Blame radiator support. The top 360mm radiator needs about 16" of internal space. Limiting the top to only a 280 would let you reduce it a decent chunk front to back. Even with the fans hidden between the main case body and the front cover you'd still need about a third to a half the internal space front of the mobo to support a radiator there. A thick radiator and a second set of fan on the inside could be as much as 3" thick.
That said, I don't think I've seen any front drivebay less towers that shrank internal volume to just the mobo + PSU.
I don't think I've ever seen an mATX case shed all the extra volume when it went frontbayless either.
ITX cases have been around in no bigger than the mobo size cases from the beginning. The trend there's actually the other direction. Increased integration and the steady decline in SLI/XFire is drawing former mATX users to the smaller form factor; but in addition to often wanting support for full length cards many of them want room for tower coolers/AIO liquid coolers, room behind the mobo tray for cable routing and enough space make working in them not an exercise in hand contortion. All of which collectively leads to hand wringing from long term ITXers who haven't jumped to NUC systems yet about how big the new cases are; when their target customers are comparing to an mATX box and going "wow, so tiny".
Most people that want minimal cases with few drive bays moved to mini-itx a while ago.
Even supporting water cooling I don't understand the total lack of 5.25 external and internal 3.5 drive trays. Most of the cases these days that do away with the 5.25 slots replace it all with 3.5 trays that can be removed to support radiators. Though it's been growing the number of cases that truly support water cooling is still fairly limited. Most manufacturers just put in a couple radiator optional mounts and never even verify if you can install them and still have clearances.
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Yuriman - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link
Seems like an awfully big case to have no 5.25" bays and two 3.5" bays. Empty space and fans?DanNeely - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link
Blame radiator support. The top 360mm radiator needs about 16" of internal space. Limiting the top to only a 280 would let you reduce it a decent chunk front to back. Even with the fans hidden between the main case body and the front cover you'd still need about a third to a half the internal space front of the mobo to support a radiator there. A thick radiator and a second set of fan on the inside could be as much as 3" thick.That said, I don't think I've seen any front drivebay less towers that shrank internal volume to just the mobo + PSU.
Bulat Ziganshin - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link
probably such extremal economy looks more appropriate combined with mATX/ITX mobosDanNeely - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link
I don't think I've ever seen an mATX case shed all the extra volume when it went frontbayless either.ITX cases have been around in no bigger than the mobo size cases from the beginning. The trend there's actually the other direction. Increased integration and the steady decline in SLI/XFire is drawing former mATX users to the smaller form factor; but in addition to often wanting support for full length cards many of them want room for tower coolers/AIO liquid coolers, room behind the mobo tray for cable routing and enough space make working in them not an exercise in hand contortion. All of which collectively leads to hand wringing from long term ITXers who haven't jumped to NUC systems yet about how big the new cases are; when their target customers are comparing to an mATX box and going "wow, so tiny".
rahvin - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link
Most people that want minimal cases with few drive bays moved to mini-itx a while ago.Even supporting water cooling I don't understand the total lack of 5.25 external and internal 3.5 drive trays. Most of the cases these days that do away with the 5.25 slots replace it all with 3.5 trays that can be removed to support radiators. Though it's been growing the number of cases that truly support water cooling is still fairly limited. Most manufacturers just put in a couple radiator optional mounts and never even verify if you can install them and still have clearances.
Definitely an odd case.