Teenage Engineering Rig

Is this the PC setup Meccano lovers have been seeking?

SAM LEWIS, STAFF WRITER

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM

THE CONCEPT

LOOKS AREN’T EVERYTHING, but they do play a big part in this build. We can’t really start without first mentioning how cool this mini DIY PC setup is. A huge part of building computers is the customization scene and this Teenage Engineering computer-1 fits right into that. It’s full of quirkiness and comes flat-packed, which certainly gets rid of those bulky case boxes that sit around your house for years on end.

Of course, size limitations within this case also result in power limitations—that’s just the way the cookie crumbles—but we aren’t going to let that weigh us down. Chances are, if you’re building a machine like this, you’re not after a lightning-fast liquid-cooled gaming monster sent down from the PC gods. A rig like this is more about the charm, character, and design.

The computer-1 case only supports a Mini ITX motherboard, SFX power supply, and a dual-slot GPU measuring up to 180mm by 130mm. We aren’t expecting nitro speeds here as we won’t be including a GPU. Although this isn’t strictly a budget build, we don’t want to exceed the $1,000 mark by too much, so let’s see what we can achieve for that price tag in this beautiful case.

Our aim here is to make a 12th-generation system inside that is more than good enough for day-to-day work and occasional light gaming. So read on to find how to assemble this sheet metal PC and see how it performs in our benchmarking tests.

THE INGREDIENTS

AT A REASONABLE PRICE, we chose ASRock’s B660M-ITX/ac LGA1700 mobo. Choosing a Mini ITX board can be tough thanks to limited compatibility. However, with a digital PWM design making this board’s CPU Vcore voltage more stable, it should run more efficiently than analog alternatives. It supports PCI Express 4.0 M.2 SSDs, so will work well with our 1TB Samsung 980 Pro.

It may be a substantial SSD but, as performance is limited, it should help with file transfers and loading times. We won’t be filling this with games, so 1TB is a healthy capacity for this mini workhorse. We also have 32GB of PNY XLR8 Gaming REV RGB memory. These snappy RAM sticks run at 3200MHz and are a good match for our dual DIMM slot motherboard, although you can barely see the lighting though through the gaps in the panels.

We went ahead with the Intel Core i5-12600K with Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture, which divides ten cores (six performance, four efficient) for foreground and background tasks. As we aren’t using a dedicated GPU, we’re relying on this chip’s integrated Intel UHD Graphics 770 to provide smooth performance.