What is the state of the art for small form factor gaming computers in 2019...

"From an engineering standpoint" it "makes sense" to have parts that are easily user serviceable, especially in a machine that is generally user-constructed. That being said, there are plenty of usable small form factor builds available, somebody even linked you a suggestion earlier in the thread.

I'm excited to complete this build with an 8c Zen. Going to 3d print a 120mm bracket for the C7 heatsink, the damn fan is almost the size of the board. Ancient 7950 for scale. S401 chassis. Pretty beefy.

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not really, you can get decent cooling in an enclosure around 10L, air or otherwise.

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>to have parts that are easily user serviceable
But why stick to a form factor that is 90% air? It doesn't even help with thermal performance. Air is a thermal insulator, the less of it, the better.

That's an ITX? I can't find an AM4 itx motherboard that isn't crazy expensive. I burnt two LGA 1150 itx motherboards, and suddenly they rose in price so much I had to go for a micro atx case + motherboard. I want to go back to ITX but everything is so expensive, even if they use less material and tooling.

>It doesn't even help with thermal performance

The trashcan is a horribly designed form factor.

Yah itx cost is stupid. The only thing I could see being more expensive is the psu, but of course less is more shekels across the board.

I need to find 3200mhz ecc but it looks like I can only get to 2933 with Samsung b-dies.

It doesn't, which is why people never know where and how to orient their fans. With a tiny case you put two , one pulling and one pushing and that's it.

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like $100 for a b450i. I got an x370 biostar for $50. It's 4pin with an ancient bios but it's been fine otherwise.

wheres the psu?

The thermal solution is close to perfect

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right there

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Mac pros overheat horribly

>its actually impressive that CPU's and GPU's managed to stay small while getting more powerful
They stayed small because bigger chips cost more because they need more silicon and they are more likely to be defective.

As opposed to ATX computers which never ever overheat thanks to all the empty space in the case

>As opposed to ATX computers which never ever overheat thanks to adequate cooling for the hardware they contain

>thanks to all the empty space that lets you use a huge third-party heatsink instead of being stuck with whatever "revolutionary" garbage apple uses for cooling
ftfy

>people never post about their CPU's thermal throttling

There's no replacement for displacement.

>case space is still 10% heatsink and 90% air
>"yeah it's very efficient!"

It would be easier to implement a better cooling solution with that "thermal core" than ATX/ITX arbitrary clusterfuck. Look at all the tubes. How many hose clamps are in this case, just waiting to start a leak?

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what case is that?

ncase m1 (silver in picrelated)

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It's fucking round.

Monsterlabo just perfected the vertical single-blower/passive ITX-compatible design, but nobody seemed to notice or care.

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Laptops

>It's fucking round
And?

>just perfected the vertical single-blower/passive ITX-compatible design
Not by a long shot, but this is a given since they started with a space inefficient format like the ITX

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The middle two are interesting. I wouldn't go smaller than that due to the lack of proper cooling options.

>perfected

>And?
PC components are square.

>space inefficient format like the ITX
You just defended the trashcan...

>itx shills
We get it, you want your DIY console. Rest of us don't, so fuck off.

>He likes apples instead of grapes
>Willingly goes into grapes thread

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>PC components are square.
Printed circuit boards are flat, you can mount them on anything as long as it has flat faces, like an extruded aluminum prism for example. Imagine pic related, but with the flat faces on the outside. You could easily close down the top and bottom and trickle water down it. I'll add a schematic drawing.

Power IC's (like mosfets and voltage regulators) have thermal pads on the bottom, so when you see people adding heatsinks on the top of them that's actually the least efficient way to do it. The most efficient way to cool them would be to have thermal vias under the IC's on the PCB's and stick the heatsinks down there, but this would be very bad to implement given the outdated solutions in ATX/ITX motherboards

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>Printed circuit boards are flat
Yes, I said square, not cubic. A square is a 2D shape, 2D shapes are flat.

>The most efficient way to cool them would be to have thermal vias under the IC's on the PCB's and stick the heatsinks down there
And motherboards could cost 100% more than they do now to satisfy your autism for efficient cooling of 10W parts.

Why not make motherboards curved? That way they can cost 500% more, and your 10W-generating mosfets could be cooled 32.67% more efficiently.

