can just leave them to their own devices and their automatic fan control algorithms especially graphics cards will just ramp up fan speeds too uncomfortable levels which I personally find quite offensive although it might not matter to you if you're a headphone user so your mileage may vary on that one and then option number two is that the components will simply run too hot which can cause reliability problems in both the short and in the long term now we're going to walk you through each of the parts in the system one by one to give you an idea of why we chose it and to give you some tips and pointers for how to choose your own whether you are using a small case like this or if you're just building a regular non-compact gaming machine because remember guys it's not always all about size right right the Intel Core i7 4770k with a be quiet shadow rock - cooler was our weapon of choice for this machine now particularly before overclocking Intel's 4th gen Core series processors offer unbeatable performance per watt so that's the heat output which is necessary for what we're trying to achieve here now you could make the argument that there's another 4th gen processor the 46 70 K that would be very very suitable for this build but we opted for the 4770k with hyper-threading just because we're kind of going for ultimate here and while most games right now are not going to benefit from the additional threads that improvement in the coding of games is definitely coming and there are many gamers who also do other things with their machines such as video editing or other heavily threaded workloads when it came to the memory we actually didn't go full-on ultimate here more RAM and higher memory speed each deliver very limited performance improvements in games so I mean right now it looks like in battlefield 4 there's some benefit to faster memory but that's a bit of an isolated case so we decided to go with something pretty standard we went with a 16 gig dual channel kit of 21 33 megahertz memory from a data we could have gone all out like 2400 megahertz or 3,000 megahertz or whatever else the case may be but the reason we went with this option is that when you go 21 33 you're actually not paying much more than a 1600 megahertz kit so really that's the reason why just because it wasn't costing us more once you go past that it starts to get more expensive the reason we went with 16 gigs is because it gives us more than enough for now with the option to upgrade in the future without totally overspending on the memory in comparison to the rest of the system 16 gigs also gives us a little bit of flexibility for more memory intensive applications like the video editing we mentioned before my kuroh ETX performance motherboards often actually deliver a pretty compelling value compared to their ATX counterparts even if you were to use them in a full-size case and not an EM ATX case but anyway we went with the g1 Sniper m5 from gigabyte because it's optimal PCI Express slot spacing allows us to actually install two dual slot graphics cards running at PCIe 8x gen 3 which is more than enough bandwidth even for 780ti s and have a left over PCIe 4x slot for an additional add-in card of our choice down the road whatever we want to put in it that's not bad for em ATX not to mention it comes with all the latest bells and whistles including swappable op amps for the onboard audio was one swappable op-amp I killer networking overclocking options galore and all of that at under $200 the green color scheme will also go very nicely with our green graphics cards and green LED lighting effects but of course I'm not that shallow so the color had nothing to do with it it's all about the technical technological superiority I like green for the case we went with the BitFenix phenom M it uses the same internals as the prodigy M and while it doesn't have the same like hardcore water cooling and hard drive mounting options as the ITX version does it still has room for a large air cooling heat sink for the cpu and the added expansion for PCI Express cards is awesome it features 5 PCI slots at the back for future expansion which is a huge benefit if you ever wanted to say for example add dual graphics cards or something like that it's also small enough to easily pack this sli rig around with you to LAN parties or wherever else you might need to take an immensely powerful well cooled little rig speaking of cooling it can accept plenty of cooling fans which we can run at low rpms when we're idling for quiet operation then ramp up as needed we'll be using Spector pro green LED fans for this machine Spector pros are one of the only really good-looking fans out there that also have performance and quiet operation on their side so there are a couple of other exceptions but for the most part you got to choose performance or looks well we chose both once again guys storage is so personal but we're going to go with something pretty standard for this one which should be applicable to many different people and until 5:30 series 240 gig SSD will act as our OS and key application slash games drive while the Western Digital four terabyte black will be our storage powerhouse to handle a massive Steam library a media collection and all that kind of stuff and still provide excellent performance but with huge storage this SSD plus hard drive configuration has grown in popularity over the last couple of years a lot and I