Upgrading/Improving my gaming rig

[Tsukiyomi91]

Hello to all forum members. I'm currently finding a perfect upgrade for my desktop PC rig. With plenty of small form factor casings like Bitfenix Prodigy, EVGA Hadron Air & others, along with plenty of mITX boards from vendors like ASUS, Gigabyte & others. Current budget here should be somewhere around the $400 or lower range complete with a closed-loop liquid cooling kit. I've came up with a poll for you guys to help me on this & comments/posts will be much appreciated.
Still sticking with the 3rd Gen Core i5 CPU for now since I don't have much budget on getting a decent Core i5-4670 & a Z87 Chipset board...

 

[RCoon]

Hello to all forum members. I'm currently finding a perfect upgrade for my desktop PC rig. With plenty of small form factor casings like Bitfenix Prodigy, EVGA Hadron Air & others, along with plenty of mITX boards from vendors like ASUS, Gigabyte & others. Current budget here should be somewhere around the $400 or lower range complete with a closed-loop liquid cooling kit. I've came up with a poll for you guys to help me on this & comments/posts will be much appreciated.
Still sticking with the 3rd Gen Core i5 CPU for now since I don't have much budget on getting a decent Core i5-4670 & a Z87 Chipset board...

Literally just bought an Aerocool Dead Silence. It's about the same price as the Prodigy/Phenom, same size and all, only without handles. When they say dead silence, they seriously mean it.
I've hated aerocool for years, with a passion. When I opened it up, all the screws for individual parts were bagged and labelled specifically, and I have never EVER been so impressed with the layout and packaging of a case in my life. It's incredibly easy to install components in. I've owned, TJ07's, NZXT's, silverstone's itx case, and a number of others, and none of them have impressed me in such a way this case has. It can fit mATX motherboards in it, but has mounting holes for mITX. I also have a silverstone SG07 ITX case, which was really great, and had a nice build quality, but overall it was horribly cramped, and the PSU is less than reliable at this stage. PCIE cables also plug in very tight against the case egdes, and HDD mounting position is less than optimal for the SATA port. It's also pretty tight and hard to get all your components in without a little bend here and there.
I don't recommend an ASRock ITX board, they are horribly thin and bend a lot with weight. I think the Asus ITX boards are pretty great, I've had a few, along with a few MSI boards in my time, so either or. As for closed loop, they're all pretty much identical if you ask me, but the corsair H100 is one I've owned before going custom cooling.

I'm big on tiny and silent enthusiast builds right now, so PM if you have any specific questions.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

I see. Thanks for the advice RCoon. ^^