Mini ITX Gaming Build - Intel Core i5-4670K / GTX 780 Ti / Corsair 250D

Hi everybody, this is Philip from PCPartPicker. Now we've got a little bit different build today. We've got a small form factor system, we're using the new Corsair 250D. We've done everything from 3-way Titan builds and ATX to $500 budget systems, but we haven't done a small form factor build yet. Originally we were going to go for a $700 budget, we were going to try to build a steam box around that price point, but when we saw the 250D we thought this is a perfect opportunity to see how much performance we can put into such a small form factor. So we're going to postpone the $700 budget build to the next system, and this time we're going to focus on something a little bit more expensive. So what we have is we have a Core i5-4670K CPU, we're pairing that with a GeForce GTX 780Ti. Now we're putting all that in an ASRock Z87E ITX motherboard, we're going to be cooling the CPU with an H100i. We looked at the H105 but it actually doesn't fit in this case, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. Powering is a 550W power supply. And then for the storage we have kind of a combo, we have an SSD and a platter-based hard drive. So we've got a 128GB A40 EVO from Samsung, that's our SSD. And then our platter drive, we're going to have a 1TB platter drive, you can put anything you want in there really. But for this particular system we have a 1TB already, so we're going to take advantage of that. So let's go ahead and get started. So here we have the Corsair 250D Mini ITX case, Corsair kindly provided this to us. On the front, we have the front panel cover that removes, it exposes the dust filter. Behind the dust filter is a 140mm fan, now you can replace that with either a 120 or a 200mm fan. There's plenty of space behind it to install a radiator if you wanted to do water cooling or another close-up coolant. On the top of the case we have a removable panel, there's a window on it, it gives us a good view down into the interior of the case. The motherboard tray is horizontally oriented, then there's an optical drive bay if we want to use that. In this particular build we're not going to be taking advantage of it. The power supply can fit in the back, obviously there's plenty of depth in this case so you can use pretty beefy power supplies if need be. On the side of the case there's a 120mm fan, now there's room for a 240mm radiator, not a lot of depth there but we can fit the H100i. Now if we remove this panel we get access to the side of the case where we have very good access to the motherboard tray. On the other side we remove the panel and we'll get access to the 240mm radiator. So obviously that's going to fit right here. We have the 120mm fan that we're going to remove here in just a second. On the bottom you can see that there's the drive bays, so we have two 2.5 inch SSDs and we're going to remove this panel to take care of those caddies, to get them out of the case because the hardware for the case, the screws and whatnot, are in one of the caddies here. So this one here, the 3.5 inch caddy, remove that, remove the other one. This will give us the screws and some wire ties and that sort of thing that comes with the case. Now we have the 120mm fan, if we're going to install the radiator we need to remove this one. There's also a bracket along the bottom that you can see that it's mounted to. That's removable and we're going to take advantage of that in just a little bit to install the radiator. Now we're going to install the CPU into the motherboard. We have an i5-4670K. We're going to install that in our Z87E ITX motherboard. So first let's take everything out. We have our back panel IO cover, our WiFi antenna, and we have some various manuals and so forth. We have four SATA cables, which is quite a few for an ITX case, I was really surprised by that. The motherboard itself actually has six SATA connectors on board, which is pretty high for an ITX case. So to install the CPU, we're going to remove the latch, take the CPU out of the packaging. The CPU has two little indentions on the side that guarantees the proper orientation into the socket. So let's gently set that in place, we'll close the latch, and then flip the lever back in and lock it into place. Now let's unbox the H100i closed loop cooler. We're taking this out of the box now because we need to prepare the motherboard to mount the cooler before we stick it in the case. So inside the H100i we have the two fans, 120mm apiece. Then we have the radiator and the CPU block that's got the tubing connecting the two. It's all in one piece. It's a sealed system so you never have to replace the fluid that's inside. Then we have the hardware that goes with it. So the different connectors and the mounting brackets. So we're going to use one of those mounting brackets for the motherboard. Then also we have the screws. In this particular case it looks like our bag came open so some of the screws actually fell into the little cardboard box here so we're just going to dump those out into the box. And while we're at it, just go ahead and dump the remaining hardware in there as well. So the radiator is really easy to dent so be careful about that. The other thing is the block has the thermal paste pre-applied. There's that plastic cover to protect you from accidentally touching it. However, it's real easy for that cover to fall off so what I've started doing is taking a piece of electrical tape and just taping the cover on. That way when you go to install the radiator into the case and that block is kind of moving around you don't have to worry about it falling off. Now let's install the bracket for the CPU cooler. So we have two different types of standoffs. One of those is for AM style sockets, AM3, FM2. The other side is for the Intel-based. So we're going to use the longer standoff and that's for the Intel-based system. So flip the motherboard over, then we install the bracket. It's got the, each side you have to adjust it just slightly so that the shafts fit through the screw holes on the motherboard and then what we'll do is we'll take the standoffs and we'll screw the standoffs into the backplate. Now there is a little bit of give so it's not going