Building the Best $2000 Mini-ITX Gaming PC Possible

we're not wasting any time we're getting right  to it with our monthly build for December 2023 because we're running out of time to build  systems this year and we have actually two planned - this one of course which is going to  be a giveaway system to help promote our charity live stream December 9th, Saturday, Kyle and I  will be live streaming games entertainment and more to help support Children's Miracle Network  hospitals via extra life so join us if you're available and you might be the

lucky winner of  this system right here which is based on the AMD radon RX 7900 XD graphics card and the ryzen  7800 x3d CPU the best CPU for gaming right now excellent today's video is brought to you by  the Tower 200 series cases from thermal take featuring a vertical Tower design with a 90°  rotated motherboard and two pre-installed ct40 fans the Tower 200 can support huge gpus including  the RTX 490 without compromising airflow thanks to an abundance of filtered V ventilation panels  and it

also supports 280 mm aiio standard size psus and a sold separately 3.9 in LCD panel kit  to personalize your rig or display useful system stats it's available in black snow or several  unique shades of green so for more on thermal takes the Tower 200 series cases click the sponsor  Link in the video description before we go over the parts I'll be working with today I want to say  a huge thank you to AMD for providing the RX 7900 XT graphics card as well as an RX 7700 XT graphics  card that one w

ill also will be given away during our charity live stream we have lots of prizes  lined up and also a huge thank you to gigabyte for providing the motherboard for today's build  now with all my monthly builds I try to pitch something that's practical for anyone who might  be considering building a gaming PC at home and the Practical pitch for this system right here  is that for roughly the price of an RTX 490 which have gone up in price recently it's really hard to  find one for less than $2,00

0 these day these days you can build this entire system so to contrast  the build of the month for October which was a $1,200 bang for the buck sort of the build that I  would recommend for most people right now as well as the build of the month for November which was  a $700 PC which is starting out with much more of a budget going with the last generation am4  platform this build does feature the best of the best in at least a few categories specifically the  CPU with the 7800 x3d this is pret

ty much the best CPU purely for gaming right now we're building  on the am5 platform which if you look at the mainstream platforms right out right now from AMD  and Intel does have the most future proofness for it we are expecting at least one future generation  of CPUs to launch on this platform from AMD if not more than that they did have really really long  lifespan and support for their am4 platform and we're differentiating this build by going small  we're going with a miniitx build using T

he Cooler Master nr200p Max computer case which includes  not only the case but also the power supply and the CPU Cooler let's go over the rest of the parts  so once again the CPU being the 7800 x3d one of the best CPUs for gaming out there some would  call it the best CPU and that is debatable of course like with many PC hardware parts depending  on how you're testing it you can get uh you know comparable performance from some other CPUs that  are out there on the market but one of the nice thi

ngs about it being an 8 core CPU versus some  of the higher core count CPUs is that it's going to have a little bit more comfortable time uh  keeping itself cool in a small form factor build and for our motherboard for this small form factor  build we have the b650 I orus Ultra a v650 chipset motherboard from gigabytes for the am5 sockets am  5 platform of course with many ITX motherboards you're losing quite a bit of space by going small  form factor but they have packed a lot onto this motherb

oard including a couple dim slots even  even got that USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel header as well as a couple m.2 slots for our storage  our storage is going to be yet again the Acer fa100 2 tbte nvme SSD this one's a bargain for  about 85 or $9 right now so excellent price per gigabyte with a lot of the Gen 3 drives that are  out there right now and you're still going to get up to about 3,300 megabytes per second reads and  2700 megabytes per second rates for memory for a build in this range I'd r

ecommend a 32 GB kits  at 2x 16 gigs you're going to want to go with ddr5 of course since that's the standard for this  platform and there is less expensive memory out there than the Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB ddr5  kit that I have here so you will find that that is what I have Linked In the description now there's  nothing necessarily wrong with this kit it's just a bit more expensive than some of the other  ones that are out there this is made for aim so it does have Expo settings that you