think we're probably going to be sticking with it for quite a while for most high performance users I mean until something paradigm-shifting happens with respect to SSD pricing and capacity or maybe some other new technology comes along it makes a ton of sense to go with fast small storage and then slower massive storage so you get the best of both worlds well guys for us there was really only one ultimate gaming graphics card configuration we've gone with two gtx 780 Ti graphics cards from EVGA I really don't know what to say about these other than that they're the fastest gaming cards on the market and they're thermal and acoustic performance made them an obvious choice over the red team this time around for this specific bill because of the constraints we have in terms of space we went with rear exhaust cards versus an open cooler like EVGA ACX cooler because we felt we would rather compromise GPU temperatures a little bit we'll have the GPU running a little bit hotter for the sake of keeping the rest of the inside of the case cooler remember that not every component in your system can be read with a temperature monitor so for things like your power delivery components on the motherboard lower ambient temperatures inside the system can make a big difference to long term reliability so just because you have a couple graphics cards in there and your CPU temps look okay and your GPU temps look okay that doesn't mean that an open-air cooler is necessarily the best choice for you so rear exhaust for very small builds is definitely recommended peripheral wise for this rig honestly guys I'm not sure how much sense it makes to keep including these since everyone's choices will be so different but tell you what let me know if you'd like me to keep featuring peripherals that I think makes sense for each build and we'll see if we keep doing it in the future anyway we just got our hands on the ducky shine 3 so for our all-out machine we are suggesting this all-out keyboard unfortunately ours are blue backlight so they won't match the rest of the green theme here but don't worry there's a green one available and it's available in all the main Cherry MX key switch types and in either a 104 key layout or a 10 keyless layout so you can get something to match your rig for sure for our mouse we are going with the Death Adder 2013 again it's green to match our build which isn't the main factor here because the main factor here is the fact that it features one of the best sensors on the market as well as excellent ergonomics this is an extremely well regarded mouse out there right now and I have already recommended in previous build guides but I have no problem recommending it I gain finally for our monitor it's kind of big got to go get it we've gone with the Ben q XL 2420 te if you saw my unboxing you'll already know that for a 144 Hertz monitor it is far and away the best-looking one we've ever seen in terms of color and viewing angle the one caveat is that it doesn't support g-sync so yeah until monitors that support G sync start arriving I don't know that I can recommend investing in a gaming monitor right now but if I absolutely had to then that would be the one which leads us finally to our operating system we went with Windows 8 because that's all you can really get right now for gaming maybe at some point here steamos is going to be an option but that is still very much in beta right now in fact we have it running upstairs very much in beta not ready yet windows 8 for this particular machine when it comes to pre build safety and setup base secondly what you want is to start with a safe static free workstation and anti-static strap I like to keep mine on my ankle to keep it out of the way you also want to make sure there's no one necessary clutter around so that you can lose screws or trip on something and knock something over because that would be disastrous next up all we really need for assembly these days is a multi-bit screwdriver and the last thing is I always recommend doing your first build and powering it up outside the case to ensure that everything works while it's nice and easy to reach in case something goes wrong and you have to take it back to the store or send it back to the manufacturer the motherboard box makes a very handy non conductive test bench for this outside the case installation will start with CPU installation after carefully removing the CPU from the package align the little golden triangle on the corner of the CPU with the triangle on the plastic cover then what you're going to do is lift the retention arm by pushing away then up without removing the plastic cover that protects the delicate pins inside the socket leave that in place for now then what we're going to do is gently place the CPU in the socket the risk of damage to your system is highest at this point in the build process so be extremely careful if you're forcing it then there is definitely a problem once the CPU is in place pull down the retention cover then pull down the retention arm lift it out away a little bit and then lock it under that little clamp right there once you've done that there it goes the plastic cover will pop itself right off put that in the motherboard box for safekeeping if you ever need to return your motherboard they will require you to send it in with this cover because once again those pins inside that socket are extremely fragile ddr3 installation is simple