Since I'm sick of having a full size tower and would rather something that didn't take up as much room I spec'd up this micro atx pc build. Would love some feedback on the parts and if anyone has had experience building a smaller PC. Thanks.

I've already got an MSI GTX 560 Ti, Corsair 650W PSU, DVD/BD ROM, Misc HDD's.

Intel Core i5 2500K Processor LGA1155 3.3GHz
ASUS S1155 P8Z68-M PRO
Fractal Design Define Mini Tower Case Black
G Skill 8G(2x4G) DDR3 1600Mhz PC12800 (CL9D-8GBRL)

Cool thanks rusta. I'll take a look at that case but I'm really liking that fractal one.

I'm not sure why these sort of builds aren't more popular. Full towers just seem like such a waste these days.

I chose a Silverstone Sugo SG03

I've been using one of these cases for the last couple years, it is a good case but I've found it tends to overheat easily with GPU intensive games, you could however use one of the PCI GPU rear exhaust fans but I never got around to installing one.

For a micro-atx case, I would probably swing more towards what Kappa has chosen (at least the Arc mini model) just for the position of the PSU (i.e. not sitting over the top of the CPU), if nothing else, it gives you more flexibility with after market coolers.

I can thoroughly recommend the Silverstone Sugo SG07 also.

I think you recommended one of these cases in the last thread about mini-itx, I looked into from that thread and saw there was a SG08 about to be released, it came out a few weeks ago now. I reckon it's a much nicer looking case than the SG07.

As far as a gaming box in a small case goes, this is the best option for me so far. Built-in 600w PSU, enough room for 3 hard drives and an optical drive - 2x 2.5" HDD bays, 1x 3.5" HDD bay, 1x slim optical drive bay. Thing with this case design is that the fan of the GPU point out a large vent on the side of the case so you don't get any heat from the GPU trapped inside you PC, there's an enormous fan on the roof of the case pointed directly at the CPU which pushes air out another large vent on the opposite side of the case from the graphics card.

Anyway, I've been very very happy with this case so far. I'm now just waiting for a mini-itx Ivy Bridge board to be released and I'll upgrade the guts of the box. It may not look it from the shots below but there is actually a decent amount of space for air flow in this case, the wiring looks a little messy at the moment but I'll tidy that up with the upgrade.

Apologies for the crappy quality shots, just quickies on the iPhone this morning before I left for work.

Lower power draw = less heat for a mini pc?

Tom's Hardware has done some basic CPU benchmarking. I guess I'm more interested in some of the new mothboard features like PCI-e 3.0, native intel USB3 support and thunderbolt, but how quickly things like thunderbolt start getting included on mATX and mini-itx motherboards, who knows. Zotac are generally pretty good at pimping out their boards though.