My Ultimate ITX Build for Productivity (and Gaming)

I've got a lot to do this year so that's why I built this I'm a software engineer so I have code to write I'm creating 3D printed projects in blender I need to edit videos for this channel along with creating all the art that goes with them and so I want to build a PC that'll be able to handle all of these tasks I also want my PC to handle any current or upcoming games fit on my desk without taking up the entire thing and to be visually appealing so that's why today I'm creating My ultimate ITX PC for productivity and [Music] gaming [Music] so while each of the components or parts that I chose here are tailored around my personal needs my hope is that as I explain my reasoning for each of them it can help you decide what is most important for your build so that you can also build your best productivity machine a lot of times at least for me when it comes to building small form factor I start with a particular case in mind as that's what can drive a lot of the component choices based on what's compatible for this build though because I have workload considerations I'm going to be going the traditional route when it comes to Planning by picking out a few of my key components and seeing what kind of case I can fit it all in and let's start with the CPU so for me it came down to a few different options I could go with the Intel I9 14900 K which is one of the best that Intel has to offer right now but considering how minor of an improvement this generation of chips are from the 13th gen and the likelihood of this being one of the last releases of the LGA 1700 socket I decided to go instead with AMD now the 7,000 series from AMD is on the new am5 platform which they claim to support until 202 25 and so any motherboard that I choose from here could theoretically last me a good long time for productivity only there are some good options out there like the 7950 X and the 7900x but if I'm being honest with myself I know that I'm going to be wanting to game on this as well and so that 3D vcash that's offered in the 7950 x3d is going to have a massive impact on gaming performance now looking at some stats from Tom's Hardware it looks like we can expect only a minor hit in productivity performance by going with the x3d version however if you look at the gaming benchmarks there is a huge difference in favor of it all of this to say that if you don't game I wouldn't spend the extra money on the x3d variant but if you do it could be worth it now the Intel i 94900 k does have a slight Edge when it comes to productivity tasks and is a well-rounded CPU but I also like the lower power consumption of the AMD chip making it easier to cool which is definitely going to be a major benefit when building small for factor and so with a CPU picked out we need to figure out what motherboard to plug this into and the options for ITX am5 motherboards are still you know fairly limited so I've narrowed it down to a few different options the first is the Asus x670 EI this is an expensive and pretty overbuilt board but it does have some pretty compelling features that I think could be useful two m.2 drives under this massive heat sink that's actively cooled but the main draw for me is the two USB 4 ports on the back so that I can get the fastest data transfer speeds between external drives the downside being of course that the price is over4 $400 and I wish at that price they would have given a third m.2 slot on the back now another good option could be the gigabyte B 650i AR Ultra it does have three m.2 slots so there's a ton of room for fast storage and it's a lot less expensive at $240 the downside here is that you have to use a dotter board for some of those front panel connections and other features now while I totally understand the reasoning and The Limited space of an ITX board it can still be annoying to work with ultimately I decide on the MSI b650 I Edge for a few reasons first is that it matched the all-white aesthetic which while not the most important thing for me in this build was still a big bonus it also supports up to 7200 MHz memory overclocking which I do plan to take advantage of and it has all the io that I would personally need including USBC 3.2 port for that fast data transfer on top of that you still get built-in Wi-Fi 6E and while it doesn't have three m.2 slots like the gigabyte board it does at least support two one under this actively cooled heat sink on the front where I'll be putting a two terab 980 Pro and then the other on the back that I can utilize later on now if you're working with those large files like I am and need quick access to them having those extra m.2 slots is going to be really valuable as that's going to give you the fastest storage now while I still definitely need fast storage for my files and I'll likely be populating that back spot with another 2 tby stick soon for me I also plan to move all my large files onto a Nas system like the one from this video sponsor UK green now they sent this over to me ahead of its release because they have a Kickstarter thing going on for this new line of systems that they're launching in the coming weeks this is the nas sync dxp 4800 plus and these are made for mass storage that's accessible to any device connected to your network now this is going to be really useful so that I can access any of my files from any of my computers at home instead of being tied up to one PC or a single location now the one I have here has four Bays for SATA drives plus an additional two m.2 drives with a total storage support of up to 96 tab which should be more than enough for all those large video files and anything else