3 ms·

i love the idea of sff, but my one attempt at mini-ITX resulted in a system with non-standard PSU and mainboard (i think). i have an ATX case from college that

• badlucklottery 7y ago
  >have things stabilized enough in sff that i'd likely to be able to swap mainboards for several generations If you get a case large enough to support a full-size GPU and SFX PSU (so around 7-8L in volume), you're golden. Smaller than that you start having to go with ITX GPUs or external PSUs. I think every big motherboard maker has at least one ITX board for each new generation/chipset so I haven't had any trouble in the last 3-4 years since I switched over to ITX for my builds. The only thing you really have to look out for is some of more recent extra tall + wide GPUs. But even some full-tower ATX cases can't fit these without vertical mounting.
• rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  ITX boards and SFX power supplies are certainly less common, but by no means hard to find. And they are standardized, just like the ATX board variants and ATX power supplies. The only compatibility issue that you need to worry about is cooler height and video card length, if you choose a very small case. But there are plenty of really nice ITX cases like the NCASE M1 that are reasonably small, with excellent compatibility. If you want to get really exotic, there are cases that require DC to DC adapters for external power supplies, but if you stick with SFX internal PSUs you should be fine.