pull back the tabs on your motherboard align the notches on your memory with the notches inside the sockets then insert it gently and finally press firmly down on the memory on both sides until the latch clicks back into place on its own then you're done always install matched memory sticks in the color matched slots on modern motherboards for dual-channel operation this gives you better performance when it comes to heatsink installation every one is a little bit different and be quiet mounting systems are not always my favorite but they do have solidly built products at good prices so that's why we went for it in this particular case because it's going to fit quite well with the rest of our hardware but still invest maximum cooling on the CPU so don't be intimidated by all the little tiny bits and screws and pieces right here we're going to show you how exactly it all goes together on the board so we start with the backplate you position the backplate so that the screws on the back of the little backplate that's already on the motherboard poke through the much bigger backplate then you're going to take each of these four longer screws and put them through the board so that we can access them on the top the next step is to take the little plastic washers and clip them from the top so that they stay in place and don't fall back through the board so now they're going through the backplate and they are stuck in place now that the backplate is securely in place we can thread on the nuts that will support the CPU hold down use the included wrench to hold them in place from the front of the ward while tightening them from the back of the board with a Phillips head screwdriver now we're done with our board for a little bit and it's time to work on the heatsink itself simply use the four countersunk screws to attach the hold downs to the bottom of the heatsink that's how we're actually going to well hold it down onto the CPU now this next step is optional but to maintain the awesome looks of this system we are going to swap out the stock fan which is actually a very good fan with a Spectre Pro just remove the metal clips on the stock fan and then put them back onto the new fan exactly the same way it's actually quite quite simple and now it's looking good oh yeah next up put a line of thermal compound which is included with your heatsink onto the CPU and then position the heatsink with a sensible fan orientation so we're going for kind of a pseudo push-pull configuration so once the motherboard is in the case the rear exhaust will we help the Fen that we installed as a push fan pull air through that massive heatsink also don't forget to orient the fan when you're installing it so that the power lead reaches to the CPU fan header without any extra cable mess you know lying around all over the place solid cable management starts at every step making sure that you're maintaining it so you can you can actually plug that in now we're ready for that I think at this point you'll start to see why we went with a low profile memory kit from a data for this build tall memory modules can interfere with large CPU heat sinks in some cases yeah get it in cases they can interfere because this is a computer we're gonna put it in a case and all man I crack myself up okay no but seriously we're we actually aren't quite done with this yet we'll use that wrench again from the front and then the screwdriver again from the back but this time we are tightening nuts onto the top of the hold-down again this isn't my favorite CPU mounting mechanism in the world but the good news is that once they're all on there it is extremely solid and it's not going anywhere now my friends it is time to start working on the case so we are going to begin by taking off both side panels by removing the four thumb screws at the back what I really recommend doing is taking these side panels and putting them back into the case box for now because we won't need them until a bit later the Phenom M is a little bit different from most cases though and that we will need it at some point during the assembly process here because you can see that the front i/o is actually located on one of the side panels where we have our power and reset buttons as well as our front audio ports and our USB 3 ports one little trick for this case as well that we're going to actually do is we're going to switch sides and we're going to put the side panel with the i/o on the left-hand side of the case then we're going to take this side paddle move it over to the other side I found that when I was working on this case recently that it was a little bit easier to do cable management that way and the only drawback is that the logo on your power and reset buttons will be upside down in the finished product now that the case is open undo the twist-tie that's holding the accessory box in place that box contains all the screws you need to assemble your system so please told who sit and for that matter don't lose that twist tie twist ties are a handy-dandy reusable way of doing cable management later on you can even cut them to size according to what you need if you have nice long ones like this next you'll need to remove the brace that's across the side panel just take out the four countersunk screws and pull that out and put it somewhere safe make sure you also put those screws somewhere safe I recommend the accessory box that already contains all of