I'm a big fan of this form factor, specifically just big enough to fit a motherboard/CPU/RAM plus a real-size GPU. These all use SFX PSUs and typically just an M2 SSD on the motherboard. They also have only 2 RAM slots.
The days of needing a tower are over for most people. I'm all about space-saving while still having a full-power PC.
It's a niche, boutique market but there are some really interesting cases. My personal favourite is the Louqe Ghost S1 [1]. I've built one PC with this (the Mk II). I bought a Mk III case but couldn't source a GPU so ended up just buying a CyberpowerPC prebuilt (which is actually a pretty nice PC, to be fair).
They're not cheap and they're kind of annoying to buy. Louqe in particular has had huge distribution problems in the US (through Amazon's logistics service).
Another popular one is the Dan A4 [2]. It's smaller. I personally prefer the Ghost for having better airflow, being more modular and being able to expand the case with "top hats". This allows you to add a 240mm AIO and bottom fans for some pretty darn good cooling and airflow.
Anyway, I'm always excited to see entrants in this market.
Agreed. There's an entire world of Small Form Factor cases available now with great features.
This Teenage Engineering chassis is neat and has a cool aesthetic, but it's definitely a form-over-function design. Great if you're going for a certain vibe, but not ideal for a high power build, or even a quiet mid-range build.
Those tiny fans and limited ventilation holes are not going to cut it for anything but a very low-power build. I'd be looking at the lowest power CPUs and GPUs available for this case. I'm not even sure why they limited it to such small (read: loud) fans when they seem to have the space for larger fans.
Optimum Tech is the place to go when evaluating any PC part or peripheral.
The work put into the videos is simply unmatched, with its scientific precision, in the space and it doesn’t go overboard in the recommendations.
It keeps in mind everyday things like value for money, availability and practicality.
Agreed. Such a contrast to all the shouty, gossipy, attention-seeking channels. Just lays out the facts or opinions with high production values and (apart from sometimes repeating himself a little) no filler.
The one and only fan is the CPU fan, which is also used to blow air through the case and out holes in the bottom. I look forward to the next iteration, but my current system does everything I need without missing a beat.
My last two builds (going about ~7 years) have been mini ITX. The builds tend to be more frustrating (I wouldn't say harder; just more frustrating and longer), but the end result is always more pleasing.
The biggest thing that I wish were more accessible within the mini-ITX form factor is 10Gbps ethernet. Maybe with thunderbolt it could now exist as an external dongle, with the right motherboard, but internally there's few options today. Very few mini-ITX boards offer anything faster than 1Gbps, and of course have no additional PCI-E slots (despite the chipset bandwidth being more than ample).
I believe Intel's enthusiast Alder Lake chipset (x690 IIRC) specifies 2.5Gbps ethernet as minimum spec, which is nice; but it ain't 10Gbps. This is something that Mac just plain-out does better, no argument; the Mac Mini has had 10Gbps ethernet as an option for years.
HoneyComb is a feature-rich Mini ITX platform [...] based on NXP’s [...] 16 core LX2160A Arm Cortex A72 (2GHz) offering up to 64GB DDR4 (dual channel) and up to 40GbE.
> Very few mini-ITX boards offer anything faster than 1Gbps
I'm more familiar with the AMD boards, but several of the B550 ITX motherboards have 2.5gbe. At least the MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS boards have it. I think it's rarer for ITX boards with the x570 chipset, which is a bit older.
I had a mini ITX case (Node 202) and liked it well enough once it was all closed up, but even with a modular power supply it's a bit of a mess to get all the cables to fit, and it was a nuisance to open back up. The case went together with plastic clips that would rather snap off instead of releasing.
But last time I upgraded my computer I switched to micro ATX and I'm happier with that size. Any maintenance or upgrades are a breeze with room to get your fingers around the components, I didn't need to buy a special low profile CPU cooler, it's small enough, and if I need an extra PCIe slot for something I've got it.
The new computer is mounted it to under my desk where it's out of the way. Unless you're carrying your desktop around to LAN parties I think this is an overall nicer solution to "desktops take up space" than tiny form factor cases.
Mine's in an InWin 301. Not the smallest possible, but reasonably compact. No optical drive bay, one 3.5", three 2.5". Airflow is suboptimal, the front fans turn 90 degrees and blow out through small gaps in the side, so I've used fans there with high static pressure rather than high flow rate and it seems to work well enough.
