You don’t need to actually buy a low profile video card, as long as the video card is the only thing you need in the slots - you just need a riser card, IE something like this (Amazon.com). Some case modding may be required to secure it & get access to the video outputs.
Riser cards and APU’s (CPU and GPU on the same processor die) are your best bet.
I’m running an AMD A8 APU on my low profile home theater PC (It’s a $130 part) and it performs better than a console. But you are looking at 720p, medium settings for most modern, demanding games (and not 1080p high+ settings like you would get from a decent discreet GPU).
You can easily build a tiny system around an APU for $300-$500.
I’ve built several SFF (small form factor) PCs and my advice is, buy a Shuttle if you can afford it.
One caveat with a riser card like that - you’ll be limited to a 1-slot graphics card, since the card will be facing the motherboard, while most higher-end graphics cards use 2-slot cooling solutions.
You can find 1-slot cards, but they typically generate a lot more heat than 2-slot cards, which in a SFF case can be problematic.
I agree with Kinthalis, that an APU, at reduced resolutions, might be a good bet. I have a server running a super low-end AMD E-350, which offers an embedded low-end GPU, and it can run older games on moderate detail and 720p just fine. If you went with an A3850, you’d get pretty decent mid-range performance.
If you want full resolution, high detail performance, another option may be to go with an HTPC case with full-height slots, like this one - these are typically well ventilated, but will allow decent-sized (but not super huge) graphics cards. You won’t be putting a GTX 590 in one of these, but a GTX 460, or Radeon 6850 would drop in nicely. They are no bigger than the average stereo receiver, so are a lot easier to lug around than a mid-tower.
Another option is to build a mini-itx system - here’s a list of mini-itx cases from decent vendors that should support average-to-larger graphics cards. Beware that many of these require slim laptop-style optical drives.
Depends on the size of your case whether you can get a 2 slot card in there, actually - because you can, for example, get a “riser” like this Amazon.com
that will pretty much let you put any card that will fit into your case sideways in there. Although the posters above are definitely right that heat could be an issue unless your case is very well ventilated.
Honestly it is way easier to get a normal 4u case for a micro atx or mini ITX and use a strap like this DFI LANParty PC-TRANSPO Case Carrying Strap - Newegg.com to make it easier to tote.
I came back in to post just that - I was digging deeper on Amazon and noticed they had 16x riser/extension cables. If one is handy with a Dremel, this could make for some interesting case mod possibilities.
Building a SFF PC is a doable solution but I suspect that in actual practice you might be disappointed with the results. SFF PCs still don’t pack and travel particularly well and you need to make some significant compromises, plus they are still heavy and packing cabling is a nightmare. You say you don’t need cutting edge graphics, in which case I think a gaming laptop might actually be perfectly adequate.
Is your current laptop company provided or is it your own? If it’s company provided you may be able to work out some arrangement with them in which you are allowed to buy your own replacement and have a share of that cost reimbursed to you in exchange for them not being responsible to administering and providing your laptop. I know many companies will make accommodations for remote workers who might be Apple geeks and prefer to use their own phone and laptop as opposed to the corporate Dell/Blackberry provided.
Really, your profile is exactly what gaming laptops were designed for. They are pricier and they tend to be a little less than bleeding edge, but nothing travels better and is more multipurpose than a gaming laptop. An extra few hundred bucks seems like a pittance to eliminate the need to pack a gaming console or a SFF PC every trip and if you get a new work laptop in the deal it might be really ideal solution. If you really wanted to be a pencil pusher about it, you’ll probably spend that extra money on baggage fees when you need to check your console/SFF PC as opposed to carrying your gaming laptop in a shoulder bag when you can pack light.
This strikes me as a case of being penny wise and pound foolish, you’re expending a ton of energy and time to save money when a ideal solution is sitting there waiting for you. Instead of spending the time and energy buying and building and packing a SFF PC, spend the time trying to sell your current laptop or negotiating with your boss to have the company facilitate an upgrade that is fair for both sides. It might not end up being cheaper, but I suspect you’ll end up being happier with the result.
Unless there’s a really compelling technical limitation for the gaming laptops you can afford, that’s the route I’d choose even if it means you have to lay out a little extra.
Say you went with this one: Amazon.com
or going nuts, this one:
Amazon.com
How many games would you not be able to play with those specs? Those are both cheaper than the Dell Latitude that my company provided when you factor in the upgrades. Not saying you have a similar situation, but the difference in price doesn’t seem high enough to really justify dismissing it out of hand.
Poking around the internets a bit yielded LanSlide, a company that seems to specialise in portable gaming rigs that aren’t laptops. I don’t know anything about them, really, but it might be worth a look. They seem a little expensive, though.
On review, they seem not dissimilar to Shuttle, that ReticulatingSplines linked to upthread.
Village Instruments makes the ViDock - a ~$200 external chassis to connect a PCIe video card to the ExpressCard slot on a modern laptop (price goes up to ~$280 if you need to run a 200+ watt card like an AMD 5800-series).
Or, roll your own (lifehacker.com link) for a bit less (but increased fiddle-factor, of course).
Hmm, thanks for the responses. It looks like there are some doable options out there.
I guess regarding **Omnicient’**s post, I was sort of trying to get at that-- how much would a desktop equivelent of, say, one of those $1300 Alienware gaming laptops cost? If it’s only like a couple hundred bucks less I’d agree that the laptop is the way to go. But if I can build something significantly cheaper, the hassle really doesn’t bother me, since I’d basically be able to set it up and not touch it for 3ish weeks. But I haven’t really been hugely into gaming stuff in a long time and don’t fully understand how to compare things like processors and video cards these days.