your other screws now it is time to replace all the fans that came with your case if you want to the ones that come with it our decent but we're throwing inspector Pro so yeah it'll be much more difficult to try and do this later so make sure you do fans pretty much first we'll start at the bottom by removing the air shield that comes on the case I don't plan to reinstall this because we're going to need that airflow space next we'll remove the four screws that are holding in the bottom fan take off the stock fan and then we're going to reuse those screws to replace it with our Spectre Pro I also changed the orientation to turn this one into an intake to bring fresh air to both my cpu heatsink and also up to my graphics cards we then repeat that same procedure for the rear fan replacing it this time with a 140 millimeter Spectre Pro just to get a little bit more airflow just a reminder here guys make sure you're checking your fan orientations as you're installing each of them it's nice to have logos the right side up in the finished bill but it's even nicer to have short easy to manage runs to the fan headers on your motherboard once everything is installed now we would have liked to install more fans in the top of this case to 120 millimeter fans up there would have been absolutely perfect for fresh air for those graphics cards but unfortunately the fans don't quite fit between the metal of our chassis and the plastic outer layer and when given the choice between a board with tight spacing between the graphics cards which would cause one of the cards to be starved for air flow but it allow top fans to be installed for even better airflow to the other car and then going with this board which offers much better graphics card spacing but doesn't allow for those top fans to be installed on the other side I think we that was a sacrifice we were willing to make not to mention of course having the graphics card spaced out like that gives us a future expansion and the ability to install another PCI Express card here power supply installation starts by taking out the thumb screw that holds in the power supply bracket here at the front of the case the holes on this bracket do allow for the fan on the power supply to face inward towards the components or outwards towards the front of the case where it can take an air from these little vents on the side at the front here but the design of the case favors inward facing for my build however I don't have much air intake because I wasn't able to install those top fan so in order to keep my intake and exhaust as balanced as I can which is optimal for cooling I wanted to install the power supply with the fan facing towards the front of the case so it could pull in its own fresh air then exhausted out the bottom of the chassis without affecting the pressure of the inside of the case the air pressure so I had to do it a quick double check to make sure that all of my cables would reach with acceptable cable management to the places that they needed to go and then I was ready to commit and screw the bracket into the power supply in my chosen orientation now I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that the peer power 700 watt power supply we're using is by no means the only option for this build in fact it's not even really that high-end for something that's like an ultimate build I was just trying to make a point that modular power supplies like this Corsair ax 860 I aren't always the best option especially when you're planning to use all of the connected cables anyway because modular power supplies tend to be larger to accommodate that modular interface so as long as we can manage the cables or use them all we're not really getting any benefit out of the modular interface the other point I was trying to make is about the power efficiency of the components we're using this 700 watt power supply we'll handle it I'll show you guys that at the end of the video but with all that said it's only an 80 plus bronze power supply and all that so in a x86 di or something similar would also be a great choice for this particular build I guess the other thing is whoops excuse me we always use modular power supplies so I'm shaking things up a little bit anyway to finish up the power supply installation we align the little notches on the bracket slide the power supply now connected to the bracket back in put the thumb screw back in place and then flip the case over so that we can plug in the pass-through cable that allows the power supply to be installed in the front of the case it's a little bit tricky it's a little bit of a tight fit but we managed to get it in there now is also a good time to flip that power supply switch to the on position if it has one to save yourself some headache later when you finish the build press the power button on the front of the system and it doesn't turn on and you're like oh what's wrong with it if it's just the power button on the bottom of the power supply but you didn't think of it because it's on the bottom of this case so before putting in the motherboard there are a few things that we're going to need from the motherboard box grab your i/o shield your sli bridge and your SATA cables we'll need the i/o shield now but the other two you can put aside for later installing the i/o shield is a little bit tricky in this case remember that the motherboard is 180 degrees off the normal upright orientation so