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>And motherboards could cost 100% more
It costs 0% more to add vias to a PCB

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Just about everywhere in the industry you'll see high performance thermal solutions like this, but this isn't the case for PC's because most of people who build PC's only know how to insert things into slots, not how PCB's or products in general are made or designed

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fucking housefire macfag meme

>no 5.25 bay
>likely no 3.5 bay
>might not even have a 2.5 bay
>0 expandablity
>0 airflow
>shit tolerances for hardware
>only supports microATX at fucking best so you can only buy shit motherboards
amazing, might as well just buy a mac then you faggot

macfag fuck off

>0% more
>normal pcb
>cut the board, stick the metal to it, etch it, clean it, coat it, done
>to add through-board thermal pads would require massive rework because you need to find ways to penetrate the board with solid vias during production
>just drilling air-holes would have shit performance because of static forces and sharp corners of the boards
It'd be easier just to literally cut square holes under components, then you could in theory have double-sided cooling, but that only works for components which only connect on the edge. These days the only hot components are hot amplifiers or regulators, high-power switchers (mosfets have dropped to millohm resistance for years), and a few specific chips on a board (DSP, CPU). To renovate the whole process would be retarded.

>airflow

Funny considering how most atx cases have "dead spots" as far as airflow goes

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Funny think considering you cant argue any other point than that faggot

>to add through-board thermal pads would require massive rework because you need to find ways to penetrate the board with solid vias during production

That's not how PCB manufacturing works. Motherboards usually have around 8 layers and need to have plated vias anyway or else you can't connect the vias. You only cut the boards before SMT assembly if they don't fit in the machines

>milling square holes under components
Now that would increase the cost by a good 5% or so

youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_VddkDybI

>connect the layers
Fix'd.

youtube.com/watch?v=1qBFrxy6ljE

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SFF is kind of a meme to be honest but still my next build will be in a Dan A4 definitely.

The reason it's a meme because manufacturers don't care about it, they don't care to make SFF friendly components so people have to crowd fund everything and options are limited.
Instead of building more mATX/ITX motherboards, we have like 10 different ATX versions (which are 95% same motherboards with different heatsinks and colorways) and then MAYBE 1 ITX board.
>Gaming 3
>Gaming 5
>Gaming 7
>Ultra Nigger
>Ultra Nigger Gay
>Ultra Faggot
>Ultra KYS Extreme
While having the same VRM layout of course ;)) Which is sometimes worse than on ITX boards.

They should get rid of ATX and mATX should become the standard. Your average ATX build leaves about 50% of the case empty, such outdated standard. Especially with SSD/NVME becoming more popular.

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This is why most of your SFF shit is made en-mass by OEMs. It's cheaper to build your own tiny board and chassis in 1m units than to use standard parts. See optiplex or elitedesk micros.

>spend thousands on computer
>jerking off because it's a few cubic centimeters smaller
I get you have Autism, but most people don't.

/thread

It's not 1993 anymore you don't need EATX for everyday use

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>few cm
>half the case
>with full size components nonetheless
Real SFF cases are like 1/5th the size of mid towers.
I'm for an mATX standard which would still be noticably smaller with full size components compatibility.
It's just that manufacturers like to leave so much room so it's idiot proof.

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SLI is not something an average person does, did you read my post?
I posted an average build, that's not an average build. I also said there's way too many ATX boards with similar specs and nobody even really needs ATX, unless you're running SLI with 3 slot GPUs which require greater distance between them.
But I've also seen dual GPU SFF builds using PCIe risers which eliminate the need for vertical space.

Even then, mATX motherboards support SLI. 99% of builds use single GPU.

I'm just showing that there are cases without that gap. Like the Define C.

I think you SFF guys would be surprised how much you reduced a fans effectiveness by putting something anywhere near it's intake path. You can try it yourself by holding your hands on both sides of one and moving your hand closer to the intake.

You're a moron. The computer will sit in one place 99.9%+ of the time I own it, and I will not be using the space around it for anything else. Having the convenience to swap out drives and components without having to take everything else out is better than save an inch of space that nobody is using anyway - not even you. Imagine the standard computer being as retarded as dell or hp prebuilts. You're a fucking turbo fortnite millenial if you think we'd ever want to go back to that shit, and it's even worse now when components are much smaller than they used to be.

True, just not as much ATX cases that focus on efficient use of space.

That would be extreme territory where everything is crammed together (sub 10 liter cases).
Then you have 20 L cases like Cerberus which can house mATX boards with 240mm AIO, 2 GPUs, ATX PSU, multiple 120mm intakes/exhaust mounting points.
This is more than even most enthusiasts need, let alone the /v/eddit normalfags.

>swap out drives
*sips*

My Dan's temps are pretty OK, might get one of those new coolers though. I don't bother screwing my sides in though, if i get worried i can just pop the sides off.

I would expect something like the grill on the Ncase is significantly limiting the amount of air the GPU fans can pull in. I get it, you guys are after smaller computers but I just don't like when you don't admit they run hotter and louder than full size builds.

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Sweet I have an open test bench too.

ITX have more layers and retracing of lots of stuff, it is smaller but much more complicated to be made.

Those holes are for intake fan or 240mm AIO.
Nobody's saying they're don't run hotter but M1 in particular can house 2 x 120mm fans just under the GPU.
Or you could get a massive 3 slot card and your troubles are gone.

