Half-Height options

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CombatChrisNC

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 3, 2013
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I'm considering a SFF desktop and I'm looking for half height as a full size card obviously won't fit. In terms of new it seems that the 1050 and 1050 Ti are really my only decent options for 1080P gaming.

No 1060 option? Nothing new from AMD or around that same performance as the 1050 Ti?
 
Sadly there are no rx 460's in a low profile configuration as of yet, so basically your best bet is going to be the 1050ti for raw performance. Are you planning on building the rig yourself or going a prebuilt route? If you are building you can get a small volume and a full card experience with cases like the EVGA Hadron Air, or the flip the card horizontal type cases like the Silverstone rvz01. As far as legacy low profile cards nothing really holds a candle to the 1050ti as it is ~faster than a GTX 770 in practice.
 
Sorry man, there's always going to be limited selection on those type of cards. You're fighting physics fitting that much performance in such a tiny card, so anything above a 128-bit bus and 60w TDP is really difficult to fit in there.

Also, most people who want a case that small usually give up and either (1) live with integrated graphics, or (2) buy one of the "compromise" ITX cases rhansen already mentioned. So the target market for these things (powerful, half-height) is tiny, so you should expect them to attempt no miracles packing more power.

Make sure the case you desire has room for the 2-slot-wide cooler on those. Many popular half-height cases (like the ISK 300) only have room for a single-slot wide cooler.

It might help if you posted that :D

And no, RX 460 performance in bus-powered guise is nowhere near the performance of the bus-powered GTX 1050 Ti. This is the reason why most of the RX 460 cards have a 6-pin and suck-down 90w. In bus-powered mode, it's only about 20% faster than a GTX 750 Ti.

ZERO bus-powered cards were given to reviewers when the RX 460 was launched, and that was intentional. They've since been reviewed, but whereas the original exceeded the GTX 950, the bus-powered cards are 10-20% slower.
 
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Well, 1050 Ti it is then.

Yea, I'm looking at the refurb market on Ebay right now - old office PC's ranging from i3-2xxx to i7-3xxx chips (and 4-16GB RAM) and depending on your luck a very good deal. It just happens that there are a lot more SFF PC's in this market than mid towers.

Thanks, everyone.
 
Yeah good point on the 2 slots, just tried to upgrade a lenovo for a fiend and we found the pcie slot was on the second slot more like a mini dtx board.
 
Your best bet is to hold out for a mid-tower version. I've seen a few going for ~$100 shipped recently. Sometimes you just gotta wait it out.
 
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