I often find myself taking my gaming PC to different places, be it for LAN party with friends or some other reason. As Gaming PC’s are usually pretty big, carrying it around can be quite annoying. To counteract that problem i will use SFF ideology or Small Form Factor idea, which in short means small sized PC. With A Small Form Factor PC Guide I will document my own journey though choosing suitable components to build a SFF Gaming PC.
Building A Small Form Factor PC
I will divide the whole process into separate steps. There are variables however that affect the order of these steps. Small Form Factor PC has its pros and cons.
PROS:
- small size
- weight
CONS:
- cooling capabilities
- size limitations for the components
For My start I have one component from my old pc, that I am planning to use in the new build and this is my current GPU or graphics card. I currently have ZOTAC RTX 3080Ti AMP Holo 12GB and with that I will bring out first very important variable. The length of the GPU that for me is 317.8mm. I can probably fit this GPU to many SFF Cases, but that is a thing i must check before I start.
In case you are wondering what the different terms I use mean, you can check out my post series Beginners Guide to Computer Hardware, that hopefully explains what is what exactly.
So my logical steps order would be something like this:
- SFF computer case that fits my GPU
- CPU – Intel or AMD
- Motherboard that supports the chosen CPU
- CPU cooler that fits into the Case with the GPU
- PSU or power supply that is enough for the GPU and fits into the Case
- RAM that is supported by the CPU and Motherboard
- SSD’s that are supported by the motherboard
I will write a new post about each step as i go, so stay tuned…