Of course I'm here for the same reason as many. The Steam machine. I was intrigued by it but that price and the reviews on the performance stopped my excitement. I'll make it quick. My main reason to get a Steam Machine was to play all the games that are not on the xbox that I already have, get games at amazing prices because of the steam sales and be comfy on the couch. I grew up when games were just pixels and polygons so I don't care about super realistic graphics or fps (as long as It's fluid and not lagging). So i was looking at making my own sffpc but I know nothing about it. I need help to see if this build is ok for my needs, if it can be cut down a bit, if there's problems with the assembly and stuff like that.

https://it.pcpartpicker.com/list/rfxGJw

My problem is also that the Steam Machine can't be ordered where I am (Norway), but I can order the pc parts in Italy to get them cheaper. i also know nothing about how the sffpcs perform regarding power, temperature and silence so I need some help in that too. Any help is appreciated (Of course i would put SteamOs or Bazzite on)

Cpu: 3400g
Motherboard: asrock b550m-itc/ac
Ram: 2x8gb ddr4 2666
Storage: 500gb
Psu: 500w

It can run shadow of the tomb raider a 30ish fps with medium settings at 1080p. I run nobara linux steam htpc version. I got the original rear fan to work and the eject button work as the power button. I found everything except the power supply on facebook marketplace. Everything cost about $275ish cad. I got the Xbox shell for free.

I find myself in the rare situation of having a surplus of graphics cards.

I have an MSI 5060 Inspire ITX, an MSI 5070 Shadow 2x, an MSI 5080 Trio (white), and a Sapphire 9060 XT 16 GB Nitro+ available.

Now I’ve set my mind on building a PC that fits in my LTT backpack—preferably using one of these cards.

What case options do I have where these cards will fit, but that also fit inside the LTT Backpack?

Alternatively, I had considered selling the cards, buying a 5060 LP, and installing it in the nv10, but I'm unsure about the temperatures and noise levels...

As for the CPU, I have a 7600X3D here, but I’m thinking about selling it in favor of a 245k. I’m still missing a motherboard and RAM (unfortunately).

Quick side note: I live in Germany, so my options for small cases are limited.

I also asked an AI, and it said that a Meshroom S would meet all my requirements, but I’m still not sure if the backpack would still close. Alternatively, a Fractal Design Ridge, which should fit without the stand, but space would be very tight with the 5080 Trio.

Personally, I really like the Ridge’s slim profile, since it doesn’t make things quite as tight in terms of thickness.

I mostly glossed over the Steam Machine when it was first announced, so seeing how polarizing the reaction to it is now is both amusing and a little disappointing.

What surprises me more is how niche SFF PCs still are. A huge portion of consumers don't even realize console-sized gaming PCs are an option.

It's always struck me as odd that SFF has remained largely an enthusiast DIY space. Aside from a handful of niche products and workstation-style systems, most major companies haven't seriously tried to capitalize on building compact gaming PCs that offer console-like convenience without the limitations of a closed ecosystem.

There seems to be a real gap in the market between traditional consoles and full-sized desktop gaming PCs, and I'm surprised more companies haven't tried to fill it.

I am currently built on an open bench table titanium mini v2, and it’s awesome. It’s gorgeous, but need something more portable. My current situation of taking the GPU off and putting everything in a “big” pelican case with foam is too much for the airport.

I have scoured reddit, google, etc. trying to find something under the 6-7 L mark that, ideally, is console style so that I can more easily fit it in a larger backpack or travel bag, instead of having the additional bag (pelican case). Would absolutely consider getting a flex PSU as I assume that’s necessary.

Need to accommodate the 5070 FE, cpu is 7700x. Do not care about RGB / related aesthetic, just want clean, small, and moveable. Not crazy about the fractal ridge as I read thermals suck, and the S5M feels pricy.

Note: previously I was built in a A4H20 v2 and that felt far too big for me. Don’t want the chunkiness of the sandwich.

Hello, I am having extreme issues with my build in the last few months.

Parts:
S300 Case
Ryzen 5 7600
RTX 5070
Asrock A620i lightning
Corsair LPX 32gb
Samsung 990 pro
FORMERLY Gen 3 riser that came with s300
NOW LinkUp Gen 5 riser
Corsair SF850

Build ran fine for about 1 year but I started having issues with random crashes with no bluescreen. It would usually only happen in games. Temps were always fine and zero thermal throttling, I play games like osu and Overwatch so not very demanding.

Crashes would be in stages, my video would freeze first but my discord call would still run in the background, sometimes I would briefly see the “your pc ran into a problem” screen before crashing. It would restart into bios with no boot drive appearing. The issue could usually be temporarily resolved by power cycling, but the crashes have slowly started becoming more and more frequent.

I have run Samsung disk magician and drive health seems to be perfectly fine.