But I'm not doing any overclocking and my GPU is solidly midrange, for a hotter computer you might want better ventilation.
Only small nuisance is I can't open it up while it's in the desk mount, so I have to unplug all the cables and remove it. Don't do that often enough to complain about it, might be able to fix it by dremelign off a chunk of the mount if I were concerned.
Glass panel is not really by bag, but under the desk I don't care about it. Solid side option is available but I wouldn't pay extra for it.
Size-wise, it is very similar to mine, a cheap Itek Patriot Mini, which seems just a bit smaller than yours. 3.5" bays take space.
I don't care a lot about space either since it's under my desk. But I think it would be easy to create a smaller uatx case by dropping fans/3.5" bays/other things that a miniitx drops.
I averaged one or two a year through the 2010s, but my last one was in early 2020 for obvious reasons.
While most games can be played over the internet these days and voice/video chat is now accessible enough that the experience can be pretty close, in the end there's still nothing like being in the same room as your friends when you're either cooperating to take down a raid boss or taunting them after a headshot.
And maybe more importantly, LAN multiplayer actually exists in case of ISP problems, server outage, or trying to play the game in 20 years when the official servers are long gone.
AFAIK the same has worked in Halo: MCC for as long as that's been available on PC. I've certainly been cross-playing my replay of the campaigns, rotating between PC, Xbox One, and XSX based on whatever I'm in front of at the time.
It is nice that Microsoft finally acknowledged a few years ago that their consoles are Windows devices that have USB ports and stopped disabling keyboard/mouse support. The idea that console users were banned from better FPS input for years was just nonsensical.
Now if only we could get them to mandate keyboard/mouse support instead of making it optional. There's no good reason to force console players to not be able to aim properly.
I know someone who's building a mini ITX computer with one of AMD's APUs for convenient LAN party travel, so it's a non-zero number! Been years since I went to one.
I like handles. I had mac pros with them (g4 and original). My system76 mini desktop has a nice case and is significantly lighter, but the handles are a nice touch.
The mention literally crashing the machine on the original design when the case broke, hopefully means this one is quite sturdy.
Big annoyance with SFF builds is noise. Many of these are overall smaller than just my GPU and CPU cooler, and SFX PSUs have smaller fans and aren’t available in passive configurations. And they’re usually more expensive than a more normal-sized build.
There are really two flavours of SFF PC: those with a full-power GPU (typically for gaming or professional use) and those that don't. For the latter, it shouldn't be too hard to build something even passively cooled. You can go even smaller. I know less about this space because it hasn't been my focus however.
Gaming SFF PCs are my jam and here the Louqe Ghost S1 holds up extremely well:
1. It takes almost all double-slot cards. Getting something a little shorter can help in terms of getting the card in and out and for cable management but there's really no need to shop for a specific shorter model. The more than two slot cards (eg RTX 3090, RX6900XT) won't fit but say a 3080 (assuming you can even get one) will be just fine;
2. My personal preference for PSU is something like the Corsair SF750. It's a 750W highly-rated SFX form factor PSU. It works well, can power a 3080 system and seems to be relatively quiet;
3. The Ghost with a top hat can then mount something like an NZXT Kraken X530 AIO to cool your PC. This is going to cut down a lot of your noise; and
4. With a separate top hat on the bottom of the case you mount two quality Noctua 120mm fans in exhaust (meaning it pulls air from the case).
The net effect of all this is that air is drawn in from the sides and expelled out from the top and bottom. It is also a negative pressure set up, meaning there is more force for exhaust than intake.
Positive pressure would be nice for keeping dust out of your case but negative pressure here is better for airflow and thus noise (by operating at lower RPM).
The above will have almost full case power and airflow and be relatively quiet. It won't be as good as you can get with a full or mid tower case but it's pretty darn close.
Not really any more. Most popular mini-ITX cases for enthusiasts support 240mm AIOs for CPU cooling. Noctua even has low-profile air coolers that fit in some mini-ITX cases and rival their biggest heatsinks in performance.
The SFX PSUs are slightly more expensive, but the good ones are so efficient that the fans won't even turn on during normal (non-gaming) use.
