Computers don’t have to be big to be powerful. While opting for a small form-factor PC once required sacrificing system speed, recent technological advances have shrunk even potent PC hardware into pint-sized packages. Case in point: The 6-core, 12-thread mini-ITX gaming PC we’re building in the wake of AMD’s recent Ryzen CPU price reductions. This football-sized rig is tiny enough to tuck underneath your arm and ferocious enough to spit out fast frame rates during an all-night LAN party session.

Graphics card and memory shortages mean it’s a horrible time to build a gaming PC (see page 7), but a specialized rig like this simply can’t be found at most big box retailers. Portable yet powerful PCs yearn for a personal touch. The hardware needs to do everything you need with limited expansion and connection slots, but more crucially, it all needs to fit. There’s not much wiggle room inside a mini-ITX case. Components can easily wind up bumping into each other if you’re not careful, and you need to consider the order of installation to avoid blocking access to crucial ports while you’re trying to plug everything in. They’re a challenge, in other words.

Well, challenge accepted. Let’s dig in!

MINI-ITX RYZEN GAMING PC: WHAT’S INSIDE

Today’s market influenced this tiny Ryzen gaming build. We’d originally planned to make this a blazing-fast, no-holds barred system capable of chewing through gaming and productivity tasks alike without breaking a sweat. But in an era where graphics cards and RAM are selling for twice what they used to, we dialed back the scope to craft a more affordable, still