GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

IN AN IDEAL WORLD, we would rather be running an 11th-gen CPU in our new build, with a later Z590i motherboard. This would have certainly made more sense for our SSD. Regardless, our rig is still a more-than-capable fighting machine.

Being a Mini-ITX build, it certainly was more difficult and awkward than a typical ATX case. Fitting everything to the mobo was easy enough, but when it came to fitting parts inside the chassis, some niggling issues arose. The obvious lack of space meant that we had to take things more slowly. Every component we added decreased the available workspace, resulting in even more stress. This is where our long-necked magnetic screwdriver came in. Screwing down the mobo was not as daunting thanks to this tool. The cooler created most of the issues inside the case, largely due to the inflexible nature of the radiator tubes and having to fit said tubing into an already-cramped area. Don’t let these issues put you off your own Mini-ITX build, though, as they are fun PCs to own.

Benchmarking

For a mid-budget Mini-ITX build, the CPU and GPU are more than good enough for producing a reliable 60fps-plus experience at high graphical settings. Yes, at 4K the i510600K paired with the Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti can’t quite reach the frames we would love to see, but it only falls marginally short of the ideal gaming targets. Up against a very similar build with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, the Intel build just wins. However, as we said earlier, our Intel chip doesn’t support PCIe 4.0, making the AMD chip a better bet for high-speed data transfers.

Another area where our Intel build reigns over the AMD rig is the sequential read and write speeds. This has to be down to our Samsung 980 Pro SSD. Again, it is overkill, and unlike the CPU, this is future-proofed with PCIe 4.0 support. Luckily, the Samsung drive is PCIe 3.0