They do OK in noise-normalized tests, which are good for comparing and still relatively easy to perform. They're inadequate for quiet operation though. In fact the huge coolers I am using currently are barely adequate for their respective components - they require clearly audible fan speeds to avoid unhealthily high temperatures under sustained load. Certainly not extremely quiet; I'm not really happy with it, and I have the best air coolers with some of the best fans and the best thermal compound on the market and I have very carefully tuned fan profiles. Water cooling would offer slightly better cooling performance, but it has other issues - mainly pump and motor noise - plus it's rather expensive (more than 10x the cost of air cooling).
You can of course make an extremely quiet SFF build, just not with an upper-midrange CPU and a highend GPU. With the same components you can make a decently quiet mid-tower desktop, like I have.
("Extremely quiet", "virtually noiseless" and so on are pet-peeve phrases of mine - I'm always assuming that marketing people are half-deaf because they keep referring to stuff emitting 20 dBa or more like this.)
If your goal is as close to noiseless as possible, a big case with a lot of sound dampening material is the way to go.
However, the modern SFF experience is much better than you give it credit for. An AMD 5950X with a 240mm AIO in a mini-ITX case is easy these days and it keeps the CPU temperature in a reasonable range.
But if your goal is a no-compromise quietest build possible, obviously you don't want to get a small case.
> plus it's rather expensive (more than 10x the cost of air cooling).
I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers, but modern AIO water cooling isn't that expensive.
> I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers, but modern AIO water cooling isn't that expensive.
I could have been more clear here, I meant a custom-loop, not an AIO since they're a sidegrade to a top-end air-cooler at best.
> However, the modern SFF experience is much better than you give it credit for. An AMD 5950X with a 240mm AIO in a mini-ITX case is easy these days and it keeps the CPU temperature in a reasonable range.
I don't see the contradiction - you can have a quiet SSF build, and you can have pretty powerful SFF builds (enthusiast GPUs might be a problem), but you can't really have both at the same time... at least not under load.
The space is evolving. https://www.winterdesign.co/ -- this ultimately proved too expensive to produce in large quantities (due to the massive spike in the price of Aluminium), but it's a mini-ITX case with 2x280mm radiators.
I managed get one cheap-ish from the Kickstarter, and while it's got some flaws (and was a total bastard to build in -- it's a very small space to do a custom loop), it's everything promised on the tin; small, quiet, powerful (5600X and a 6800XT -- even when gaming the fans don't ramp above 40%, though admittedly that may change in summer).
> I could have been more clear here, I meant a custom-loop, not an AIO since they're a sidegrade to a top-end air-cooler at best.
Custom loop and an AIO of the same size are going to perform the same. I don't understand why you're suggesting that water cooling costs "10X" as much as air cooling when that's clearly not true.
An AIO and a custom loop with the same size radiator will perform the same. I've done custom loops and I've done AIOs. There's nothing special about a custom loop other than you get to mix and match different components.
Also, the top-end air coolers like Noctua perform almost as well as liquid cooling these days.
> I don't see the contradiction - you can have a quiet SSF build, and you can have pretty powerful SFF builds (enthusiast GPUs might be a problem), but you can't really have both at the same time... at least not under load.
I'm telling you - I have a 5950X and a 240mm AIO in a SFF and it's quiet. I could move the same CPU and the same AIO to a big case with sound dampening and it might be marginally quieter, but not by a huge amount. The only real difference is when I'm running the GPU at full tilt during gaming, but it's undervolted and I can't hear it over the game anyway so I really don't care.
PCIe 4.0 x16 (16 lanes) has a bandwidth of 32GB/s, which is 256Gbps.
So external GPUs are always going to be inferior. Also, an external case incurs a lot of extra unavoidable costs. Essentially you have a mini-PC case, a TB to PCI-e bridge, a PCI-e interface and mount and possibly cooling as well.
It's a nice idea and has some applications but on-chip GPUs as part of a fully-integrated SoC just makes way more sense for almost everybody.
I bought a Louqe Ghost S1 from the original Kickstarter, I still love it. Solid as a rock, really high quality. There are a few minor design issues like the tophats warping if you screw them in too hard but otherwise it's the perfect form factor (plus it looks great).
I built it with a 1080ti etc and it's had no cooling problems apart from the 2 m.2 ssds getting a little toasty (alleviated by adding a fan under where the psu sits; I cool using a 240mm radiator in the top so the motherboard wasn't getting much airflow from that).
