Masterclass: Put together a LAN Party PC
Build a gaming PC you can take to a friend’s place.
Do you miss LAN parties? We do. The steady erosion of split-screen multiplayer and improvements to online play mean that the tradition of gathering at your best friend’s house, setting up bulky CRT monitors, and connecting cables all over the place so that you could all play Quake II together is a distant memory .
Well, the LAN party isn’t dead just yet – at least, not if we’ve got anything to say about it. We’ve got a challenge for you: Grab a few friends and a few drinks, and set up as many systems as you can in one room for a proper old-fashioned game night. So, this month, we’re going to be building a compact PC designed to be taken over to a friend’s place for a spot of co-op (or competitive) gaming.
This gave us a few preordained necessities to work around.
An ITX form factor motherboard was basically mandatory, squeezed inside a small case. However, we also needed a decent graphics solution; integrated graphics on an APU simply wouldn’t cut it here, so a discrete GPU was needed. Alongside all this, we also needed a decent amount of memory and an SSD – hard drives are too bulky for compact builds.
The other element we wanted to capture was portability. No, this won’t be a system you can break out on the bus, but it needed to be light enough to carry around easily and compact enough to fit comfortably in the trunk of a small car. Minimal internal cabling and a low-profile CPU cooler were also preferable features, and we knew there had to be at least some RGB lighting – this is a gaming PC, after all.
“We’ve got a challenge for you: Grab a few friends and a few drinks, and set up as many systems as you can in one room for a proper old-fashioned game night”.
COUCH COMPONENTS
Our compact case was an easy choice: Cooler Master’s MasterCase H100. It’s one of the best ITX cases we’d seen in ages, and guess what – it comes with a carry handle on top, too. It was a no-brainer.
The rest of our list was more complex. We needed an ITX motherboard, so reached out to Asus for a ROG Strix B450-I Gaming. A recent price drop made this high-quality board more affordable, so we couldn’t say no. It’s worth noting that new B450 boards purchased from Asus now come pre-flashed, making them compatible with second and third-gen Ryzen CPUs straight out of the box.
We’re using the Ryzen 7 2700; a last-gen chip, but it remains a solid eight-core CPU. We’re not using a third-gen Ryzen chip to keep the price down. B450 chipset boards don’t support PCIe 4.0, so we wouldn’t be able to take advantage of an ultra-speedy fourth-gen M.2 SSD anyway. It had to be M.2, though, rather than a larger SATA SSD – being able to install the drive directly to the motherboard means one less cable getting in the way. With that in mind, we selected XPG’s 512GB Gammix S10 SSD.
We’re using the stock cooler that comes with the CPU, the AMD Wraith Spire. Fortunately for us, it just falls below the maximum CPU cooler clearance for this case. The reason for the minimal cooler clearance is simple: In order to save space, the MasterCase H100 requires you to mount your PSU vertically alongside the motherboard, at the top-rear of the case.
Our PSU is Fractal Design’s excellent Ion+ 560P, a fully modular power supply for just 100 bucks. We needed a small GPU, too, so we’ve gone for Gigabyte’s GTX 1660 Ti XLR8, a single-fan factory overclocked model of Nvidia’s excellent mid-range GPU. Lastly, we’ve got 16GB of Micron’s 2,400MHz Ballistix Sport RAM.
2 SMALL PACKAGES
Start by stripping down the case. Only one side panel can be removed from the MasterCase H100, so take that off and set it aside. You can remove the plastic front cover – it pops off easily – but there’s no need. You do, however, need to remove the two expansion card blanking plates and the mounting bracket for the PSU at the rear. To prep it for later, remove the PSU block from its box and screw the bracket on to it, using four of the larger screws from the H100’s accessory bag. Keep this bag handy; it also has cable ties and the screws you need to secure the mobo (we aren’t using the included RGB controller, though). Lastly, make sure the front I/O cables are neatly secured to one side, so they don’t get in the way when it’s time to install the motherboard.
2 SHIELD BEARER
Begin this build proper with motherboard assembly. Start with the M.2 drive; the Gammix S10 comes with its own heatsink attached, so rather than remove that, we’ll simply go without the heat shield that comes on the motherboard. Unscrew it at both ends (being sure to store the screws in the B450-I’s box), and slot the SSD into the M.2 port. Push the drive down and screw it into place using the tiny silver screw – it should be situated in the stand-off, but if not, you’ll find it by itself in a tiny bag in the motherboard box. With the drive in place, move on to the memory. This is simple: Release the clasps at one end of the DIMM slots, then push each stick down until it clicks into place at both ends. Don’t be afraid to apply a little force; you’ll know when the sticks are secure.