can plug  in to get your memory running at the right speed and other than the capacity being 32 GB I also  wanted a ddr5 6000 speed kit at least which this one does match and it even has quite tight timings  at cl30 and then there's the case and this is not just the case the nr200p is available as just the  case by itself and actually that's easier to find at this point the nr200p max includes the case  an 850 W 80 plus gold rated power supply as well as an all all in one liquid CPU Cooler and

again  this is not a new case it's been out for a while there have been quite a few builds done in it but  I've never built in it and when I was looking for a suitable case for Min ITX build that I could  also ship to someone after we give this system away uh this one fit the bill and I was able to  pick it up on Amazon nice things about this case other than the included power supply and allinone  liquid cooler are its compatibility with large gpus and the uh Radeon RX 7900 XT can absolutely  be

a very large sizable GPU we're dealing with the powercolor hellhound version here and this is  typically among the lower priced RX 7900 XTS that are out there on the market these have gotten down  to the low $700 range I think this one's going for about $740 or $750 right now there have been Black  Friday cyber monday deals lots of holiday pricing going on but for a video card with a 20 gig vram  buffer and a lot of performance uh that's actually a really really solid price so for anyone who's 

looking to build a system under $2,000 the 7900 XT is totally a viable option right now if you  don't want to pay Nvidia prices which are still really expensive I would say consider the RTX 480  for example but those are still over $1 or $1,200 and again the second video card is not going to  be going in the build but just showing it off because AMD sent it over as well this will be a  standalone giveaway GPU uh giv away alongside the system that we're building today again supporting  our extra

life charity live stream on Saturday December 9th so those are the parts we'll be  building with today let's get the the system put together I'm going to give you guys a closer  look at this motherboard cuz it has some pretty unique features miniitx is smaller it's about 7 in  x 7 in square so SPAC is at a premium and in order to make this motherboard a premium motherboard it  retails for about $230 right now uh they have done a lot of little things to maximize the space so  let's start off by

looking at accessories so you have some typical motherboard accessories like uh  m.2 screws SATA data cables and orus Logo badge to proudly display on your case Wi-Fi antenna of  course since Wi-Fi is included on this motherboard and then you have stuff like this little dongles  that they've included so that on the motherboard side they can use a teeny tiny plug that's less  of a standard connector for a PC and even for adapting something as simple as a fan header  so you have two of these fan h

eader adapters and those plug into the teeny tiny fan header  adapters on the motherboard saves a little bit of space there this is just an LED extension there  are some RGB LED headers on this motherboard they are in somewhat unique places though like this  whole unit right here is actually a daughter board extension that sits here just above the  PCI Express by6 slot along the edge of this they have uh connectors like a surface mounted reset  switch a 5vt RGB header that's right there this lit

tle plug which is again a header for a dongle  adapter that would be this one right here and that connects up to give you a couple USB 2.0 headers  which is very helpful if you have something like a control box for an all-in-one liquid cooler the  B I6 slot does have an extended uh little release catch there so it pops up and gives you a little  bit more access since the spot you normally push down on will be pretty covered up um so that's  helpful there's that USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel header u

nfortunately the case does not have this  connector I I do like having this connector and it's nice to have for some cases but not the  case we're using today back to this daughter board right here though there are actually two  m.2 connectors here one that's on top and one that's on the bottom so by removing this heat  sink assembly on top and the dotter board you can connect two m. tws right there for m.2 nvme  ssds you have another on the back here so that gives you three total and there's al

so a back  plate on the whole motherboard so you do need to remove that back plate in order to access that  m.2 header but that does give you a little bit of cooling for the m.2 drive that you might tuck  behind there and then there's this slot right here which I thought was an additional m.2  vertical connector and it actually kind of is this is the uh m.2 connector that it is for it's  not the standard m. two connector that's keyed for like nvme drives as you can hopefully see  right there but

this is actually another little adapter this I guess somewhat proprietary to this  board an expansion doter board that adds four Serial ATA connectors two there and two right  angle ones right there another teeny tiny fan header for the other one of these little dongles  a 12vt non-addressable RGB header for anyone who needs to connect up to one of those types of RGB  devices and lastly this thing here which is your front panel connectors which again connects to  another dongle cable uh that's

