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Here’s the small form factor gaming PC I’m building from Black Friday deals

Nice console games November 26, 2024 Black Friday 2024, Digital Foundry, PC

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I’ve been planning a small form factor gaming PC build for months, and now that it’s Black Friday week, it’s the perfect time to actually order what I’ll need! There are some great Black Friday discounts on PC components right now – including CPUs, GPUs, mobos, cases and PSUs – so I thought I’d show you what I’m going for in case you wanted to build something similar.

The idea here is to spec out a small, silent gaming PC with enough CPU performance for work and gaming, plus a powerful mid-high-end graphics card. I’m opting for AMD’s AM5 platform for this, as I feel Ryzen 7000 and 9000 processors offer the best blend of performance, power/thermal efficiency and price, with an RTX 4070 Super as my GPU of choice.

Glance at the spec sheet below, then read on for my thought process for each selection.

Case, PSU and CPU cooler

To start off, I’m going to recommend the Cooler Master NR200P Max. This is a Mini ITX case with a pre-installed 280mm AIO CPU cooler and an 850W SFX power supply, meaning that the most annoying wiring is already done for you and you don’t need to spend any money (or thought!) on these components. £217 is an incredible value for a great SFF case, PSU and AIO, and after having built two NR200P systems before, this deal gets a strong recommendation from me.

If you want to buy your case, PSU and CPU cooler separately, that’s cool too! For the case, the Fractal Terra is an incredible SFF option at £133 (discounted from £185) and looks fantastic with its wood accents and nice colour choices. For the PSU, I’d recommend the Corsair SF850L at a discounted £110 (down from £130). The Noctua NH-L9a-AM5 at £40 is a good air cooler that fits the Fractal Terra. If you prefer a 240mm AiO – which the Terra doesn’t support but many other Mini ITX cases do – the Corsair H100 RGB is £66, down from £100.

Motherboard, RAM and storage

For the motherboard then, I’m going with the Asus ROG Strix B650E-I, which is discounted to £220 from its usual ~£260 price point. B650E is the best AM5 choice here I feel, because you can’t really make full use of the extra PCIe bandwidth and USB ports on a physically smaller motherboard, but you still get all the good stuff from AM5 like PCIe 5.0 SSD and DDR5 support.

For RAM, we’ll install a 32GB kit of Crucial Pro DDR5-6000 CL36 memory, which is discounted from £88 to £67. That’s plenty of RAM for gaming and work, and at the DDR5-6000 sweet spot preferred for Ryzen 7000 and 9000. Storage is also an easy choice, with the 2TB Corsair MP600 Elite at £125, but any NVMe drive without a heatsink is fine.

CPU and GPU

Now we’re entering the true realms of choice – the CPU and GPU will determine the overall performance of the system. For the CPU, you can go for an X3D part for gaming performance, a mid-range Ryzen 7, a high-end Ryzen 9 or a more budget Ryzen 5. I opted for the AMD Ryzen 5 7600 as it offers good-enough CPU performance while consuming less power and costing less than the 7600X at £171 (was £249). I would have liked to have slotted in a 7700 for similar reasons and more CPU cores, but it looks like it’s out of stock at the moment – with similar issues with the 7800X3D and 7900X3D. AM5 doesn’t run too hot, so you can choose pretty much anything here with great results as long as your CPU cooler is reasonable.

For the graphics card, this mostly comes down to your budget, but I’m going with a Zotac RTX 4070 Super at £500, down from £543. This GPU provides excellent performance at this price point, including great RT performance, frame generation, DLSS and an excellent media encoder for streaming. It’s also a dual-slot, dual-fan design that will fit easily within most small form factor cases. Alternatively, this Gigabyte RX 7800 XT is the best value AMD option, though its triple-fan design may not fit in all SFF cases.

The finished spec sheet

Here’s the spec sheet once again, this time with the alternative options also listed for your convenience.

All told, the build here costs £1299 – a nice round number! If we go for the Fractal Terra instead of the Cooler Master NR200P, then our total is a bit higher due to our separate PSU and CPU cooler purchases – £1366. Either way, you’ve got a performant small form factor gaming PC with plenty of room for future upgrades thanks to our choice of case, CPU cooler and motherboard.

I’ve actually ordered these items, so stay tuned for a follow-up to see how I get on with the build.

In the meantime, feel free to ask questions in the comments below if you want any build advice, or reach out on Bluesky (wsjudd.bsky.social). Thanks for reading!