Make a furiously fast Core i5 desktop PC

Alex Campbell reckons it’s time to prove you can get some impressive performance from a locked quad-core.

If there’s one thing we love to have in a build, it’s an unlocked CPU. While we don’t always overclock our published builds, it’s hard to overstate the value that some get from overclocking. There’s the ‘free’ upgrade, the satisfaction of customising and tweaking something yourself, and the thrill of pushing a CPU to its limit.

But not everyone needs to overclock. Most people will never enter the UEFI BIOS, let alone risk voiding a warranty on a part that costs $250 or more. There’s another price of overclocking, too. K-model CPUs are more expensive than their locked counterparts. For a first-time builder or someone on a budget, it’s difficult to justify buying a K-model CPU when a locked model does most of the stuff you need it to do. That’s not to say you can’t get great performance from a locked CPU.

In this build, we set out to assemble a machine that called upon the Core i5-6500, a locked quad-core that’s fairly inexpensive. We found that this CPU — the Skylake successor to the Haswell i5-4570 — can still get the job done.

ALL IN ON GRAPHICS

One of the things we wanted to test in this build was how a high-end GPU would perform with the humble Core i5-6500. We picked the ASUS R9 Fury Strix to push pixels in this build, and complemented the system with 8GB of DDR4 RAM.

We installed our CPU, GPU, and RAM on to an EVGA Z170 Stinger mini-ITX motherboard. The Stinger was one of the first Skylake motherboards we got our hands on, but it’s been spending its days on a shelf in the office. We took it from its hiding spot and pressed it into service.

For storage, we turned to one of our favourite SSDs: the 250GB Samsung 850 Evo. With impressive speed and a decent price, the 250GB Evo really is a great base for any PC. This particular SSD was the 2.5-inch model, which we’ve been trying to wean ourselves away from, opting instead for the M.2 form factor. Unfortunately, not every motherboard supports M.2 — while the Stinger does support M.2, it only has room for the shortest of M.2 cards, which we feel is aimed at Wi-Fi expandability, rather than storage.

We put all of these parts into NZXT’s new Manta mini-ITX case, which we reviewed in APC 427 (see page 27).

1 BASIC COOLING

One of the bad things about getting a K-model Skylake CPU is that you’re forced to buy a cooler of some sort. The Core i56600K and the i7- 6700K both come without heatsinks or fans in the box, so the onus is on the builder to make sure the chips don’t overheat. The Core i5- 6500 doesn’t have that problem. Intel’s stock heatsinks and fans are made by Foxconn (if you look closely, you can see the parts stamped with Foxconn’s name). They’re far from sexy, but they’re e ective, low pro le and don’t consume much power. And if you’re building a PC with a locked CPU, there’s really no compelling reason to go out and spend money on a bigger heatsink. Using the stock heatsink and fan also saves time, because installation takes all of about 15 seconds, provided everything is done correctly.

2 ROOM FOR THE BIG GUYS

The ASUS R9 Fury Strix is a big card, and using it in a mini-ITX build can sound counter-intuitive. The typical logic that a mini-ITX build means using a small, underpowered card didn’t hold true with the Manta. The front of the Manta actually had plenty of room to spare, which gives us con dence that using a big card such as the Fury Strix with a thick radiator wouldn’t pose much of a problem. The front of the Manta comes o easily, allowing for easy fan and radiator mounting. The two fans you see here come pre-installed, which o ers plenty of airflow for the Fury and our air-cooled CPU. It’s a good thing, too, because the video card sits just above a partition for the PSU and hard drives. Without plenty of cool air being forced over the card, pulling cool air in from that relatively tight space could be a little tougher.

3 RUNNING CABLES

If there’s one thing that will frustrate a builder in a mini-ITX system, it’s the location of SATA and USB 3.0 connectors. When connecting the cables for this rig, we were forced to run them over the top of the RAM DIMMs. While this isn’t a big deal, having a clean-looking motherboard compartment is half the reason people buy cases with windows. They don’t want to see clutter; they want to see their components in all their glory. We had to curb our obsessive-compulsive need for a totally clean presentation for the sake of functionality. After all, the machine has to boot, right? And two little cables are far from the worst o enses when it comes to presentation. It’s also worth noting in this photo that the Fury Strix’s backplate looks quite nice in this case, and serves to help camou age the cables slightly.

5 NOT SUCH AN UGLY SIDE

Astonishingly, the Manta accommodates cabling quite well, without the need for excessive tie-downs. If you look closely, you might notice that our big, fat power cables aren’t actually tied down to anything. Instead, they sit in a channel that’s beveled out into the motherboard compartment. Holes on either side of the channel o er access to the motherboard, while big cables have a roomy place to call home. The backplate you see actually came from a Gigabyte H170 board. The Z170 board came with a backplate that had arms reaching out to each of the CPU cooler’s mounting holes, with a threaded screw hole near the tip of each arm. The stock cooler’s prongs couldn’t be tted into the threaded holes, so we had to go with another backplate.

4 HATS OFF

We already mentioned that the Manta has plenty of room up front for a radiator and fans, but it would be a shame to leave out what the Manta o ers up top. The top of the case is easily removed with a few round tabs found inside. It was only after we tried putting the top back on that we realised that taking o the front panel makes removing the top much, much easier. The top panel has enough space to accommodate a radiator like that found on the Kraken X61. It looks like there’s room to add fans, too. Even if your radiator and fan combo is too big, you can always try hanging the radiator below the bracket and mounting the fans on top (or vice versa). One thing we noticed here was the lack of a dust screen. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and we’re forced to wonder where one would be added if it could have one. But having a screen is almost always preferable to not having one.

6 STEALTHY STORAGE

The Samsung 850 Evo we used for storage seems to disappear against the black interior of the Manta. We’re just ne with this, because it o ers a clean look and doesn’t draw attention to itself right away. Upon casual inspection, one could wonder whether the system has storage at all. The Manta has two mounts for 2.5-inch drives, which sit ush against the panel that’s adjacent to the motherboard tray. Using a ush mounting position not only shows o the drives, but allows for an unobstructed path for air (or water tubing) to reach the motherboard. If builders are looking for a place for a 3.5-inch HDD, the hard drive mount points are located under the PSU compartment partition.