**Building and Using Small Form Factor PCs**

The author of this article recently built four small form factor PCs using different components from various manufacturers. These PCs were designed to run games on ultra settings and maintain good frame rates, despite their compact size.

One of the PCs was an Evolve ITX from Fantex, which is a great case for small form factor builds like this one. The author praises the case's design, saying it looks "absolutely fantastic". This PC was used primarily for running games at high settings, and was also used for general computing tasks such as browsing the internet and watching videos.

Another PC built by the author is an HTPC (Home Theater PC) that is connected to a TV in their living room. The system consists of an 11-year-old CPU, which still runs strong, paired with a modern GPU that provides better performance. The original GPU was replaced with a Black Edition Gigabyte card, which is a 750Ti model. This PC is used mostly for watching Netflix and Amazon Prime content, as well as browsing the internet.

In this article, we will explore each of these PCs in more detail, including their components, design, and performance.

**The Evolve ITX from Fantex**

The Evolve ITX from Fantex is a compact case that was used to build one of the author's small form factor PCs. The author praises the case's design, saying it looks "absolutely fantastic". The case has a limited cable management system due to its size, but this is mitigated by the use of a fully modular SFX power supply unit from Silverstone.

The power supply unit used in this PC is an 80+ Bronze certified unit that provides more than enough power for the system. It also features a modular design that makes it easier to manage cables and keep them tidy. The author notes that the cable management system can be improved, but overall, the case and power supply combination work well together.

**The HTPC**

The HTPC is another small form factor PC built by the author, which is connected to a TV in their living room. This system consists of an 11-year-old CPU, which still runs strong, paired with a modern GPU that provides better performance. The original GPU was replaced with a Black Edition Gigabyte card, which is a 750Ti model.

The HTPC uses a SG05 case from Silverstone, which features USB 3.0 ports and has a limited cable management system due to its size. However, the author notes that this is not a major issue, as the cable management in this PC is mostly handled by the use of a fully modular SFX power supply unit.

The system also uses a 250GB SSD for storage, which is sufficient for storing movies and TV series. The data is stored on an external NAS (Network-Attached Storage) device that provides redundancy and backup capabilities.

**The Author's Favorite PC**

In this article, we will explore the author's favorite PC, which is their HTPC. This system is used mostly for watching Netflix and Amazon Prime content, as well as browsing the internet. The author notes that they have been using this system for several years now, and it still performs well.

The system consists of an 11-year-old CPU that still runs strong, paired with a modern GPU that provides better performance. The original GPU was replaced with a Black Edition Gigabyte card, which is a 750Ti model. This PC also features a SG05 case from Silverstone, which has limited cable management capabilities due to its size.

The author notes that the system uses a fully modular SFX power supply unit that makes it easy to manage cables and keep them tidy. The system also uses a 250GB SSD for storage, which is sufficient for storing movies and TV series. The data is stored on an external NAS (Network-Attached Storage) device that provides redundancy and backup capabilities.

**Suggestions and Feedback**

We would like to hear from our readers about their suggestions for this PC or any other PC that the author may consider building in the future. Perhaps there are some components or designs that you think would be interesting to see used in a PC build? Do you have any ideas for potential videos or giveaways related to PCs?

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know in the comments below. We will do our best to respond to your questions and ideas, and we appreciate your input.

**Conclusion**

In this article, we explored four small form factor PCs built by the author using different components from various manufacturers. These PCs were designed to run games on ultra settings and maintain good frame rates, despite their compact size. We also looked at each PC in more detail, including their components, design, and performance.