(Oh, and the laptop isn’t company provided-- they have a seemingly endless supply of 10+ year old laptops running Windows 98 we actually use for work.)
If you don’t need the OS or a monitor (IE hook up to a 1080p TV for gaming), way way cheaper - for example the tomshardware $500 gaming PC is probably faster than a $1300 alienware : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-overclock-graphics-card,3032.html
If you tweak that build slightly to use a Micro-ATX board and a smaller case it wouldn’t cost much more and probably could play many games at 1920x1080 (1080p), and virtually all games at 1280x720 (720p) which would work with any TV. Edit to add - in high/higher levels of detail - not on low.
Couple of thoughts. First, Alienware PCs are overpriced for what they are. They are good gaming laptops, but you can get the same specs for $200 cheaper or more from other manufacturers who aren’t so trendy. A 14" Alienware laptop comes in at a similar price as a comparable 17" Asus Gamer laptop. Shop around some. I don’t know enough about specs to know what you can and can’t play on what graphics card, you’ll have to look at the games you own and the games you want to buy and judge for yourself.
The Shuttle compact PCs come in between $999 and $1500 and aren’t any cheaper than laptops for the same specs. To build your own SFF PC you are going to need to compromise on specs too. I’d be shocked if a gaming laptop today really fell much short of any SFF PC you built spec wise.
A BYOPC solution isn’t going to be cheaper in most cases if maxing out performance is your goal. You can save some money by finding the sweet spot of older parts that have been discounted, a 6 month old GPU and a year old CPU for example, but it’s a tricky proposition. I’d prefer to shop for a 6 month old laptop that played 90% of the games you’re likely to ever want to play. You could probably find a clearance model around the holidays that’s less than a grand.
If you can justify and afford to replace your current laptop and can find a use for the old one, say a hand me down gift or selling it, that’d be my solution. Unless you can piece together all the parts and software you need and ensure that it’ll all fit into a SFF case and confirm that it’s dramatically cheaper than a comparable laptop (something I doubt) I would give serious thought to that option.
How could he get away without an OS? Almost all games require a Windows OS, doubly so if they have an online component.
Tom’s recommends an AMD Phenom II, but in a SFF system, I’d recommend going with the newer Intel Sandy Bridge dual-core CPUs. They tend to perform better in most games than AMD quad-core chips, at a much lower price, and they have a very low power envelope, which is critical for a thermally challenged SFF system; especially if you get a better-than-mainstream GPU, since they can generate a lot of heat.
Here’s a comparison of an AMD processor close to what the Tom’s Hardware link recommends (a bit faster, even, for around the same price - $130), with a $90 Pentium G850 (I have this chip in my HTPC/gaming rig). The Pentium uses less than half the power at load, but beats the AMD in many game benchmarks, and comes within 95% of the AMD’s performance in all other games.
It’s not as snappy in other tasks like media encoding, but it can get the job done if you rip the occasional DVD.
If you want to squeeze out that extra bit of performance and don’t mind the extra $$, the Core i3 or i5s are a good bet, and still have way better thermals than comparable AMD chips.
I would add that if you are going to go with BYO, try to copy a system someone else has already built. For example, the company Dinaroozie linked upthread uses all off-the-shelf parts, it looks like an Apevia X-QPack2 case, and if you find out what parts they use you can build it yourself for much cheaper. It’s frustrating working through the quirks of each SFF case; that X-QPack in particular has a metal beam running from front to back that limits the height and width of your CPU heatsink. The Thermaltake Lanbox’s 5.25" bay rail limits you to video cards that are 9" or less, and so on.
First off, Shuttle is way overpriced. They are decently built, but because they use purpose-specific components and cooling solutions, they cost much more than a system using off-the-shelf components. If you want a smallish system, but don’t need the absolutely smallest footprint, you can built your own system for close to half the price of a comparable Shuttle in many cases.
Cheaper than what? A laptop? No way - see below. Shuttle? Ditto - see above.
This has been covered before in other threads, but IMO, going for mainstream, not top-notch components allows for upgradeability down the road, but can give you “more-than-good-enough” performance today. It’s a matter of personal taste, and budget.
However, with Intel driving their prices on newer Sandy Bridge processors waayyy down, you don’t even need to go with an old CPU model to get decent performance, especially in games, where very few titles utilize more than two cores. If you find performance lagging, and decide to upgrade, a $250 CPU or graphics card is way cheaper than a $1000 laptop.
I’ve got a micro-atx system that ran less than $700, that will best a $1400 ASUS gaming laptop - it’s in a largish case now, but it would definitely fit in one of the micro-atx SFF cases.
It’s not too hard if you know where to optimize your system - you can drop from the 12-16GB that most gaming laptops offer to 8GB with negligible performance loss (assuming you’re on a 64-bit OS - if not, don’t bother with more than 4GB); a $150 GTX 460 card can easily beat the performance of most “gaming” mobile GPUs, and is usually under 9" long so it will fit in many cases; a dual core Pentium, or i3 dual-core/hyper-threading processor, will handily beat almost any quad core mobile CPU on clock speed alone, but can stay quite cool using the standard heatsink, which should fit into most small cases - and as I mentioned earlier, most games won’t see a big benefit from more than 2 cores anyway.
After optimizing your build, it’s just a matter of finding small enough components and case - getting a mini-itx motherboard for a bit more might be a good idea, in order to give you a bit of insurance on cable space and airflow in a SFF micro-atx case, without really incurring a big performance hit.
I’m pretty sure he’s referring to re-using the OS. Even with OEM licensed copies, you can usually transfer them to a new system no problem.
I’m down with that, if you are willing to spend even a little more than the Toms $500 box - an i5 2500k is probably the best value processor you can get today.
Shuttle is the way to go. Yes, they’re expensive.