to be a super tight fit. The bracket can move around just a little bit once we finish putting in all the standoffs. Now let's install the backplate for the I.O. Put that in, be really careful, it's pretty sharp, especially this particular one was sharper than most that I've dealt with in the recent past. Now we're going to put the motherboard in, but one thing that we ran into was when we went to put the motherboard in, it didn't actually quite fit and the reason why was that the Wi-Fi antenna, there's two prongs that stick out for the Wi-Fi antenna. So the backplate, we actually had to remove those first. So those are in the way. We'll just take the motherboard out, use a screwdriver basically to just push those little pins out, or those little plugs. So we'll get rid of those. Now we'll try it again with the motherboard. With those pieces removed, now the motherboard fits right in and we'll go ahead and screw it in. Now we're only going to screw in the back two screws and this will make a little bit more sense later but basically what we're going to do is we're going to have to run a cable underneath the motherboard later on and so because of that we're only going to use the back two screws. Now we're going to attach the bracket to the power supply. This is for the case so that when we slide it in, that bracket will then latch onto the case with thumb screws. But for this particular build, what we're going to do is hook up the PCIe and the SATA power connectors before we put it into the case. Now the reason we're doing that is because the case is pretty small, so we want to do the cable management as we go and also once we slide the power supply into the case, it's going to be a little bit of a tight fit in there so it's kind of hard to reach around and hook up those connectors once it's already in the case. So once they're all connected, then we'll go and slide the power supply into the case and then of course take the thumb screws and lock the power supply into place. We will mount the H100i onto the side and place it right here. We're actually going to insert it up into the case. To do that, we're going to remove that bottom bracket that has two screws that come off and then it will lift off from the case. With that bracket piece removed, now we'll prepare the H100i for that mount. So we put it on top of the power supply box so that the tubing from the radiator doesn't rest on the desk. It makes it kind of awkward to handle the fans. Now the fans themselves, they have orientation on them. So there's a rotation and then there's an airflow orientation. Replacing those so that the airflow will go through the radiator into the case. So we have a positive pressure case. Now we attach the bracket onto the radiator. Before we put the radiator in, we want to hook up the power connectors. So we have the 24 pin. We also have those two screws that we left out. We're going to wire the cabling underneath that I was talking about earlier. We also have some of the IO connectors and we'll get to those as well. So we have the 24 pin power connector. Then we have the 8 pin power connector for the CPU. Finally we have our SATA connectors. We want to go ahead and hook up the hard drives and install them into the case first before things get a little bit tight. Now the SATA connectors, we can put them in. They're not going to interfere with the video card because the video card is actually going to go into the slot and it's going to fall a little bit further down as opposed to overlapping on top of the SATA connectors. Now we'll install the hard drives into the caddies. So the caddies have the pins in them so basically it's a screw-less design. It makes it really easy to get the SSD and the hard drives in. Next we'll install these into the case. The SSD will go into one of the top slots. The flighter drive will go a little bit further. But before we do that I'm going to wire in the power connectors or run the wires through the case so that we can connect them on this side. Now in hindsight I probably would have done things a little bit differently. However at the time I felt like this was the best way to go. We went ahead and connected them up but after installing them it looked like there was actually plenty of room to reach them from the other side. So if I had to do it again I'd probably recommend going ahead and sliding the drives into the case first and then wiring them up from the other side. As it is right now with the two drives and trying to hook them up to the same power connector it was just a little bit awkward to get that all hooked up and slid in at the same time. So you can see this is the part where it's a little bit awkward. It would have been easier to wire it up separately later but we're going to tidy up some of the cables. As I mentioned we're going to do the cable management as we go. So we have some of the zip ties we're going to attach the cables to the case. There's anchor points throughout the case to attach the wire ties makes it really convenient. They just happen to be all in the right spots. It's almost like they planned it in advance. We want to get these static connectors out of the way. We're also going to have a number of the front panel connectors like the HD Auto here. So we'll wire that up. But then that's going to overlap where the video card goes and so we want to get that out of the way. So there are anchor points right there right on top of the power supply that make it really easy to make sure that that doesn't interfere with the video card in any way. Of course we'll clean those up. Now we have the front panel connectors for the reset switch, for the power switch, the hard drive LED and the power LED. Now of course for the switches they don't have polarity but for the LEDs for the power LED and the hard drive LED they do have polarity. Typically what you want to do is you want to find the wire that has the white stripe on it and hook that up to the positive lead. However if in doubt just check the manual for the case. Now the USB 3 connector and we'll bundle all those up and keep them nice and tidy and just doing wire management as we go. There's an anchor point on the front of the case so we'll take those front panel switches and LEDs and we're going