We would like to thank our readers for watching this article and we hope that you found it informative and helpful. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys welcome back to the channel today is hopefully going to be a fun and interesting video for you all because I'm essentially going to be giving you a grand tour of all the PCS that are currently in the awesome sauce Network household uh that spans about 11 systems um now some of which are being used on a daily basis or a weekly basis and others are just kind of collecting dust and some of some of them don't even have like all the components some have had their CPU coolers or their CPUs stripped from them to be utilized for other purposes or other builds so I'm kind of I'm going to kind of be giving a rundown of each of those what the main system specs are and what my future plans are for each of these systems um and you know one of the biggest questions on the channel That I get is Kyle what do you do with all of these PCS after you've built them for a particular video and that's kind of what this video aims to answer in one regard but uh yeah hopefully you guys enjoy it let's let's go ahead and take a look at the I don't know there's so many where do we start where do you start with 11 computers which one do you talk about first I'm just GNA like close my eyes and like pick a pick a system to talk about so let's let's talk about this one all right so this first system is very important and sentimental to me in many ways because it's essentially the first rig I ever built with my own two hands back in 2011 when I was still working at New Egg with Paul uh he was one of my co-workers there and um at the time this was a freaking high-end system it had a 2600 K in it which has since then been repurposed to going into my wife's build the wifey build go ahead and check that video out if you haven't already um but since then you can see it's it's just gone there's no more CPU here so I haven't booted it in a while uh it also had GTX 670 direct cu2 from Asus uh in there so video card was pretty on point at the time but I think before I completely scrap it and tear it to bits I think I want to do one last video and you guys can let me know in the comments whether or not you think this is a good idea but a lot of you have been asking in the comments lately you know I've got this older PC you know that's a couple Generations old but I don't know if it's time for me to upgrade to something like Skylake or or even x99 uh so I think I'm going to do one last rodeo with this system and kind of Benchmark the the original rig that I had in 2011 to see how it Stacks up against current gen titles uh in terms of gaming performance and things like that so let me know if you think that would be a pretty cool idea uh and if I am able to do that um that's probably going to be the last use that I have for this rig before I completely disassemble it that's essentially it this is a really um very important PC to me again and I'm going to be sad to see it go but there you have it the next PC I have in my Arsenal is the white build and I did a recent video on this maybe a month or two ago many of you guys saw it um but this is essentially one of the nicest looking PCS I've built in the last year uh it's probably my one of my favorites as well because of that uh featured a gtx980 from G Hall of Fame Edition very nice card as well as has a 6700k but that's since then been repurposed into the uh silent build the Silent Night rig that I built very recently but more on that later um what I really want to do is get that CPU back in here reinstall the inax CPU Cooler um and find a place to just just to put this to have it on display cuz it really is one of the nicest looking builds that I built uh in 2015 and I I really don't want to scrap it and the N2 Lux from fantex is just an awesome case because if you guys remember that white build video uh it does have case Lighting on it that can change I think seven to nine different colors I forget exactly how many but I also got the fantex LED strip that I that I placed right here on the side of the case that is uh that also changes the same number of colors the same various colors as the case itself so altogether it makes it look really nice uh but yeah that's pretty much all I have to say about that rig moving on to the sleeper system sleeper PC was a rig that I built oh maybe a month or two ago as well uh where I essentially took highend components and put them in a crappy HP Pavilion case this is actually my dad's old case um from like five five to six years ago and I thought I'd make a sleeper PC essentially by that I mean uh a really high-end rig in a crappy case so that people don't really suspect it or pay pay much attention to it uh it's kind of like a covert rig I guess if you will um and it's got a 9 980 TI as well as a GTX I'm sorry a GTX 980ti as well as a 6700k so latest and greatest from the Intel Skylake platform um but uh you know when I brought this to CES this year I thought I had high hopes for it and while it was a really good editing machine for my editor um we were blue screening every time he tried to render out a video so since then I really haven't had time to troubleshoot it but that's my that those are my plans for this rig is to kind of do maybe I'll do a video on it I don't know just to find out what's wrong um instantly I'm thinking it's it's got to be the memory usually memory is is the the culprit when you're blue screening uh that early on in a system build so maybe maybe do a ram a memo K test or something like that just to find out exactly whether or not this thing should be scrapped or if it could be kept around for future uh events and uh different on-site locations where I need to edit videos so uh altogether apart from that little Quirk I'm pretty happy with that system uh moving on to the silent build which I think this is probably the the most recent build that I did let me go ahead and adjust the lighting here for you