your i/o shield will go in upside-down compared to normal make sure you get that right at this stage next find the motherboard standoffs in your box of K screws they look a little something like this then grab the little included tool that adapts your Phillips head screwdriver to a stand off socket there are four standoffs already installed but you'll need to use that little tool to install four additional ones here here here and here now guys you can see that our power supply is actually already in from our test fit but don't worry we're going to show you the whole installation process in just a moment in really small cases like this it can be handy to pre connect some of the cables to your motherboard before actually lowering the motherboard into the case particularly the eight pin CPU connector is going to be hard to reach with that large CPU heatsink nearby so we pre connected the eight pin and the 24-pin ATX connector it's important here though to note that we aren't able to fully install the power supply until after the motherboard is screwed in place due to space constraints particularly with that large heatsink screwing in the motherboard is pretty easy but make sure guys that you're using a long enough screwdriver and I would highly recommend using a magnetic one so just put the eight screws into the eight different places where they go and again please use a magnetic screwdriver because otherwise screws can fall into little nooks and crannies in the case where they're extremely difficult to retrieve a magnetic screwdriver will not damage your components the magnets are not nearly strong enough we'll take this chance now to put our power supply back in but don't worry guys the details for that are coming in in a second so just sorry don't don't mind the power supply don't mind the man behind the curtain and now is also a good time to connect our fans to the appropriate headers we could plug them directly into the power supply but I prefer using the onboard connectors on the motherboard to enable BIOS and software level fan control once the system is up and running now normally we do cable management as a finishing touch but the way we're doing this build forces us to do it now while we can actually still get at anything the first step is to figure out exactly which connectors were going to need from the power supply and jam all the extra ones behind the power supply where it can be completely out of sight and out of the way of our airflow we'll use some zip ties to keep them in place because they're so tight that I don't think twist ties will do the trick in this case next we'll position the side panel with the front connectors next to the case on the left hand side remember not the side it came on then we'll pass all those cables through to the front first we'll plug in the front panel HD audio then the front USB three these connectors are both keyed and or missing pins so they'll only go in one way just be gentle with them and then finally the front power and reset switches as well as the front power and drive activity LEDs now BitFenix doesn't color their positive wires which gives it a very clean look but also makes it a little bit difficult to figure out which ones the positive wires so you will need to match up the I are indicated in your manual where it needs the positive one with the tiny little arrow on the corresponding front header so guys look really carefully at it and make sure you get these right in fact at this stage even though there's no graphics card in here you can do a quick power on test and make sure that the LEDs illuminate because if you get this wrong now you'll be tearing out your graphics cards if you need to fix it in order to get at that little spot speaking of graphics cards next we can tuck our PCI Express cables out of the way we will need those soon though when we install the video cards so just a twist I'll do the trick to to make sure that you know they're just out of our way so we can figure out what we're doing and then the next bit is just one way of doing this okay so if we were using the included cross brace with the case we could simply install our three and a half inch drive and our two two half inch SSD on here throw that into the case and that would work just fine that's the way it's intended to be used we came up with a bit of a different idea though I wanted a cleaner look to the internals so I had to grab a couple of longer SATA cables and I'm going to be running them down to the bottom of the case where I'll be kind of ghetto mounting the SSD on top of the hard drive I'll show you all that in a minute but it's up to you which way you want to do it one other thing I like about this approach with not having the cross brace in there is that it gives me the option to add a side panel window as like a DIY mod later on in the future so it's totally up to you anyway I grab those SATA cables plug them into the motherboard one little trick that I use is because I can never remember four stacked SATA cables four stacked right angle static cable connectors which one is 0 and which one's one like which is the first port is I'll usually plug them into completely different stacks so that it's easy to figure out which one is the first one in the boot order by default in the BIOS and I'll plug my SSD into that one so that if I ever reset my BIOS I don't have to remember to go and manually reset my SSD as the boot device