4 ms·

sounds like every mITX. My m.2 slot is on the back of my motherboard. That drive has been full for more than a year and I don't care enough to take apart my ent

sounds like every mITX. My m.2 slot is on the back of my motherboard. That drive has been full for more than a year and I don't care enough to take apart my entire PC just to replace the damn thing. Going mITX was a mistake for me. I wanted to build a NAS and reuse parts from my mITX last year. Only thing I could salvage was the CPU and RAM. Now I have an old CPU on a new MB for my NAS and a newer CPU on my old mITX board for my main PC. SFF really limits your upgrade and reuse paths going forward. Limited PCI slots, limited SATA ports usually, limited RAM slots, the case is just too small and horrible to work with. Looks pretty sitting on a desk though.

flyinghamster 4y ago
Another problem with SFF: proprietary case and/or power supply designs. I got bitten by that one with an old Shuttle cube. Great-looking design, but it was not mITX, it was its own thing. When it became too obsolete, there was no upgrade path.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
Most mITX cases don't open up like this, though: https://hardwarecanucks.com/wp-content/uploads/Corsair-ONE-1-i165-6.jpg https://hardwarecanucks.com/wp-content/uploads/Corsair-ONE-1... In order to support that, they had to make a lot of custom components. This means that you wouldn't even be able to use the water coolers, for instance, since the loops are tiny. To get to the m.2 slot you'd have to basically disassemble the whole thing, and you weren't the one that put it together in the first place so good luck! They're absolute beasts in a tiny form factor, which is the only real thing going for them. They cost far more than any mITX build.
Sakos 4y ago
I like my mITX case, but I'm only going to open up again if something breaks. I accidentally put my m2 SSD in a PCIe 3.0 slot instead of 4.0, so I'm not getting the full bandwidth. That's just how's gonna be for a while.
jsmith45 4y ago
Yeah, mITX especially is super limiting. But ATX cases are pretty obnoxiously large, especially for anybody who has been buying HP or dell or the like desktops, where the Full ITX cases look mosterous in comparison. microATX size is probably more of a sweet spot. Smaller, but at least you are not completely . I would have done microATX on my last system update, but I was going with Ryzen, and the only microATX boards available at the time with the better chipsets just had poor overall quality, failed to pack in a lot of rear IO to compensate, etc. I think the intel side microATX offering may have been better.

flyinghamster 4y ago

Another problem with SFF: proprietary case and/or power supply designs. I got bitten by that one with an old Shuttle cube. Great-looking design, but it was not mITX, it was its own thing. When it became too obsolete, there was no upgrade path.

mynameisvlad 4y ago

Most mITX cases don't open up like this, though: https://hardwarecanucks.com/wp-content/uploads/Corsair-ONE-1-i165-6.jpg https://hardwarecanucks.com/wp-content/uploads/Corsair-ONE-1... In order to support that, they had to make a lot of custom components. This means that you wouldn't even be able to use the water coolers, for instance, since the loops are tiny. To get to the m.2 slot you'd have to basically disassemble the whole thing, and you weren't the one that put it together in the first place so good luck! They're absolute beasts in a tiny form factor, which is the only real thing going for them. They cost far more than any mITX build.

Sakos 4y ago

I like my mITX case, but I'm only going to open up again if something breaks. I accidentally put my m2 SSD in a PCIe 3.0 slot instead of 4.0, so I'm not getting the full bandwidth. That's just how's gonna be for a while.

jsmith45 4y ago

Yeah, mITX especially is super limiting. But ATX cases are pretty obnoxiously large, especially for anybody who has been buying HP or dell or the like desktops, where the Full ITX cases look mosterous in comparison. microATX size is probably more of a sweet spot. Smaller, but at least you are not completely . I would have done microATX on my last system update, but I was going with Ryzen, and the only microATX boards available at the time with the better chipsets just had poor overall quality, failed to pack in a lot of rear IO to compensate, etc. I think the intel side microATX offering may have been better.