for the foreseeable future what's interesting about it though is that it's basically a small PC specifically designed around mass storage it's got a 12 Gen 5 Core Intel processor expandable memory this one comes with 8 gigs of ddr5 4800 installed but it does support up to 64 gigs and a lot of the io that you would see in a typical PC it's got 10 gbit ethernet along with HDMI out so that you can directly connect this to your monitor with a mouse and keyboard if that's easier for your setup now of course like other NASA systems you also have remote access to your storage through a desktop app or even from your phone so that you can search upload or download any of your files from anywhere once we get this all unboxed here we just need to install the four drives the face plate for each of the Bays pop open so that you can pull out the hard drive tray these trays are also toolless making for a very easy setup they slide open on one side giving you enough room to insert and secure the drive then you just push each of the drives back into the system I'm starting off with 16 tab so that's four 4 tab drives and after a brief setup process we are ready to start transferring files if you want to check these out yourself I'll leave a link in the description below they have a few different models coming out for a range of different needs now Ram is actually pretty important for a productivity PC if you're working with really large image files or anything that needs to hold a lot of system memory having enough to go around is going to make a big difference to the overall speed of your machine so having a bunch of large files open a bunch of tabs in your browser this is all going to use more memory and so if it's in your budget I would go with as much capacity as you can now for me in my workload I found that 32 gigs of RAM to be enough but of course everyone's projects and these are going to be different so you might feel more comfortable with 64 gigs now if you're a heavy blender user then 64 gigs would probably be better for me in the project that I'm working on 32 is enough this being an ITX board we're only going to have access to two dim slots so you'll want to keep that in mind that unlike microatx or ATX boards if you go with 32 gigs now you'll have to outright replace those two 16 gig sticks with two 32 gig sticks if you want to make that upgrade now Photoshop requires a minimum of 8 gigs of RAM but recommends 32 same for Lightroom 32 is also the recommendation to edit 4K video in Premiere Pro as well as the recommendation for blender which covers all of my heavier Ram uses I'm going to be using this ddr5 7200 cl34 Kit from Team group aesthetically this is probably the cleanest looking set I've seen yet they are capable of up to 7200 MHz which is the max at my theboard will be able to support and to utilize that we'll also need to make sure we select the overclocking profile in the Bios now those faster speeds will allow for faster data transfer from the CPU to the ram resulting in Faster overall performance now 7200 though is going to be overkill for most people I would actually recommend ddr5 6000 as that's going to get you the best balance between cost stability and performance anything over that would probably be a waste if you're just gaming but it can make a performance Improvement in productivity tasks but again capacity is is going to be more important than these overclocking speeds for most creators so I would still make sure to get as much capacity as you can now when it comes to the GPU for an ultimate productivity and gaming machine there's really only one choice in my mind and that's the RTX 490 now the one I have here is the arow 490 OC from gigabyte this card is absolutely massive so it's definitely going to be a challenge to fit into a small foreign Factor case but you really can't argue the Aesthetics this thing looks super clean in my opinion the all- white and silver shroud surrounding the triple fan setup looks super nice the aluminum back plate is a clean all silver design as well which is also where you can find the Dual mode switch so that you can choose between the default overclock bios or the silent mode from the side though you can really see how thick this cooling system is it's got an insanely large heat sink making the card 75 mm thick which will take up almost four slots so that's definitely going to limit our case options but it will hopefully result in cooler temps and lower noise levels I've got to admit though that the aine of car cards from gigabyte is probably my favorite from any of the other partner cards especially if you're going for an all-white build like I've got here the reason I'm going with a 490 specifically though is for a few reasons the first is that Nvidia cards are generally better for creative and productivity tasks due to the Nvidia Cuda cor Adobe programs like Premiere are better optimized to work with Nvidia and 3D modeling performance is typically much better with Nvidia than AMD the second reason is that it comes with 24 gigs of vram which will be really useful when using blender and also when working with higher resolution video editing and lastly of course because this build is centered around productivity and gaming it's also the best gaming GPU available today no question now if you're a photographer or video editor that's working with 4K or lower resolution video then you really don't need more than 8 gigs of vram but if you're editing 6K or 8K video you'll want more than 10 gigs of vram and for 3D modeling the more the better in my opinion for those bigger renders okay for the case I decide on the meshroom S first because it can fit this massive