it's just a nice little building trick for you anyway once that's done you've got pretty much everything plugged into the board and it's time to tuck everything nicely behind that left side panel and close it up don't force if it's not closing check what it's stuck on readjust and try again clean cable management is not worth damaging something so just take your time and go slow once you do get great cable management going on though it's very satisfying and having the PCI Express slot area nice and tidy is great for airflow for your graphics cards and will help them run cooler and lasts longer alright so here it is guys the not really recommended way that I'm installing my drives into the machine I am going to put both of them rather than here right down there under the CPU heatsink there's lots of air flow from the fans around there but obviously there is a problem there aren't enough mounting points for two drives more on that later anyway first we're going to mount our hard drive these rubber grommets and screws will do nicely for that so just put the grommets in from the bottom of the case then position the drive in place with the SATA connectors towards the side panel then screw it in from the bottom alright so there wasn't really any trouble there well no this is where the magic starts guys I'm going to put my SSD right here on top of the hard drive how you might ask well with a very famous Canadian invention velcro just put this stuff on the back of the SSD stick it to the top of the hard drive and you are ready to rock next install the SATA power cables and SATA data cables onto both drives and then run them along the bottom of the case for better cable management now that we've done so much work to prepare ourselves for GPU installation it's actually pretty straightforward all we do is turn the case around and we find oh this has a toolless PCI slot mounting mechanism so just undo the screw there lift it up you're going to have to remove the PCI slot covers that are already in there because they're in the way for us to install our graphics cards then grab one graphics card I'd probably recommend doing the top one first and then carefully maneuver it into the case what you'll probably have to do is put it kind of butt end in first into the five and a quarter inch bay that of course we can't use because our system is so full of other gear in spite the fact that it's in there and in spite of the fact that the front of the case actually doesn't even have a spot for it you know that's the that's the feet on them for you anyway so you go ahead and put that in and then press it down firmly then follow up with the second card pressing it down firmly then go around to the back put that last PCI cover in unless you have another expansion card such as a sound card or raid card or you know I don't know like red rocket card or whatever you want to do with this awesome little machine that is aside from putting in additional slot covers put the screw back in place and then just plug those bad boys in since you put the PCI Express power cables exactly where you were going to need them earlier on in the build they're right there so one eight pin and one six pin connector for each of the graphics cards and we are pretty much done here folks okay well we're not quite done we're finished the hardware which brings us to software number one is in a system with two drives I've seen Windows do this stupid thing enough times so I recommend physically unplugging the drive you don't want any of your windows files on so go ahead and unplug the hard drive from time to time it stores the boot manager on onedrive and then the actual OS on the other drive so the system can't boot without both of them in which is ridiculous so that's just one little tip for you guys then when we get into the BIOS there's a couple little configuration tips that are just even just basic stuff like not overclocking or anything like that so just make sure that HCI mode is enabled for all of your SATA ports and ensure that all of the components are detected correctly your memory is running at the correct speed and all of that good stuff next up Windows installation is a snap if you know how don't worry about the lack of a disk drive in this machine you can just grab all the files off of a disk copy them to a blank USB Drive and boot from that it's faster and more convenient in fact most of the techies I know just have a dedicated USB Drive for doing OS installations just like that drivers are the next thing and there's something that many people struggle with but it's not too overwhelming if you break it down even devices that already have drivers installed so Windows Update will grab drivers automatically for a lot of this stuff would recommend grabbing the latest ones directly from the manufacturer website so you can start with gigabyte they make your motherboard so they should have the latest Intel chipset drivers LAN or network drivers and sound drivers but then when you're finished with that you can just do a double check and you know head over to Intel site big foots a real tech site or whoever else manufacture the actual chips on the board itself but as a catch-all the gigabyte website should be fine and then you'll also need to go to an videos website to get the latest drivers for your graphics cards you can pick up GeForce experience and it'll continue to keep them up to date on its own now if there's