Deridjian Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Hey folks, I recently moved to another country and left my workstation where I lived before. For several reasons I'm about to make a new build, this time on a more tight budget. I was first setting up the usual ATX mid tower setup I usually do, but soon realized I won't ever do any SLI/Crossfire or huge HDD setups in the future while being here. This lead me to some pretty nice ITX builds on partpicker and I dig the idea of a small layout for my limited work space. Also I love the minimal looks of the Corsair 250D Mini case. This is not meant for any gaming, pure low profile workstation. I would want to triple boot though. Since it's gonna be budget I wanna base this build on a Pentium G3258 which to me it seems is widely used for OC budget builds for it's great performance/price ratio. Any suggestions on comparable processors I wouldn't mind though. As for the GPU I first thought about a GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB SC by EVGA because of it's very low TDP and good price/performance. But it still pushed the overall total too high so I thought maybe a cheap Radeon would fit better for OSX anyways. So I ended up flirting with a R7 250 by MSI. My biggest concern, and reason why I'm writing this, is about competitive alternatives to CPU & GPU and the cooling system for over clocking the Pentium. Also the wifi controller on the MSI Z97I AC motherboard is an Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260 card. Probably a no-go for OSX? I'm thinking about USB WIFI? I wouldn't mind for one USB less. To boil it down to a short list of components: Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual Core OC Silverstone AR06 40.2 CFM CPU Cooler or Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler MSI Z97I AC Mini ITX G.Skill Ripjaws X 1x8GB (so I could buy another one in some future) MSI Radeon R7 250X 1GB GPU Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5" SSD Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case Corsair CX 430W 80+ Semi-Modular ATX PSU I made this list on pcpicker if you want to see parts specs. So regarding my concerns: Do you know if any of this would give me headaches running OSX?(e.g. if I installed an all-in-one water cooler would it be recognized at all by OSX?) Can you think of better alternatives for CPU & GPU? Most mini ITX builds I've seen do use water cooling indeed. Although I've read of enough people who OC well with a heatsink. Do you think the Silverstone would do it? Would you install extra case fans if I went with it?(The case supposedly comes with two from what I read) Thank you for your attention everyone. Any comment is appreciated. Critics won't be flamed. I'm grateful to the community. Kudos Deridjian 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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