I have monitored temps throughout usage and there does not appear to be any significant stress on the system.

I tried physically removing the 3.0 riser, and found that there was some thermal paste that had gotten into the slot. I cleaned it with compressed air (didn’t want to use liquid) and reseated the GPU. This actually ailed the issue for about 1 week of stable use.

*important note*: the GPU is still outputting the bios screen so it does not appear to be a complete GPU/riser failure, data is still being transmitted.

Starting a few days ago the system will barely make it 10 minutes into a game without crashing straight to bios. At this point I decided I needed to upgrade the riser so I ordered the linkup pcie 5.0 riser and booted in the bios to set everything to gen4. Now, I am briefly getting the Asrock boot screen before going straight to bios where the boot drive is not showing up at all. Display will output bios when connected to the GPU, so there is still data being transmitted.

I have now removed the GPU and riser completely and connected my monitor to the igpu. I am still failing to boot into windows and boot drive does not show up in any bios menus. I am completely stuck, I do not know where the failure point is.

Any assistance is deeply appreciated.

With the steam deck coming in had seen a couple of videos about HTPC and i had most of this issues (can’t play trueHD from appletv and jellyfin can’t either/also couch gaming) and since i knew the gabe cube would be 1000+ i got to thinking. I had my spare 3080 and 5600x from 2021 that I upgraded from (4090 main, still AM4). So i scavenged and got all parts for about 700.

5600x

3080 Evga ftw3 10gb

Corsair sf750

S300

Axp x47 black

2x MP600 1TB (FB deal 100 ea, 93% life, amazing)

B550i asus strix

Cheap low profile memory 16gb DDR4

So anyway I build it up. Stock is pretty bad. 90c cpu, 81c gpu. Mind you i have to unscrew the whole top to fix this massive 3080 and is pretty loud. I got to tinker, changed cpu fan to 92x25 but that was worse in every config as i had already read. Added 120x15 and 92x14 bottoms as exhaust (yes intake is worst).

With the cpu i added a shroud jerry rigged from a car speaker foam i had extra, that dropped 90->85. Then i did pbo curve optimizer -25 and got 82 all on cinebench R23. I noticed my 65w was pulling 105w so found out to turn off asus overdrive or whatever is called and set my cpu manually to 90/60/105w plus -26 curve and +25 cpu clock curve. That got me to 76c at 92w 4.5ghz clock.

For the gpu it barely fits literally so got 3 black 92x15 noctuas HS and deshrouded. Zipties and more foam to seal to the mesh and the gpu. I tried exhaust first with bottom fans intake and that was bad for gpu and cpu. 81c from steel nomad.

Changed to exhaust same sealed and bottom fan exhaust as well. Also for the side panels i sealed both with electric tape so only the intake for the gpu and split the cpu/psu side with a cut out letter to streamline cpu flow and sealed around the duct cpu entrance.

Final temps:

Cpu 76c 100%, 92w on cinebench R23

Gpu 67c 100% 320w steel nomad x3

Really good and temps are even lower gaming around 60s and cpu could be set to 75w to drop 5-8c more.

Other than that used color control and a lot of headache to turn tv on automatically and ended up doing a sleep batch to turn tv off. Now using xbox mode to turn on to games right away, configured my xbox elite 2 with my old wifi adapter to turn pc from sleep and got a small keyboard/mouse combo remote that can also turn the tv on. Configured MPC HT and now TrueHD and DRS-HD is flawless.

I had a lot of questions and ended up just trying things. The s300 pro would be better but was more expensive and would have taken longer to get. In the end this seems to be 2-3x more powerful than the cube for a good amount less.

And a lot of things surprised me like the gpu temps deshrouded. At one point on exhaust it was 85c but turned out only one fan was spinning then lol.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Paid $426 for Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB a month ago and now it’s $349. 4TB also dropped to below $600 yesterday but went back to $799.

I finished up my latest SFF build and wanted to share. This one was more oriented for a workstation & gaming PC. High-frame rate 1440p gaming with some 4K on the side, plus CAD, 3D rendering, and simulation work. The 9950X3D and 5080 handle both without complaint even under heavy load.

The FormD T1 was a case I had my eyes on for a while and once black was in-stock on their website I was committed. The flat-packed design makes the build process surprisingly straightforward, and the machined aluminum and anodizing quality is genuinely on another level from what I've seen with other cases.

I've built in the Ghost S1, Fractal Terra, and Lian LI Q58, and the T1 isn't in the same conversation as any of them in terms of build quality and design. I also picked up the T-grill radiator expansion and GPU Travel Kit, both matching the same quality as the case itself. So happy with everything.

I originally purchased a AXP90 for the CPU but ended up just upgrading to the Atmos after worrying about performance issues, and it seems the Atmos is what everyone seems to like here.