a little bit of a breakout so I plug that in right there for front  panel connectors and then over at the other end we have uh pretty standard gigabyte colorcoded  front panel connectors for power reset and all those good things I can actually get by without  using this uh expander cable here for front panel I just broke the housing it's disappointing  and do be careful when unplugging this or you might break the housing like I just did did but  it it should still work but as I was saying you co

uld leave this little dongle connector out of  it because on the motherboard they did provide a couple two- pin headers for a power and reset  button so you can connect those up for basic functionality in terms of front panel pinouts  and then you wouldn't need to use that right as your cable or Riser card I should say but  if you do want those SATA ports or more RGB or that additional fan header so this should just  slot in right there a little push it's crooked there we go that sits in place a

nd then uh there  you can see how it would be and is installed so yeah since this motherboard is pretty quirky and  has some unique features for ITX I thought I'd Point those out to you guys but next up we're  going to install our CPU our memory and our SSD and also get the back plate prepared so we  can install the aiio that came with the nr200p max so this piece comes off here and then there's  one here and then here a quick note here I was supposed to have another one of these  two terabytes

Acer drives I don't it's in the mail it should be arriving soon for  this video I'm going to install this SSD just for the sake of completion but I will be  swapping this out before we send this to the winner look gigabyte has tooless m.2  mounts now too like that and it snaps down nice next let's take a closer look at our  nr200p Max case from Cooler Master which is not just a Case Case uh power supply as well as  our all-in-one liquid cooler which I believe is a 280 mm unit on here so you can

see I have in  the back as you would expect uh motherboard's going to be right here it does come with a pcie  4.0 Riser cable that lets you bring your graphics card over here for your video outs at the top  of the case you can see the exhaust for the pre-installed 280 mm Allin one liquid cooler the  front you have a couple USB 3.0 type A connectors uh this does not have the type- C I would it  would be cool if Cooler Master came out with a new version of this case that had type- C  I am very lat

e to the party with the nr200p max by the way there have been plenty of builds  uh in this case done over the past year or two and it's been very well received that's part  of the reason why I decided to build in this today I wanted a case that was somewhat tried  and true and it wouldn't give me any trouble or compatibility issues as you can see here the  side panel pops right off it does include some mesh there behind uh those holes to prevent a  little bit more dust filtration since this is t

he max version of the case it also comes with  this which is a a tempered glass side panel so you can swap that out for the uh mesh panel if  you so desire I'm going to stick with the mesh panel for this build and we'll keep this nice and  pristine for the eventual winner so they can make the choice of which one they want to use inside  we've got a bit of packaging we have this box of accessories it's packed pretty well and Joe just  said it's packed pretty well I agree Joe they've packed everyt

hing in here because they don't want  stuff rattling around during shipping and probably going to reuse some of this packing when I pack  this up to ship it to the eventual winner of the system since there is an all-in-one liquid cooler  pre-installed in here uh they don't want the pump block part of that banging around Loosely in the  case so they've tucked that into this little foam part do note that this does not come with thermal  paste pre-installed so we will need to do that not too much e

lse to show for the interior  uh there's the AIO radiator and the two fans at the top here's the pre-installed 850 W 80 plus  gold rated power supply unit bunch of cables come preconnected and then I believe there's a few more  expansion cables in the Box they do include some mounts at the front of the case uh for like 2.5 in  drives we're not installing any of those today so we won't need to be too concerned about that and  you do have the option to install like for example a couple intake fans

along the bottom of this case  we have a GPU with a 3fan cooler that's going to be right here against that intake so I think we'll  be okay with that I suppose to complete the look we should also pop off the rear side panel very  similar to the other side panel here we can see the fan for the pre-installed power supply as  well as some of the pre cable management work that's been done because that's another advantage  of this case and a reason why it was so popular when it first came out becaus

e a lot of the stuff  is pre-installed uh this case is actually fairly reasonably easy for firsttime Builders or new  Builders to build in whereas Mini ITX can often be a bit more challenging for new Builders this  case makes it a lot easier rounding things out with the accessories there is our pcie Gen 4 Riser  cable here is the power cable for the power supply here are some SATA extensions as well as a Molex  adapter here's some modular cables for the power supply we have a couple Molex plugs