3 CONCEALED COOLING
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that fitting the cooler once the motherboard is inside the case is easier. It isn’t. Raise the retention arm and slot the CPU into the socket, lining up the triangle markers in one corner, then lower the arm to secure it. With that done, you’ll likely need to remove the plastic brackets from either side of the socket; we only need the metal backplate to install this cooler. Once the plastic parts are unscrewed, deposit a small glob of thermal paste on the CPU and lower the Wraith Prism on to it, lining up the four screws with the holes in the mobo. Screw it to the backplate until it’s secure, then plug it into the CPU fan header on the board. You can unplug the RGB cable; you won’t be able to see the small light ring once the PSU is fitted, anyway.
5 GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
We had a few ideas for which GPU should go in this build. Our original plan was to use AMD’s RX 5500 XT, but our unit proved too large for the case. So, we delved back into the storeroom to examine our options. First up was a Gigabyte GTX 1050; a twin-fan affair that was small enough, but not as powerful as we’d like. We settled on the GTX 1660 Ti, also from Gigabyte, with one larger fan. Before fitting it, though, connect all the front I/O cables to the motherboard, the small form factor means these can be awkward, especially the tiny button control cables. Once these are all in place, lower the GPU carefully into the case and push it into the PCIe slot until it locks into place, then screw it down at the rear of the case using the two screws you removed from the blanking plates earlier.
4 MOUNT AND MADE
Let’s mount that motherboard. This can be a somewhat awkward process thanks to the cramped interior of the case, so get everything set up first. You need four of the small motherboard screws from the case accessories bag, as well as the rear I/O shield that came with the board. Slot that into place on the back of the case, then carefully lower the motherboard into position, ensuring that it lines up properly with the holes in the I/O shield. You may need to hold the board in place to get the first screw in, as the back of the shield is squishy and pushes the board off its stand-offs if you release it. Focus on the two screws closest to the shield first, and the other two should come into place.
6 HIGH POWER
Lastly, the power supply. Due to the limited space, the best approach is to plug in the cables first – the large ATX cable, CPU power cable, and PCIe cable for the graphics card – and feed them out through the back of the case. Connect them to the PSU, then turn the case on its front (with the front cover on if you removed it) and lower the PSU into the slot so the fan is facing out from the case. Screw it down, then it’s time for cable management. The large exposed fan means that loose cables need to be kept out of the way, so we recommend using cable ties to bundle the power and I/O cables separately. There are few points to anchor cable bundles to in this case, but the drilled slots in the metal frame that mounts the case fan can be used, if you snip off any excess cable tie length.
Ready To (LAN) Party
There were upsides and downsides to this build. We were satisfied with the GPU’s performance at 1080p, as it comfortably handled our gaming benchmarks and the single fan kept it cool. In fact, this build ran cold throughout our testing; the case fan is brilliant, keeping the whole motherboard chilled. The CPU idled below 30 C, and even heavy stresstesting barely saw temperatures rise much higher than 60 C.
At these low temperatures, the Ryzen 7 2700 performed well, making good use of its 16 threads. We don’t overclock our CPUs for benchmarking, but the 2700 definitely has the headroom. Ryzen Master’s auto-overclocking options are useful if you prefer not to meddle with the BIOS. Perhaps we should’ve selected a third-gen Ryzen chip, but we’re happy with the numbers.
Had we done that, it would have driven the price up significantly. We’d have wanted an X570 motherboard, and the selection of ITX boards with that chipset is limited, plus the price would’ve risen by close to a hundred bucks. We would be able to use a PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD, however, and the Gammix S10 drive was the main weak point of this build.
While the SSD was well priced and outperformed any SATA III drive we could have used, the numbers were lower than we’d hoped for. A good M.2 SSD should be able to hit at least 3,000MB/s read speeds, but the S10 peaked below 2,000MB/s across multiple tests. In practical terms, though, this shouldn’t be much of a problem for a gaming build; M.2 drives are so much faster than HDDs that games should load quickly anyway. The difference between the S10 and a faster SSD probably means load times of two seconds instead of one in many games.
Power-wise, we might have wanted a less powerful PSU. The Ion+ is good, but 560W is more than we need. However, a fully modular supply was necessary due to the case, and it’s hard to find a good one under $200. Cable management was hard enough already; introducing excess cables from a non-modular PSU would be a nightmare.
Connectivity-wise, both the motherboard and GPU work well. Our LAN-party-inspired choices mean this rig can be hooked up to a monitor or TV via DisplayPort, HDMI, or DVI ports. The lack of USB-C ports is a shame, but between the front and rear I/Os there are eight USB-A ports, so plugging in multiple controllers for a spot of couch gaming is an option, too. There are a few things we’d change if we built this PC again, but we’re reasonably happy with how it turned out.