I think being able to fit MicroATX gives you a bit more options and they are not that much larger. From the picture I would have guessed it could fit it. Nice overall look though.
r/sffpc is solid with a spreadsheet covering parts, cases, etc for compatibility and more. I just moved into a Lian Li Q58 from an SG05, bigger but cooler.
I have plenty of room so I like my tower, thank you very much. I have plenty of room and it allows me to play with various disk combos and multiple video cards. I love the mac mini for other reasons and use it as a NAS and multimedia center in my living room where space is as a premium for hiding away stuff. There is no reason to assume no one else has a need for other form factors than these mini computers.
> The days of needing a tower are over for most people. I'm all about space-saving while still having a full-power PC.
Have you seen the air-cooler on a threadripper ?! :-)
I don't really disagree with you but I like my old tower box because it has lots of room and easy to work on, and I realize that was why I liked my old car because engine compartment had lots of room to work.
>I'm a big fan of this form factor, specifically just big enough to fit a motherboard/CPU/RAM plus a real-size GPU.
This doesn't really fit any decent GPU at 180 mm. I think the single-fan ASUS RTX 3060 Phoenix is 177 mm and would just fit, but I'd be a bit worried about the cooling at that point.
The Dr Zaber Sentry case is also pretty good http://zaber.com.pl/sentry/. I'm not sure they will make them again though. Mine is pretty nice, though you need to be careful about your GPU size.
> The days of needing a tower are over for most people. I'm all about space-saving while still having a full-power PC
If you want a powerful space saving device, get a powerful laptop. If you want power, cooling, adaptability and room you get a tower.
This mini desktop form factor is the worst of both worlds.
There are laptops with 16 threads, a 3080, 2x nvme and 2x ram slots and weigh 5lbs that run at 70C at full throttle, 40C idling - oh and integrated 3 hour UPS.
A tower otoh can fit 8+ disks, 2 or 3 gpus, plenty of quiet cooling and most importantly doesn't make you cuss every time you add/change a component because there is lots of room to get your hands in there.
You want a portable tower? Get one with handles on it. How often do you really move it anyway.
I don't know about this "boutique" vibe. For me the entire idea of a desktop PC is saying "no" to any trade-offs. There's so little actual difference in footprint between those and classic middle-tower that it actually does not make any sense to me. Instead I prefer to have an ability to infinite expansion and upgrade. What if I want a super wide bandwidth storage for some data processing? I will buy an expansion PCI card for like 40 bucks and put 4 M.2 NVMes there as RAID0 stripe. Having an ability to expand RAM instead of trading in is quite good too. And last, but not least, a question of price. $200 for a case without PSU?!
I have an Antec something-500 from 15 years ago and a Caselabs ITX case that is larger (for custom cooling, etc - I never did use the space) and in 2018 transplanted the guts into a SFF from Sliger and I could fit four of my new case into the Caselabs case - and they are commanding quite the premium in the afterlife.
Height and Width are less than my MacBook Pro (deeper of course but still only 13.5cm)
I don't compromise on much, sure there's only a single PCIe slot but it's got a full size GPU in it (rx5700 reference design), a 650W Gold modular (SFX) power supply. RAM is 16G (lots for my use case - the MB is 2015, not sure it supports more - but with 64G sticks I don't think two slots is much of a limit), a M2 PCIe drive and a separate 2.5" SSD, two Noctua 120mm case fans and a decent after market CPU cooler. It's quiet and it runs cool.
Lastly on price. A good quality power supply is going to run you 150-200 and most decent cases are in the 150-200 range without a power supply anyways. These are small run manufacturers too so that makes them pricy too, but they'll last 5-10 years (eg a couple of MB upgrades) so worth the investment to some.
They are a pain in the ass to build in though :). (The Ghost looks a bit easier but wasn't really available at the time)
One PCI slot is effectively zero PCI slots because I don't know who is seriously using internal graphics. Maybe as a temporary solution to get things up and running and buy GPU later (doesn't work with AMD, though). This, by the way, is another perk of a desktop PC - the ability to postpone some upgrades.
