Converting My i7-6700K ATX Build To Mini-ITX

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My gaming PC is based on an ATX board, MSI Z170A Krait gaming which is good for what I use it for but the overall space and noise are things which I dislike the most.

Keeping things cool such as the processor requires a decent sized heat sink / AIO cooler and room for enough airflow, both of which are compromised with smaller cases but with the current generation of hardware this might not be an issue. I have been looking around at smaller cases and mini-ITX boards which seem to be available for gaming purposes and it appears that it is possible to scale down my rig.

The mini-ITX case I have chosen is by Fractual Design, Node 202. To perform this conversion I will need to change all my hard drives, power supply, CPU cooler, motherboard and RAM.

Parts required / what I plan to use

  • MB: Asus Z170i Pro Gaming
  • CPU: Cooler Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev.B [SCBSK-2100]
  • RAM: Undecided but it will be a 2x16GB DDR4 3200Mhz kit
  • PSU: Corsair SF600 600W 80Plus Gold SFX [CP-9020105]
  • HDD: Seagate BarraCuda  1TB 128MB 2.5″ Sata x2 [ST1000LM048]
  • SSD: Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 250GB [MZ-V6E250BW]

Currently I use two 3.5″ 1TB hard drives and one 256GB SSD drive, these will be changed as the Node 202 allows room for two 2.5″ drives and the motherboard can take one M.2 nVme SSD. Moving from 3.5″ to 2.5″ drives might seem like a step backwards but the Seagate drives are quoted to have a 140MBps transfer rate.

CPU cooler, my current Zalman Optima CNPS10X comes with 4 heatpipes and keeps the i7-6700K at 4.4ghz close to 70 Degrees. Being a tower design it doesn’t provide any VRM cooling. The Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev.B cooler comes with 5 heatpipes and a fan that blows down on to the motherboard. This will provide cooling over the entire mini-ITX board, VRM and chipset heatsinks, performance might be close / better than the Zalman Optima.

RAM, unfortunately I am using 4x8GB kit whereas most mini-ITX boards only allow for two DIMM slots. I’m undecided on the next suitable choice so for now will use my spare 2x4GB DDR4 2400Mhz kit.

I feel confident that this will work out OK but only time will tell, waiting on parts to arrive so will update on progress later.