I don't understand why ITX has gotten so much more popular than mATX in the DIY market. You are limited to the very low end of discrete graphics cards. If space is really that big a deal, you should get a notebook which is far more functional with arguably more performance potential. mATX has the full functionality of real desktop in a small package.
I can understand the appeal of ITX for corporate customers, but not for DIY.
You clearly have not been paying attention to SFF systems for the past decade. A 12L Dan A4 (no cheating with external PSUs) will quite happily host a full-length 2080Ti plus a 9900k with a suitable cooler (low-profile 120mm), and there is a massive choice of cases in the sub-20L range that all take full-size GPUs and often WC loops. And all will beat the pants off a laptop for a fraction of the cost. Unless you have more than 1 PCIe slot populated (an uncommon situation for most boxes) mATX is just a bloated board for no functional gain. As is ATX for that matter.
Completely agree. Saying laptops have "arguably more performance potential" just shows that the OP here has zero idea of what SFF builders do. Though you have the volume for the A4 all wrong - it's 7.2l. Were you thinking of the Ncase M1? Either way, the selection of good cases below 20l is _huge_, and even below 10l there is quite a decent amount these days. Saying mATX is better than ITX just shows that this person only knows of mainstream ITX cases which are almost universally poorly optimized for space (like the NZXT H200 series).
I completely agree that mATX has great value (it provides pretty much everything ATX does in a smaller size), but saying ITX limits you to very low end discrete cards .... no. Not even close. Heck, check out the Not From Concentrate site/youtube channel for their S4 Mini 2080Ti builds, and you suddenly see what's possible.
I too have a NZXT H200 mini-ITX case and I love it. However, I think user wr3zzz is just asking a valid question politely, no need to be OC (overly-critical).
Is pointing out the factual errors in the original post being "overly critical"? The question was based on a series of entirely false assumptions (ITX builds being incapable of housing high end hardware, laptops being more functional and having more "performance potential" whatever that means), so responding to the question would be both disingenuous and pointless. Correcting the false assumptions should on the other hand demonstrate why the question is wrong and why ITX is growing in popularity.
Which can't be reasonably cooled within that form-factor. mini-ITX is good enough for an APU, perhaps with low-profile extra card, like 10G Ethernet or something.
I've seen ebough tiny builds with 2080Tis (and 1080Tis before that) and various high end CPUs to know for a fact that is entirely false. Go over to the SFF Network forums and have a look. You'll learn something.
Yup. Most people want EITHER small or powerful. Not many can compromise in kind of smaller but em not really. And itx to mATX is not gaining much as they both end up with 240 water AIO at best. a bit less hassle with cables, but 22l itx box with custom cables provided is even easier to build than full atx.
It is of course a matter of personal needs, but I quite like mATX. I often find the single PCIe slot of mITX limiting. But I still think you are right about most people choosing either mITX or ATX. Then there are also a few ATX cases which are smaller than many mATX cases. I remember making a nice i7-3770 build many years ago in the cheap and compact CoolerMaster Elite 361, which is a 25.6L ATX case! It had its PSU cleverly located in the front.
It's less the single PCIe slot (I think the last time I had 2 cards installed were SLI GTX260's a decade ago) that's always had me avoiding mITX than it has been everything else.
The biggest issue is that a lot of my boxes eventually end up with 4 sticks of ram because going from 2 to 4 is the cheapest way to double capacity, and without going SoDIMM and taking a performance/high end capacity hit in doing so mITX is normally limited to 2 slots.
Beyond that lower margins for overclocking due to limited space for power options, generally needing kludgy setups to have room for multiple M.2 drives (wasn't an issue last build, will be in the future), along with a price premium for higher end mITX boards(not sure if still an issue, but it was a few years ago) always put me off them.
I have nothing against mATX; but lower product volumes make trying to find a board with all the features I want tricky (last time around the biggest missing feature eliminator was dual USB3 headers) for my primary system, and unless i go all in I still need to buy full ATX cases to be freely able to swap parts around. (At present I'm maxed out on the number of boxes I run, so it effectively means that even if I got new mATX boards I'd still be reusing old full ATX cases unless I wanted to spend extra for otherwise unneeded replacements.)
That makes sense. I stick to ITX but have plenty of RAM from the start, at least based on my current and planned future usage. I've offloaded tasks and storage to a NAS and VM box with only a GPU upgrade planned for this system before a full refresh in 2-3 years. That will probably mean a jump to DDR5 (hopefully) and other advances.