GPU it has enough room for a 240 mm AIO so that we can properly cool the 7950 x3d I like the look and I find it really easy to work in I built in it for my downsizing video where I was really impressed how I could fit nearly everything from my 50 L pre-built into this 14.7 L case my biggest piece of criticism about this case is while I find the build quality of the frame to be excellent with a very smart design the mesh panels are not as rigid and they can bend very easily combine that with the stiff push pins and you're at high risk of bending a panel and while you can attempt to bend it back it's going to be pretty difficult to get it perfect in fact you might even make it worse so if you do get this case just be really careful the first time and try to pull as close to the actual pin as possible to avoid bending one otherwise the all mesh panels do look really good in my opinion especially in all white now before we can start putting the components in we need to get this case properly prepped for a four slot GPU so that means we need to shift that Center motherboard tray closer to the motherboard Side by by replacing the spacer with a shorter one that's in the accessories box then remove the remaining four screws on the side and bottom shifting it and then resecuring it we also need to move the GPU mounting struts to the second to lowest position so that we can allow for a 342 mm length GPU now because this GPU is so long I'm also going to need to add the case feet which you would have to pick up separately this will give us enough room under the case so that we can plug in our display port or HDMI all right now with the case prepped we can start by dropping in and securing the motherboard and now because we shifted that Center that does leave us with a lot less clearance for the pump lock on our aiio so that's going to reduce our options here in three slot mode we had 74 mm of clearance but now we only have 54 so I'm going with the Corsair h100i RGB Elite now I've used this one in the past and I was really happy with the cooling performance I believe that the pump lock is 55 mm in height so it will be pretty close but I think it should fit it's also got that allwhite aesthetic and minimal RGB we only have a ring around the the block which I think looks pretty tasteful and no RGB fans so we don't have to worry about all those extra wires now originally I was going to have the fans as intake on the front but I'll later figure out that the tubes from the radiator are going to get in the way of the GPU so I ended up having to put the fans on the inside with a grilled so that I can protect them from the cables something to keep in mind if you're running a larger card like I am now once the fans are installed with the mounting bracket we can lower the radiator into the case and then secure it and then attach the water block to the CPU now another reason I do like this AIO though is that it has a single breakout cable that connect from the water block to the fans the fan header USB and the power and while we're are plugging stuff in we might as well get our case cables in as well so that's the USB 3 USB type-c and the power button then we have the pre-installed Riser cable just conveniently hanging out right where we need it so we can plug that in as well now for the power I'm going with the Asus Rog Loki sfx power supply it's 850 WS which is the recommended spec for a 490 well at least for a Founders card the arrow card recommends 1,000 Watts but I think we'll be okay here it's 80 plus Platinum rated so that's the second highest for efficiency and it has these really flexible Almost White cables that make it easy to manage in the smaller cases including a dedicated 12volt high power connection it's a really good but admittedly overpriced power supply but come on it's a pretty damn good- looking one with the motherboard CPU and SATA power for the AIO plugged in there's only one piece left and that's the graphics card so this is a little bit of a pain in the ass to install but it's not too bad so first we just need to take off the top bar simple enough four screws on each side and then we can put that aside then after a few minutes of trying to figure this out it didn't look like any of the holes to mount the Riser cable aligned where I needed them to be so I just took the standoffs off and with the card out of the case I plugged it in along with the power cable and then lowered it into the case then just kind of slowly maneuvered it down into the position so that I can finally secure it to the case then the last thing to do there was to rescure that top bar and it was a perfect fit it's a little hard to show on camera but the bar actually isn't even touching the top of the GPU it just has a few millim of clearance and with that all we have to do is rescure the mesh panels and that's the build complete now I was a little worried about the CPU thermals with the fans being on the inside but as it turns out the temps are looking great even better than I was expecting testing Horizon forbidden West at high settings in 4k and I'm seeing mid to high 50s for both the C CPU and the GPU and this is with the mesh panels on noise levels are very reasonable as well without any whining or turbulence so let me know if you like these more productivity focused builds maybe I'll do more in the future and come up with a testing Suite to compare them if this all goes well so thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Devyn Johnston

Views: 141,802

Keywords: ITX build, Productivity computer, Devyn Johnson, 4090 graphics card, Devyn Johnston

Id: d2IHcpCWndc

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024