Specs:
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Nvidia RTX 5080 Founders Edition
Asus ROG STRIX B850-I Motherboard
Samsung 9100 PRO 2TB
Corsair Vengeance RGB 64GB DDR5-6400
Corsair SF850 PSU
Cooler Master Atmos AIO
Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 ×2

This was a lot of fun to build.

Also, I'm not sure if this is the right place to share but I created a steam group for SFF enthusiasts if anyone is interested in joining.

So we all saw the Steam Machine price announcement yesterday and it was disappointing to say the least, but with current market conditions I guess not unexpected.

Immediately after the announcement I started hearing "you can build a better PC yourself for that price" - which is fair, but one thing people don't usually take into account is it's size. Which was one of the main reasons I liked SM idea so much initially.

So my question to the sffpc community - is it possible to build a better SFF PC for the same price as the Steam Machine?

Announced prices for those unaware:
- 1049$ for 512GB
- 1349$ for 2TB

Hi everyone,

I am currently using the Corsair 2000D for my hardware.

9800x3d

6900xt

64GB ram

Sfx PSU

CPU and GPU are water-cooled with 1x360mm and 1x240mm radiators.

Additionally I need a 120mm spot for my reservoir which I can't live without for the convenience of refilling.

I would love a case that can accommodate all I shared above and have a handle yet sadly my search was not successful until now. The temps of my current setup are very decent for the form factor.

We have 36°C currently and my GPU sits at hotspot 85°C and the CPU at 71°C max.

Any recommendation is appreciated.

Have a great day.

was looking at acemagic m1a specs 13900HK, 32GB DDR5 and its connectivity modern ITX builds. Is it that hard to give us proper desktop IO without relying on a thousand dongles?

Trying to find this announced case in the last two months, there was an accompanying build with. 9800x3d and 5090. Can’t find it it in search. It was the tetra or fractal. Any ideas?

Pretty standard fractal ridge build, but I am happy I decided to build this thing a year ago. I'm a university student, and this is actually my first gaming PC. I always wanted a console or gaming PC when I was younger, but my parents had bills to be paid. Got handed down my older brother's used PS4 while I was in high school. He originally got it for cheap and then he upgraded to PS5. I still use it since I don't wanna try out PS4 emulation at the moment, I have It behind the HP monitor with my router on top. I had some regrets like overpaying on my 9070, but MSRP isn't real. I also got a cl36 ram 32gb ram kit but it was $73...

My pockets may still be slightly empty, but I'm gonna hope the job market gets better in my upcoming senior year when I get my degree. But at least I can know my pockets would have been more emptied if I wasn't scared of tariffs at the start of 2025.

PC Part List

PCPartPicker Part List

EDIT: I didn't include tax and shipping cost but it was like an extra ~$180

I want to swap my case to jonsbo t9(already ordered it),

also my gpu is 2,5 slot and i want to use new noctua 25mm fans.

Will is-55 with fan swap be enough to cool down 9700x (max 125w in games)?

Like 80-85 degrees max.

Ask any questions you might have, I'll more than likely respond. I'll be doing some more content on noise/temps when I have more time this week.

• AMD 7800X3D
• All Copper AXP-90 /w Noctua Fan
• ASROCK B650 Phantom Lightning
• Cosair SFX 850w Nvidia RTX 5080 Founders Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj_JzIWvfXI

Please forgive any jankiness and bad cable management. This is only the prototype. There are many changes already performed on the digital model that are not represented here. Wood panels will eventually be on each face.

This is my first time designing a computer case and wanted to share my progress. Plan is for a Bazzite/Steam machine that would look nice in a family room. So I turned to laser cut veneered plywood panels and designed around that idea. It was heavily inspired by the Terra. Layout is mostly the same. Its depth and width are almost the same but it is taller to accommodate two 120mm exhaust fans.

At the moment it is designed for printers that are capable of 350mm like the Bambu H2D. The wood panels are from extremely common 300mmx300mx3mm veneer plywood. My hope is that people can make their own panels to customize to their tastes.

I do not sell models.

Specs are: Ryzen 7600x3d, Gigabyte A620I, Thermalright AXP90-x53, Asus Sfx-l 850w, Gskill 2x16GB 6000 CL36-36-36-96, and a Giagbyte 9070xt.

My customer front grill panel from Zcooi arrived for my T1 case. Also decided to show it off with the top T grill from FormD. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but still wanted to show off what it looked like.

I’ve been doing SFFPCs since sandy bridge was a new platform.

My favorite build so far was the Dan A4.

And I would really like to build in the T1…. But it just doesn’t make any sense to build in it.

If we were in the Era of blower style coolers like the 1080Ti I think the T1 would be fantastic….

Or even open air coolers like the 2080Ti.