Not to mention SFF builds are not as noisy as they used to be. Every modern SFX PSU has semi-passive mode, so do the GPUs. There are slight compromises to be made of course but that's because there's still a small market for SFF builds but it's finally got some steam in these past 2 years.
Cases are still somewhat expensive but that's due to the fact that small startups have to pay big companies to do limited batches for them which hikes up the price. Imagine if a mainstream manufacturer started getting into this field, it would easily cut the final costs in half.

This. Where's /ourgirl/ when you need her?

Those are the Cerberus and Cerberus X. Micro ATX and ATX respectively.

>case has mounting for 5.25" and tons of 3.5" drives
>take it all out
>wtf why is there so much empty space

>5.25"
kek
>and tons of 3.5" drives
Welcome to 2019, gramps.
My storage mounts directly to the motherboard. No wires, no wasted space for brackets.

//thread

I personally have an ncase m1 and like it. It's pretty nice and wiring it wasn't too bad (just get a generic braided cable set for your PSU). It is more expensive, but it is nice not having a giant box that is mostly empty for a computer with such little in it. Temperature is about the same what it was before when in a Define S, bit noisy during games, but I wear closed headphones so I don't hear it.

Eventually what I plan to do is mount it underneath my desk with a hanging mount. I feel like that'd be the perfect setup and get it out of the way as well.

If you're looking for something even smaller there's the skyreach mini or a4 by the same people that make the ncase m1. There's also stuff like Chimera but that's even more expensive.

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so where does my 6 3.5in drives, my dvd drive/burner, drp4, and eatx mobo go?

>skyreach mini or a4 by the same people that make the ncase m1
They're all manufactured by Lian Li, but they're all designed by different people who have no real connection to each other.

The m1 can fit two 3.5" drives, but you'll need to take into account the logistics if you do. Personally I don't use 3.5" anywhere except in my server which is larger. But if you need them you can do 1x3.5" on the bottom front, but you need to make sure your GPU won't conflict height wise. The second can be mounted opposite of the PSU mount. You can place a slim drive in the front if you opt for that option, but I don't.

Yep

Outdated tech goes into the trash.

I have a server rack in the basement with 10gE to my desktop, I don't need an atx chassis with hot swaps under the desk. Hence the ITX build I can hang from the back/side of the desk. Smaller builds are just going to be a thing now. I see no reason to build bigger than mATX unless threadripper and you need dem lanes for IO. Most good mATX chassis support closed loop radiators now.

Oh yeah and my ITX build takes 4 thumb screws to remove anything from the chassis, nice meme tho.

>it doesn't meet my needs so that means nobody else should use it

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Small is rarely better and almost never achieved with significant price/performance losses.

Take your shit to /fa/

I think the average people would be perfectly fine using mATX form factor. Probably using case the size of Coolermaster Masterbox 300L

China is leading the way with SFF

K39 , some $30 chinese case.

You'll need a flex atx psu and a short graphics card though.

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I would never make a top-end pc in a ITX form factor. Would just get a X370 ITX slap a Ryzen APU and use it as a multi purpose box that I can carry around.

Just admit it doesnt fit and its outdated garbage

>i hate owning software, i just want valve, adobe, microsoft, apple ect. to own all my software because i dont need it

For future reference the raijintek metis supports a 180mm psu and 160mm CPU cooler, I even test fit a dark rock pro 4 (162.3mm) without issue, though the shadow rock 2 looks better in this case

Downside: psu is the exhaust
Which ain't a big deal with a high efficiency psu that doesn't make much heat, but it's still not ideal

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Outdated? No, just not effective for what I want, nor good for small space.

Got a smol system in a silverstone ML05B, an amd athlon x4 845 and a wx 4100, which was the only gpu that is decent and can fit low profile, single pcie slot cases.

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>it has to much for my needs so that means nobody else should use it
You are arguing for shit backwards comparability, features, and macfag tier design. Are you surprised you are being made fun of on Jow Forums?

Your need is most likely macfag facebook machine tier if you don't at least have 20tb of storage and think optical is outdated.

>he has dvds
>he doesn't have a NAS for his 8TB of hentai
>he buys overprices eatx motherboard
>he uses aftermarket coolers

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I just don't have a use for a cd drive. I haven't used a cd outside of a console since I was a teenager to be honest. I also have enough storage in my server, but I don't need much.

lmao the case fans will replace all of the air inside of a regular case once every few seconds
if the air is stale consider brushing your teeth

>NAS
meme
>buys overprices eatx motherboard
go learn english pajeet and buy apple shit, that should be more your speed

i never dismissed larger cases, if it's what you need then fine. I'm saying that if it can fit everything you actually use and are able to run stably then why go larger? Majority of builds in guts threads are empty anyway, why not go smaller if you want to?

SFX or SFX-L should become the mainstream and ATX should move to the Sliger Cerberus X's volume. It's perfect