as well as  SATA for expansion drives and those don't come pre-installed since you may or may not actually  need them and then since there's an all-in-one liquid cooler that's also integrated we have the  brackets and mounting stuff for that as well as your more traditional case accessories such as  zip ties rubber mounting points for mechanical drives and motherboard mounting screws we have  one last step for our motherboard preparation and that is to make sure that we have the all-in-one  liqu

id cooler mounting hardware set up properly for that we have a couple of these brackets that  came in the box with the nr200p max this case is actually old enough that it doesn't list am5 as  compatible on the box because it came out well before am5 was even a thing fortunately am4 and  am5 mounts are practically speaking identical to one another but they have gone with the this type  of method these little hook around things I hate this I'm going to be perfectly honest I hate  this so Cooler Ma

ster whenever you do come out with the next version of the nr200p which I have  to assume you're going to do because this one is popular enough you'll note that I'm reinstalling  these brackets here it's become very habitual for me to remove these brackets cuz most coolers  use the existing am4 or am5 back plate which is very solid Very Metal does a great job  saves cooler manufacturers from having to include a bracket in the box and has four very  sturdy secure locations to mount your cooler to

or you can use these plastic brackets that  come pre-installed these date back to like the am2 am3 days and they have two connection points  rather than four and you get to do this awkward thing where like you you have these kind of  loose and you position it over and you have to hook this around there and it's very wobbly  and fiddly and then you tighten it down like so so I'm going to do that in just a minute and I'm  sure it'll be fine but if I'm going to complain about something this is a g

ood thing to complain  about I don't like this mounting method for all one coolers in particular we're either almost  done or we still have a lot of work to do but at this point we should just need to install the  motherboard uh assembly into the case plug in all the power connectors and front panel connectors  then install our graphics card and then we'd be done but uh we need to work in this small space  and I'm learning about this case as I build with it including features like this a single

screw  at the bottom of the back here and the entire bottom can pop off like so that also gives you  access to like a drive mounting Point down there at the bottom and it also gives you access to  the underneath of the power supply and that is where all the modular cables are connected so you  can unplug and replug things if necessary rather than having to remove the power supply because  that's kind of the point of this case and why it costs a little bit more this was originally  $350 for the c

ase power supply and cooler combo now it seems to be going for about 400 bucks but  if you can get the whole system installed and set up without having to remove the AIO and the power  supply that's that's the goal so that's what we're going to attempt attempt right now starting  with dropping in our motherboard and taking advantage of this other access point we have down  there from the bottom our motherboard also has a fixed IO Shield which is becoming more and more  standard but I still appre

ciate it and also our Dominator Platinum memory look at that it looks  really nice it actually matches the sort of black and gray aesthetic that we have going on it is  very tall though so I'm glad we're working with an all one cooler so we don't have to worry about  any clearance issues there you're going to have fun screwing this little piece back there back  here a [ __ ] you're right that's going to be a pain in the ass after test fitting the motherboard  uh We've realized that we are going

to need access to a few things like along this side we have a 24  pin main power connector a USB 3.0 uh front panel connector that fan header uh that needs a little  dongle cable that goes with it these brackets at the top of the am5 socket uh that I'm going to  need to hook around and screw in there so we're going to see how much of this stuff we can plug in  sort of right here thankfully the aiio has pretty lengthy tubes on it so we should be able to do  that and then actually move it into the

case and mount it properly and that should hopefully  give us access to all these things we need to plug in along the edge where there's really  very little room to work [Music] with [Music] so manyi ITX builds always throw some curve balls  at you but the system is functional it's up and running and I did make one pretty reasonable  mistake when I was putting it together which is that I didn't realize that the two fans for  the all-in one liquid cooler have a cable that's tucked in the back fo

r some reason I just assumed  it was connected to the power supply by default it's not I had to take that and wire it up to the  motherboard which meant I was one fan header short or at least one normal siiz fan header short so I  did use one of these extensions and I kind of had to pull the motherboard out in order to reach it  and plug it in but after doing that everything's working just fine so I wanted to share some quick  test results with you first off noise this is as loud as it will ever

