Swapping Components from mATX to mini ITX

AndyWest

AndyWest

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Hi all you clever people.

I have a midi tower PC with the following:

Gigabyte B250M-D2V MicroATX MB
i5-7400 3.0GHz 1151 CPU
16GB Ram (2x8GB)
Samsung EVO 850 250GB SSD (2x External 1TB HDD's via USB)
Gigabyte GEFORCE GT 1030 Graphics card.

I would like to vastly reduce the size of the system and go fanless in the process. I can probably do without the graphics card as I do not game. I intend buying either a Seasonic fanless 400W power supply or go for HDPlex 250 or 300W adapter and power brick.

So question is can I buy a Mini ITX board with built in graphics and transpose the CPU, Ram and SSD to the new board. This will save on buying CPU, Win 10 licence and possibly RAM.

Will the PC run normally or will I have BIOS issues? I understand the BIOS will flip due to not having a CPU fan fitted but that can be disabled. I intend using a fanless CPU heatsink and either cut a hole in the top/side panel or do without the panel as the PC should not attract any more than normal dust.

Any suggestions, recommendations on Motherboard or anything else much appreciated. Please tell me if I'm being completely insane! :D

Just for note, all I use the PC for is:

Browsing the net with about 6 tabs open.
Watching YouTube Vids
Processing JPG's in Lightroom 6, Photoshop elements 15 and Nik collection
Listening to music while browsing/Image editing.

Many thanks in advance.
 
Yes you can do what you suggest. Your cpu already has internal gpu so don t go looking for a motherboard with built in graphics as you won’t find one!

You can buy fanless gpus’s I run a gtx 1050ti with just a ‘large’ heatsink. You can game on it but I heist use it to take the strain of the cpu/system ram.

FWIW I would run one 120mm fan and set it to 25%. You won’t hear it even with your ear pressed into the case.
 
Thanks Mark

I do have a very quiet case fan which I can not hear so may well use that. I'll be happy to ditch the GPU and just plug into the HDMI on the board, that should be fine for what I do.

Many thanks again. :)
 
Windows 10 is pleasantly easy to swap the main components of your system.

I recently swapped my motherboard cpu and ram. Hooked it all up, powered on, Windows detected the new hardware and off it went. Reactivated itself too (this will depend on your version, retail or OEM you may need to call the ms automated activation line).
 
I was a little worried about windows authentication but I thought the serial number was on the CPU which I will be using. I did hear someone on youtube say it was on the motherboard.

My windows is full retail so fingers crossed i should be OK.

Many thanks
 
Full retail should be fine. OEM can be tied to the motherboard/bios but a lot of the time ms allow reactivation anyway. I think they're just happy you're using a genuine copy.
 
i also recommend at least one fan- my favourite cpu cooler is the be quiet shadow rock LP, it;s low profile but still a fair sized heatsink, I actually tested it out passively cooling an 8700k, and it was fine, but a single fan on the top at low RPM does keep temps really low and I like downdraft style coolers as they will blow air accross the motherboard and ram too, basically cooling the entire system with one 120mm fan. I'd say its more important having a fan on the heatsink rather than on the case, a small case wont really have case fan space anyway. Don't bother getting a fanless psu, the seasonic's are too expensive, 10000% recommend the corsair sfx 450w, it's really tiny, and the fan won't spin at all unless its at load, so if you're not gaming I doubt it will even turn on, I don't own it but I would like to, I have a silverstone small psu and I actually removed the fan as it had this weird fan noise, and it's not been an issue (but it's a really power efficient model) and there is good airflow in the case

i've had zero issues just taking my drive with windows on it and connecting it between multiple pc's, always boots up no bother

in terms of cases, theres the elite 110, sg13, both will take sfx power supplies, streamcom cases that will fit a hdplex, and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-ISK3...UTF8&qid=1533504522&sr=8-6&keywords=antec+itx which I thought was kinda neat, but bigger than it needs to be since I dont need the disk drive, if they did a version half as long with no disk drive i think that would be perfect
 
"your cpu already has internal gpu so don t go looking for a motherboard with built in graphics as you won’t find one!"

if this is unclear, it's the cpu that has the graphics, the motherboard just has display outputs that are used by the internal graphics in the cpu


just get any 170 or 270 series motherboard for your socket 1151 cpu
 
Thanks for all the Info domart. I will check out you recommendations.

I am aware the CPU has graphics and not the motherboard. I didn't make that clear in my orig post LOL.

Cheers :)
 
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