this is the most recent video I did I'm pretty sure this was for Christmas that's why I called it silent night um but what this essentially was was a really quiet and uh silent build designed primarily for Acoustics you can see I've got um a CPU Cooler here that's completely passive or semi- passive I should say because there's no direct fan attached also a silent power supply from enax one of their digian uh Digi fanless uh units which is excellent I might add it is pretty pricey but um it's completely silent there's no fan just relies on the heat sinks again and it's got really nice sleeved cables as well completely modular fully modular uh so this is a really nice rig um but yeah I I really have no plans for this either I don't know if I should sell it or if I should just scrap it for parts and use those parts you know at later dates when I need them let me know you guys think I should do with this system cuz I'm really at a loss at this point but moving on to the $400 budget rig that I made for Black Friday weekend back in November um this is actually a really nice system that I was very happy with because I spent so little money on putting it together and yet it was I don't know I qualified it as a certified console killer just because it outperformed what most consoles can do or what current gen consoles can do in this day and age uh granted it's only got an fx 43 50 in there for the CPU and a radon HD 7950 but still I was getting you know well above 40 frames per second on average uh at high settings playing at 1080 on AAA titles like GTA 5 Metro last Light and things like that so I'm very happy with this rig again it's a it's in a core 1000 case from fractal design very nice budget case and it only has a hard drive in it currently there's no SSD so my my plan for this guy was essentially to do kind of like what what to upgrade first for for a budget PC Builder so I know a lot of you guys have budget PCS that are very similar to this and you're probably wondering you know well I have 100 to 200 bucks to spare I don't know what I should upgrade first though with my little budget system and I thought maybe doing a video on that would be pretty cool so let me know what you guys think in the comments about that the next rig here is the Stream box that I specifically use and primarily and only exclusively use for uh streaming episodes of awesome Hardware every other week anytime Paul is over and we're hosting the episode at my house um now this is a pretty nice this is a pretty nice system it's Mini ITX and I granted it's a bit large for a miniitx case um so I'm thinking about downsizing it to maybe something like one of those small box siiz uh Silverstone chassis uh but right now it's doing the job it's got a 4770k in there and we're using that to do all of our streaming uh all of our encoding it's been doing a great job uh it's got quicksync and all that sort of thing but it's also got a Blackmagic capture card uh the intensity Pro which is just one of the best capture cards that you can get right now apart from that been really happy with it and I don't really plan on changing much to it anytime soon the next system in our list here I believe this is PC number seven as far as the video goes is my lovely x99 test bench uh I've got a lean Lee I think it's a PC t60 I forget exactly the model name that might be it U but it's a great little open air chassis for for a for a test bench such as such as this one where I'm constantly swapping out the motherboard the CPU the CPU Cooler or the video card or the ram pretty much any component possible uh to do a lot of testing and uh and benchmarking and things like that so you can see here this is actually just below my um my 600t system was uh this is pretty much where it lives all the time um I don't know if I mentioned this before in the video but I am like super cramped and have have kind of already outgrown the space that I have here at the awesome sawu Studio at my home so I wish I could actually get this somewhere uh higher up above the ground above above sea level uh but this is pretty much the the most I can do for now but um rest assured this system is not going anywhere anytime soon the only thing that will be changing are the components that are mounted to it for testing this is system number eight and this is my Overkill console killer uh which uh many of you guys saw that was also a very popular video um where the the hardware specs are really nothing too impressive here I mean I've got an 860k for CPU I've got an r9380 I believe it's it's a it's a mid-range system for sure um but it's just in this beautiful lean Lee PC is it PC8 chassis no pc05 chassis I believe um that's just absolutely incredibly pretty to look at so this is my PC I don't I really don't use it you know I have no long-term plans for it but it's just there to look pretty and nice uh so it's it's totally a PC moving on to hotline most of you guys have already seen this computer extensively I'm not going to talk too much about her uh but this is my custom water cooled PC the only custom water cooled system that I have in my house right now and really the only one that I've ever built uh is right here and this is my primary um desktop that I use for pretty much everything gaming editing web browsing all that sort of thing it's on my main desk area it's the only PC out of my 11 rigs that's actually worthy of being put on my desk essentially this is a really nice system very high-end uh with two GTX 980 TI as well as a 5960x so pretty much I don't know it's pretty much as good as As It Gets In terms of Hardware currently uh for the average consumer um I did run into a scare recently uh there was a bit of a leak with that 45° fitting there uh merging from the um emerging from the 240 Rad but I tightened the out of it and I put a little uh # PC diaper as you guys were calling it right on there with just a bit of paper towel and some tap just to see if it was going to continue leaking after continued use and so far after 2 