to wire those up to that just to keep all those tiny little wires from kind of hanging around in the middle of the case. This is what it looks like. It's not perfect. It could be a little bit cleaner but it's good enough for now. What we can always do later on is if there's things that we discover in the process of hooking everything up that we could have organized the cables a little bit better then we can always come back and take the build apart and redo the cabling. Now it's time to get ready to install the radiator. Now the CPU block it has the thermal paste pre-applied so you don't need to apply any additional. We have the connector for the fans. So the fans are actually powered from the block itself. That connector hooks up to two fan headers. Those fan headers then connect to the 120mm fans that are on the radiator itself. We have a USB plug. So that is the cord that we're going to run underneath the motherboard and we'll show you that in just a second. That's the whole reason why we left the two screws on the back of the motherboard off. So there's a fan header right there. That's the CPU fan header. We're using that. There's only one wire there and the reason why there's only one wire is because really what we're looking for is the tachometer reading. Go ahead and mount this and there are four fairly large nuts that are going to go onto the threaded posts. Now we have the USB connector. So this USB wire, in the course of building this what we discovered was that the USB wire was actually too short to cleanly route around the motherboard tray and we didn't want to go over the top because we felt that that would be just a little bit unclean and a little bit ugly. So instead I routed it underneath the motherboard and then that's when I screwed in the two screws. So with it routing over the top now we plug it into the USB header on the motherboard itself. We'll use the anchor points that we used for the HD audio to also anchor that USB cable and then we'll use the anchor point on the other side to keep that clean too. Even though it's routed underneath the motherboard we can still keep that cable somewhat organized. Now it's time to install the radiator. This is a little bit tricky. The fit is kind of tight. The first thing we want to do is to make sure that we wire up the fans because once we get the radiator in place it's going to be really hard to reach those cables. So we have the two fan connectors and then we also have the SATA power connector. So even though it's not a hard drive it still has a SATA power connector. That's how the radiator, the pump itself and the fans are going to get the power to run. And then once all of that is hooked up now we'll install the radiator. So we're going to kind of sit it at an angle and then lift it into place. The only tricky part here is the tubing is a little bit stiff. So it takes a little bit of work to get it in. It's a tight fit but it does fit. Once it's in now we can take that bracket that we installed onto the radiator and slide it into place. Once that's in place then we can put the screws in to latch it in there. So now we screw in the top of the radiator. Alright so this is the view so far. Somewhat clean. Could be a little bit better again but good enough for now. We'll install the RAM. One side of the RAM slot is fixed. The top side can be opened up. But the nice thing about it is that as you put pressure on the RAM the top side will latch into place. Now we'll go ahead and clean up the various wires that we have coming from the radiator for the fans and for the power connector, that SATA power connector. We just want to tidy it up just a little bit and kind of get it out of the way so it won't be a total rat's nest on the bottom. Now we're going to get ready to install the video card. So we'll remove the two expansion slot covers. Our video card is a GTX 780 Ti. Fitting it into the case generally wouldn't be that bad except for there's kind of an interference between the motherboard and the bracket where the connectors are for the video card. So right at the expansion slot. But it's not too hard. You can work it in. Now we'll screw that into place and finally wire in the power connectors. So we have two power connectors, an 8-pin and a 6-pin. First one, we'll wire in the 6-pin. This particular power supply has essentially two 6-plus-2 connectors. So we're going to have a 2-pin connector kind of dangling off to the side. We'll just tuck that in behind the other cables here in just a second to get that out of the way. So final look. We have our cables. Everything looks moderately clean. We have our radiator. Now one of the things that's nice about this case is that even though we've got a 240mm radiator and a video card, we still have plenty of room. If we wanted to, we could install the 5.25 optical drive. So that bracket still fits if we wanted to use it. However, we're not going to use an optical drive so I'm going to go ahead and take it back out. It's there if you need it. Okay, so now we're going to go ahead and put the fan, the dust filter on, we'll put the front panels on, the side panels on. I just kind of want to reflect a little bit on this particular build. I'd say that the Mini-ITX form factor is definitely more challenging. The space constraints make it hard to organize and plan the build, the process of it. It also makes it a little bit more challenging to do the cable management. However, this particular case, the 250D that Corsair provided for us, I really, really like it. It's made it very straightforward for us to install full-length video cards. It supports that. It supports a full-length ATX power supply. The 140mm fan in the front is great for cooling the video card and the rest of the system. The 240mm radiator on the side, the depth could be a little bit greater there because we're limited. We tried to install an H105 but it actually doesn't have the depth to fit it. But overall, I'd say this is a great case. If you're looking to fit a lot of performance in a small form factor, definitely check it out. And then last but not least, let's remove the protective plastic from the window and then we're done. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you will check us out at PCPartPicker.com.