something that you're having trouble finding a driver for here's a little trick that I use go to the device manager right click the component in question then just go to details and use the drop down box to go to hardware ID then Google the venn underscore number number number and device underscore number number number string and it will usually tell you exactly what that device is so then you can google that and you can find a driver for it so now it's conclusion time guys I'd like to talk about a couple things so one is some performance numbers and some temperature numbers for our system small systems no longer need to perform any differently from big systems this right here has a core i7 4770k perfectly capable of overclocking it also has two DTX 780ti s it will perform as well as a much larger system that has that same hardware and in terms of temperatures honestly considering the size of this little beast I think you guys will be pranked quite impressed by the numbers that we're showing you right now this is under a gaming load so a real-world load scenario so let's talk about an overall trend as well aside from this is a great performing reasonably quiet actually that kind of impressed me I'm quite impressed by that you want to go into the BIOS and configure fan control if you want to make it this quiet but you know even running at full speed I think it probably won't bother most people anyway very very quiet so aside from the performance and the quiet and the compactness let's talk about the trend towards Portability and smaller size in the industry in general I think the Mac Pro is a very interesting comparison here now this isn't as powerful as a Mac Pro particularly one with a 12 core CPU in it I mean the Mac Pro is more workstation oriented it supports quad-channel memory it's got dual workstation grade graphics cards in it as opposed to consumer grade graphics cards although we could put workstation grade graphics cards in here but it's also very very very small on the other hand this system is a little bit bigger it's a very heavy hitter for its intended use which is heavy gaming and light video editing or other content creation and in my mind it's much more flexible it's much more upgradable especially right now this is this is another trend that may or may not take off but Apple's certainly banking on it less internal expansion and more external expansion I talked a lot while we were doing this build guide about why I liked this particular board for its ability to allow us to expand and put dual graphics cards in it and then even expand further and add an additional PCI Express slot in it Apple has not given the option at all to expand either via PCI Express or even the internal drives of the device you can just get a bigger single PCI Express SSD and that's pretty much all you can do they want you to use Thunderbolt an external expansion option in order to get things like high throughput storage professional grade expansion cards like capture cards or Red Rocket cards or other devices and they want you to do all that outside the case so you can actually get like Thunderbolt 2 PCI Express and closures and things like that and I just have to wonder a little bit if this isn't a better middle ground because we're getting that compact missile though it's small enough to sit next to your monitor without being so small that it's you know really really tiny and impressively small but we actually get some external expansion I got a wonder if the person who wants a tiny little Mac Pro wants an octopus of Thunderbolt cables coming out of it connected to their monitor and then you know external storage box 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 as they end up needing more things I mean we could still put a couple more drives in this thing without even resorting to anything external whatsoever just by putting this bracket back into the machine so there you go guys this to me is a fantastic option it's a PC of course you could probably find a way to hackintosh it if you really wanted to run OS 10 and I'll be interested to see where we go from here now we focused a lot throughout this build guide as well on the high end potential this system how its 4770k and like dual 780ti s and it ended up being very expensive but I want to also talk about some recommended ways to scale back and get better bang for the buck out of it by going with a 46 70 K a single GTX 770 or 780 and a smaller SSD and hard drive you could actually build a system quite like this but push the price point down to the point where it really doesn't cost any more than a regular desktop machine and still offers great expandability for the future so maybe it's not the kind of thing where you're going to chuck your current PC in the garbage and go buy one of these but next time you're shopping for PC whether you move it around a lot and attend land events or you don't it just sits in one place you may want to consider a small machine do you need all that expansion or is this the interesting middle ground between something like the Mac Pro and something like a full-fledged ATX desktop tower anyway guys until next time thank you for watching this altima compact gaming system build guide like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave us a comment if you have any feedback on our build guides or special requests for the next one because there will be more of these yeah you Oh you