3 days later it's been running 247 and I have not seen any kind of leaking issues so really happy that I don't have to drain the whole system and uh you know actually replace that fitting so things are looking pretty good right now for hotline um also got the NZXT h plus in there which I recently added uh just as a nice touch to uh to give it some nice LED flare there all right so those were all the PCS that were living inside of my my actual office which is through that door right there and and now as you can see we're actually in the living room now that uh that I share with my wife primarily um where you know there's like our couch and TV and and the living room and stuff like that uh and so we're going to be talking about the last two systems here numbers number 10 and 11 uh first of which is the the wifey build which I was alluding to earlier in the video uh that has that 2600k this is my wife's system this is Heather's build that I built for her uh maybe about a month or two ago as well um and it's got a 2600k from my old original system back in 2011 that CPU is still going strong guys and it's still overclocked to 4,400 MHz pretty damn good staying really chilly with that h105 cooler excellent cooler that do kind of hard to find these days um but I kind of went with like a really nice white and blue color scheme for her system um I think it just uh just it just worked out that way I had some really nice bit Phoenix extensions there for the sleeving um also the blue strip on the GTX 970 uh from EVGA this is the four the win Edition so you know my my wife's not getting no you know cheap slouch of a PC this is a very like powerful system that can still pretty much run any game on Ultra for the most part uh and still maintain some pretty good frame rates to boot so um yeah I I'm pretty happy with the system obviously the Evolve ITX from from fantex is an amazing case for for a small form factor build like this one uh and I think it just looks absolutely fantastic another one of my really favorite uh looking systems that I've built in the last year or so all right guys and this is my final PC of the hour this is my htpc which is connected to my TV right here in our living room where Heather and I pretty much watch this uh every single day apart from hotline this system probably gets used the most out of my 11 PCS um we're pretty much on it every single night watching Netflix Amazon Prime stuff or just browsing the internet in the living room uh but I built this thing about 2 or 3 years ago and the original CPU which is a which is a 3570k is still in here going strong I've also upgraded the initial GPU which was a 650 TI boost that's now been replaced with this black edition gigabyte card which is a 750ti so a slight increase there in performance so we do do some gaming on this as well we've been playing a lot of Sonic uh Sonic allars racing which I mentioned earlier um as well as a bit of lovers in a dangerous SpaceTime awesome aome indie game with local co-op if you guys are interested playing with another lover uh but the cable management in a case like this is pretty limited just based on how small it is but thankfully I've got a really nice fully modular sfx power supply which is also like the case is also from Silverstone this is one of their sfx series uh pretty much the only form factor of power supply unit that this chassis supports uh but it is 450 wat more than enough to drive the system and it is 80 plus bronze as well so very power efficient uh the modular design makes all the cables a bit more tidy than they otherwise would be you can kind of see here there is a bit of cable mess down there let me go ahead and try to crank up the aperture here give you a bit more light uh you get a little bit of an inside look you can kind of barely see it there's a CPU Cooler in there really nice one from prch excellent cooler could definitely uh put a moderate overclock on it and there's also another 120 uh gelled I don't know if it's gelled or GED but there's a gelled fan at the front there as well as strapped to the cooler keeps things nice and cool despite the size of this rig actually the components stay pretty chilly so happy about that this is also the sg05 from Silverstone the chassis itself uh which is the USB 3.0 model there's another model that only has USB 2 but I really wanted that USB 3 support uh just if we were trying to transfer some files um you know and want that faster transfer speed that is available to us right up the front panel uh there is no mechanical hard drive in here there's just a 250 gig SSD which is perfectly fine because we actually have all of our movies and stuff backed up to the Nas so here's the nas where we have all of our movies and TV series stored uh that way we don't need too much mechanical storage in the htpc itself uh it's all just kind of dedicated there on the Nas and it is a RAID setup so it is redundant which is really nice um but that's pretty much all all I have to say about my 11 PCS guys I know this was kind of a lengthy video but hopefully you enjoyed kind of getting a brief rundown of each one if you have any more questions about each of these systems go ahead and let me know in comments I'll go ahead and answer them to the best of my ability and also if you have any suggestions on what I should do with some of the PCS that I really don't know what to do with um if you have any ideas for maybe potential videos or uh I don't know giveaways or something like that which PC would you want me to give away if any of them just give me any kind of ideas on maybe what you'd like to see me do uh with either any of these PCS repurpose them reutilize them in maybe ways that I haven't thought of yet I think that'd be really cool so anxious to hear your feedback and thank you so much for watching this video guys go ahead and toss me a like on it if you enjoyed it feel free to subscribe to the channel for more Tech content coming really soon and until next time I'll see you all in the next video\n"