Still very useful old advice
For this edition, we’ve decided to keep our desktop buying guide small, and we mean it literally. We found very few changes in the market to fully review the recommendations from the previous version, although you can of course make minor tweaks. In addition, it has been a long time since we covered embedded gaming systems and a home server, and it was in high demand from the community. So this BBG is what mini-ITX is all about.
Small gaming PCs and home servers
The smallest motherboard size of 17 x 17 cm is central of the three systems we built and tested. The two systems are almost identical except for the housing. We built an mITX gaming system in a compact NR200P MAX from Cooler Master and in an A4-H2O from Lian Li. Initially, the cooling and power supply is already installed, and with a capacity of 20 liters, the cabinet can be called almost spacious. At least, compared to just 11 liters of the Lian Li A4-H2O, where installation required a little more time and a few swear words.
The third system is a home server with a focus on NAS replacement. We found a small housing with four hot-swappable drive bays for our motherboard, which actually gives you a little more space with more computing power and a free choice of operating system.
with the community
As usual, the DBBG systems have been put together in consultation with the Tweakers community. On the topic of Gathering or Tweakers, everyone can give their opinion on the ideal system. The BBG team posts proposals for systems in the Complete Systems & Laptops forum a few weeks prior to publication. And then all visitors to the forum can give their opinion and discuss the changes. Then we export the components, build the systems, and run standards on them.
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