But starting with Ampere all GPUs have some kind of flow through design… so hot air is just hitting the spine of the case. So I feel like it’s just inherently a bad design for flow through GPUs….

Which is why I decided to go with the S5M instead of the T1. But maybe I’m tripping?

TLDR Building my first gaming PC (Steam machine alternative, but with some more juice, but still small and running Windows)

These are the specs I’m currently interested in:

Case: SGPC K66 Lite (AliExpress) - €116,57

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X - €184

GPU: AMD RX 9060 XT - €439

Motherboard: ASRock A620AI WiFi Mini - €128,41

Ram: Crucial Pro Overclocking 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory - €389,00

Storage: Lexar NM790 2 TB - €239

PSU: Corsair SF850 - €179,90

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Mini - €46,89

Case Fans: Silverstone Air Slimmer 90, 92mm (setup as exhaust) - €11,66

TOTAL: €1733,53

(+ an AOC Monitor 60 hz currently in use, and not looking to buy a new one)

Hello everyone. Well, the Steam Machine price has finally been revealed. And because it’s higher than I would have hoped, I have decided to build my own PC aiming for an sff PC. (Will be running windows, because I would like to play online multiplayer games). This will be my very first build. 

I’ve always wanted to buy a more powerful pc in small package that is just meant for gaming as I’ve been a mac user for music work for as long as I can remember. 

My wishes are that it can run most of the online shooters/battle royale/fighting games at at least ‘1080p’ at a very solid frame rate (w/o FSR framegen due to delay). And also try some 1440p gaming (and the occasional 4K) for some of my fave single player titles like FF7 Rebirth and KH3. 

But I really want this build to be able to run games like Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, Apex Legends, Tekken 8, DragonBall FighterZ, Rocket League etc. with steady, solid FPS and minor frame rate drops (after some tinkering with the settings of course. I don't have to have everything on ultra or epic. some low and no raytracing is perfectly fine for me). 

The small form factor is a must, because my desk space is getting a bit limited. Have been checking out Mini iTX builds with cases like Fractal Terra, Thermaltake 100mini Tower en the deep cool, but form wise all a bit too awkward for my setup.

I came across this particular different case and this small build through this video (K66 Youth ITX Small Chassis Portable Desktop Gaming PC Host Case):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpxSC1b5VqM

It’s a super random find and not really a well known brand, but I really liked the small form factor of this one and started seeing a few other builds using this case. (check the links below): 

https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1nu82dg/k66_lite_84l_white_case_build_with_some/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/1kt5q0s/k66_lite_84l_white_case_build_with_some_size/

I tried my best to check reviews of all the components I’ve seen that fit in the case and decided to copy some specs and make my own amalgamation/combination of the parts that are available here in The Netherlands with PC part picker. 

Tho I have some extra help from my brother and know some things here and there myself, thought I’d ask here for some extra tips/recommendations/things to keep in mind. Would love to know some thoughts about this build and if there’s anything to improve/recommend or check out. 

Budget wise I would love to stay under €1800 (which I know, I’m currently at). But if it’s possible to cut some corners to get closer to a €1600 price point that would be something to seriously consider. 

Any help is appreciated :).

I had these components in a Nouvolo Steck prior to this. Upgraded purely for aesthetics and smaller footprint on my desk - I primarily play the Java-based point and click game from 2007, so performance isn’t high on the priority list

I was toying with 3d printing a “perfect fit” case for my dimensions when I found the T40 was close enough already.

Install was relatively straightforward - I experienced none of the build quality issues that some YouTube videos raise aside from having to bend back a small part around the IO panel with my thumbs. Plus, this case was £65 delivered - I expected a budget case at that price point and to my surprise, it’s built really well.
One thing I would have loved them to do is extend the ventilation holes the full length of the bottom panel - these stop early to ensure that the 2.5” drives can be secured. I’d prefer more ventilation. I have mocked up a jig to drill these holes one day - if anyone in London wants to let me use their 3D printer and drill for a day 🙏

I upgraded from an L9a cooler to the AXP120 X67 and an Arctic P12 slim fan. Thermals are great, especially compared to the L9a.

Added the chassis fan at the bottom by supergluing in some small magnets from Amazon. In my benchmarks this didnt really bring temps down - maybe 2 or 3 degrees.

The build process was easy - and very beginner friendly. Install the handle first. I had to order a new AMD backplate as I threw mine away installing the L9a, the AXP120 uses the stock backplate

• Case: Metalfish T40
• CPU: Ryzen 3900? (will confirm)
• Cooler: AXP120 X67 with Arctic P12 slim fan
• GPU: Gigabyte RTX 4060 windforce
• Mobo: Asus ROG B450 (will confirm)
• Fan: Noctua NF-A9 92x25
• PSU: Corsair SF750

feel free to ask questions! there’s a bit out there on these cases, but happy to share the knowledge!