be it's actually running  a stress test right now so this is probably louder than it will mostly ever be it's emanating  a reasonably quiet fan noise right now but when I I first started it up and when it's not actually  running a stress test it is super quiet so that's really nice I did Run 3D Mark time spy extreme  really quickly so there's our overall score of 10,934 specifically the graphics score here  12,834 that's about 400 points higher than the 7900 XT when I originally tested it and t

hat  was with a 7900 x3d CPU our CPU score is around 6,000 which is about what we would expect for an  8 core processor the system has reasonable CPU chops but it is definitely about the gaming for  comparison here an RTX 490 will get above 19,000 in this test a 480 will get above 14,000 and a  7900 XTX will get a little bit beyond what the RTX 480 can do so you can see here with our score  of just shy of 13,000 we're not too far off the 7900 XTX or the RTX 480 at the same time in these  tests t

he cpu's max temperature was 83.6 which is pretty reasonable since there is a CPU heavy  test in this suite and our graphics card got up to 61° C so that's actually quite cool memory  was also staying pretty cool keeping below ADC but as mentioned I'm running a stress test right  now it's actually getting just shy of 15 minutes or so you can see the CPU temperature rising here  and then peing at about 93° which is for the 7,000 series of CPUs within the ballpark of what's  to be expected that is

the peak temperature and this is again a stress test so these are the  peak temperatures that you're going to see with this system and definitely higher than you'd ever  see with actual day-to-day usage the GPU stress test is running too and our GPU is getting up to a  toasty 64° just 3° warmer than it got in our time spy test and the memory got up to about 74° uh  GPU hot spot was at 94 that's why they call it the hot spot I'm going to go ahead and kill this test  and you should hear the compu

ter quiet off pretty quickly so the liquid temperature has to kind of  slowly drop down and now things have settled down to a nice soft whoo this was a pretty cool system  to put together I realized after doing the parts list that this PC is about $300 more expensive  being a mini ITX system and specifically with the nr200p max case cooler and uh power supply  combo you can go fullsize ATX with the same CPU and graphics card and save yourself about 300  bucks with this build bringing it down to

about the $1,700 price range and you get basically  the same performance that you'll see here as you can see the uh GPU does have fan stop mode  and although the powercolor hellhound was just barely short enough to fit in this case thanks  to the back part here that breaks out so you can actually attach it and fit all that in there it  does have some pretty cool features like a dual V bio switch that's a really nice feature to have  on a graphics card and it's got another switch that I almost mi

ssed right here by the pcie power  cables which is a three position switch that you can go and turn the the RGB off some people don't  like RGB it's nice to be able to switch that off especially if you have this in like a a bedroom  somewhere close to where you sleep and you want to disable that and then the third position is this  sort of light blue sort of icy blue color what you're seeing there is off GPU lighting control or  motherboard lighting control but just one of the other sort of cool

features of this graphics card  but that is all the time I have for this video you guys thank you so much for watching let me know in  the comments section what you think of this build if you were spending around $1,900 to $2,000 on a  PC is this the system you put together would you go ITX or would you shave off a few and Go full  size ATX or would you upgrade the graphics card also check the description down below so you can  enter to potentially win this system because we are giving it away

you do not have to donate to  our extra life charity fundraiser to enter the giveaway all you have to do is visit the donation  page of course if you can donate if you have the spare money to do so it's a very good cause and we  do appreciate all the donations that come through thank you to AMD once again for their support  and sending the CPU and graphics card for this build thank you to gigabyte for providing the  motherboard and thanks to all of you guys for watching in the video if you want

to hit the  thumbs up button on your way out that's much appreciated if you'd like to subscribe to my  YouTube channel that's a great thing to do too if you'd like to visit my store we have an end of  the year sale going on right now Paulshardware.net is where you can go to buy yourself some merch if  you guys are around on Saturday the 9th stop by we will be live streaming and we appreciate your  support we'll see you guys all in the next video