To expand the RAM you will have to buy new sticks first and then try to sell old ones, with the discount, of course. My ATX board supports 4 sticks, so I could start with just one 16Gb (with bandwidth penalty, but still) and pump it up to 64Gb without any reselling hussle. I am also a happy owner of ASRock B350 motherboard so it is 6 years from Zen 1 to Zen 3 all the way for me.
I don't even want to start bragging about switching from air to water cooling for silence sake, I don't think it is even possible with mini ITX form factor.
So, once again, for me the main perk of desktop PC is upgradability, and mini ITX seriously impairs that.
I don't game (but would like to be able too). I ran intel integrated graphics for 5 years and never missed a thing ;).
I put 16G in my machine in '15 and rarely exceed 3-4G daily use even today (and for a long time 1-2G daily - I recently switched to Budgie desktop so it's jumped a bit). At this point I'd just buy new ram and the two sticks I have go into the surplus pile but my motherboard (depend on source) only supports 16 (it's oldish also from 2015)
There are water cooling for SFF cases (mine can take a 120MM radiator for instance - the ghost mentioned upthread can take up to a full 360 with the tophat) but I put a Noctua CPU cooler in and changed out the fan on it. Stays nice and cool. My Caselabs itx case could do up to 3 360MM Radiators but was not SFF (by a large amount!).
On the upgrade path, it's so long between that I usually just build a new machine, 6+ years so far on my current desktop and good enough until I find it not. By then, DDR5. PCIE 4.x, etc, etc
I am not trying to convince you to get one, just show that there's a market for SFF... just like there's one for latops, rackmounts, NUCS, stickpcs, Pis and yes even EATX Threadripper monsters in cases on casters ;)
With your circumstances (internal graphics, 4GB RAM tops) I would consider using Raspberry PI 4 as a desktop computer (seriously, no sarcasm). If you are interested in reduced footprint, take a look at Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny series: they have a VESA mount to hang behind the monitor and the price starts around $400 (your ITX case + PSU)
No quite enough CPU ;). It's getting a bit dated of course, but my machine is running a Devils Canyon 4790k (at stock speeds), 16G ram, 1.5TB of storage (NVME M2 and a 2.5" drive) and a rx5700.
If you don’t mind limiting your CPU choices, there’s nothing stopping you from using one of AMD’s CPUs that come with integrated graphics. I did this for a short while with a Ryzen 5 2400G before purchasing an external graphics card (and eventually replacing the CPU too).
Recently bought a zotac magnus (pre-built). It was a little pricey because it came with a 3070 but easily expandable.
it takes 2 x m.2 ssd, 1 x 2.5" sata hd, 2 x laptop ram.
I agree wholeheartedly. I built my first ITX machine at the beginning of 2021, and the case choices were fairly dire. The Ghost S1 was sold out, and finding anything else with a decent aesthetic that didn't cost $200+ USD was near impossible. I settled on a Silverstone SG13, which is great utilitarian case, and supports decent sized GPUs.
Finding a GPU to fit a SFF case this year was a whole other issue, but I too am glad to see some more companies get into this space. I want some nicer ITX options, I want to see the variety that ATX and "larger" cases see.
Before my Ghost some 7-8 years ago I built a SFF PC with a Silverstone case. IIRC it was the SG08. It's old enough that it had a tray and a slot to put a slimline optical drive. It wasn't a bad case and had a decent PSU included but it was a bit fiddly. For example, you had to remove a few things to get into the case properly. I also ended up breaking the wire to some button at the back.
But yeah I sympathize with the issues in sourcing the Ghost. My first one took like 8 months to get.
The days of needing a tower are over for most people. I'm all about space-saving while still having a full-power PC.
It's a niche, boutique market but there are some really interesting cases. My personal favourite is the Louqe Ghost S1 [1]. I've built one PC with this (the Mk II). I bought a Mk III case but couldn't source a GPU so ended up just buying a CyberpowerPC prebuilt (which is actually a pretty nice PC, to be fair).
They're not cheap and they're kind of annoying to buy. Louqe in particular has had huge distribution problems in the US (through Amazon's logistics service).
Another popular one is the Dan A4 [2]. It's smaller. I personally prefer the Ghost for having better airflow, being more modular and being able to expand the case with "top hats". This allows you to add a 240mm AIO and bottom fans for some pretty darn good cooling and airflow.
Anyway, I'm always excited to see entrants in this market.
[1]: https://www.louqe.com/ghost-s1/
[2]: https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php