W

henit comestobuyingdecisionsandlayouts,

mini-ITXPCsrequirefarmoreconsiderationin

termsofhardwarethanlargerformfactors.

Thereareseveralreasonsforthis,butit stems

fromthehugevarietyofcasesonoffer.Asyoucanseeinthis

month’sLabstest(seep46) ofmini-ITXcases,theinternal

layoutsdifferwildly.Somehaveampleroomforwater-

coolingsystems,othersarelimitedto120mmall-in-one

liquidcoolers.Also,CPUcoolerheightlimitationscanvary

frombelow100mmtocloseto200mm.Somemini-ITX

caseshaveplentifuloptionsforstoragedrives,whileothers

arelimitedtoa singleharddisk.

Youneedtoaskyourselfwhatyou’relookingtogetfrom

a mini-ITXPC.IsyourgoaltominimiseyourPC’sfootprint

tosavedeskspace?Maybeyou’relookingforsomething

smallerandmorecompacttotaketoLANpartiesor

university.A lotofpeoplesimplyenjoythechallengesof

mixingandmatchinghardware,andfindATXsystemsand

theirflexibilityratherboring,whileothersmightbebuildinga

secondPCforgamingandwebbrowsing,leavingtheirlarger

systemfreeforworksuchaseditingandrendering.

FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION

BUILD A

PC

Finally, if you just have a single PCI-E device and a few storage

drives, then do you need that hulking great ATX case?

For all that’s great about mini-ITX PCs, there are, of

course, some potential downsides. Mini-ITX motherboards

only offer a single PCI-E slot, which you’ll likely want to

use for a graphics card, so you can’t use an internal sound

card or capture card. Many mini-ITX boards have fewer

than four fan headers too, meaning you’ll likely need to use

splitter cables for more fans. They’re also limited to two

memory slots so you can’t drop in another kit to double your

capacity in a future upgrade. Finally, it can be tricky to build

a mini-ITX PC. However, it only takes a day to build your PC,

and you’ll benefit from your tiny PC for years. Plus, all of

the cases in our Labs test were fairly simple to deal with.

Over the next few pages, we’ll be building a powerful

mini-ITX PC using hardware such as AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X,

a PCI-E 4 SSD and Nvidia RTX 2070 Super graphics card,

proving that mini PCs can be every bit as fast as an ATX

system. We’ll also look at each component choice in detail, so

you can head out to etailers with your wallet, forearmed with

the information you need to build your perfect mini-ITX PC.

Antony Leather shows you how to

build a small, but incredibly powerful

PC for games and content creation