For the record, using 4 sticks instead of 2 will impact performance to a degree, though only if you are trying to use really fast memory. But if you are building a kit fresh, you can easily get 32gb in 2 sticks and I don’t see how anyone NEEDS more. Almost nothing but chrome will use the extra ram.
2 dimms/channel is only a percent or two; if you're sacrificing timing numbers to get a bigger size you're going to end up behind.
And when I built my last system 5 years ago fast 16gb DDR3 was either stupidly expensive or not available at all. Since it's only available at DDR3-1600 now I'm assuming the latter. Even if faster higher capacity dimms had became available in the interim, I was already bumping off the 18gb I had in my previous LGA-1366 box (3 channels, 4+2 in each); waiting for higher capacity fast dimms that never came wasn't an option.
If I were to build now, 2x32 GB looks pretty sweet if I went with a basic 8/16 core setup. If I were to splash out on a Ryzen 16/32 I think I'd want 128gb for headroom. It'd be running Einstein @ Home during it's idle cycles; and while the current CPU app needs about 1.3gb/core which is probably manageable, based on past history it'll probably grow to ~2.5gb/core during the systems lifetime at which point 64gb won't be enough even if it gets semi-retired from my main system to a dedicated crunchbox. While I doubt I'd spashout $750 for that chip today, 2 years from now I suspect it'll be the $300-400 option I do go for. Which means unless big capacity dimm ram prices drop a lot I'll be going 4x32 for a 2/channel setup again.
I wish mini DTX had caught on. Large enough for two slots still smaller than mATX (same width as ITX). It should also have enough room for two front mounted m.2 drives. Alas it really never went anywhere. I guess the market isn't big enough for another form factor.
because most users only utilize 1 pcie slot nowadays, i.e. for gpu, and the most desktop processors only have 2 ram channels that can be utilized by itx's 2 dimm slots
The reason is that itx allows for a discrete GPU... and discrete GPUs are the only expansion card most people care about these days. Space for a few more slots isn't on most people's want list.
You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty. These "ITX" branded GPUs are mostly a marketing exercise. The ITX spec doesn't specify a maximum GPU length, it's just based on the case you buy.
Yeah, I don't know why the author keeps referring to the graphics card as a "new mini-ITX card" when it's just a graphics card designed for mini-ITX systems.
Mini-ITX refers to a specific type of motherboard size, not the graphics card itself.
"You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty."
Or you can get a mini-ITX motherboard (since, as you point out, most people only need one slot, for the GPU) and put it in a mATX case if you're worried about GPU fit.
The advances in power usage and heat generation specifically with Intel 14nm and AMD Ryzen was a game changer as well as the efficiency of Pascal GPUs (NVidia 10 series). In laptops this was great for battery life but in desktop it means my i7-7700 generates significantly less heat than my old i7-4790 inside an ITX system using a Noctua L9i. I picked up a Sentry 2.0 by Zaber last year and had issues with the 4790 as it ran too hot for comfort peaking at about 80C. I went back to a 120mm AIO on that which is now with my partner. But the L9i on the 7700 peaks at about 65C in the Sentry. AS I no longer needed to cram the AIO in there, I could go up to a full size dGPU if needed though I'm running an ITX EVGA 1050ti for now.
I may be limited in expansion but I already have a 1tb SSD, capable SFX power supply for a beefier full size dGPU, plenty of USB ports including Type C, and solid temps. Many of us who build our own computers are able to do 99% of our tasks on an ITX system like this and many can go even smaller than typical ITX as there are capable high end mini GPUs like the Zotac 1080ti Mini and successors. They may run a little warmer than their triple fan counter parts but with efficiency improvements in the 20 series it's an even better ITX setup and still within safe operating temps.
If you need capture cards, disk space, expansion cards, etc, then ITX and super SFF isn't the best option. But for the majority of builders this isn't the case. You can get great temps even under 10L plus I find it more fun and challenging to build in sub 20L systems and see how far I can push the form factor. It's easy to offload tasks or just disk space to an old or second PC as a NAS too, if you have one, which may end up as a better long term setup overall.
Not really .. I would say that most ITX cases will accommodate all but the the very largest /3 slot cards. So even 5700, 2070 will fit in many itx cases. These super small cards are for v small cases and those who are "wary" of getting an unsuitable card. I love itx and you''ll pry it out of my undervolted dead hands( see CH)
I basically make about $12,000-$18,000 a month online. It’s enough to comfortably replace my I was amazed how easy it was after I tried it . This is what I’ve been doing old jobs income, especially considering I only work about 10-13 hours a week from home… www.iⅭash68.Ⅽom
Why do you think low end cards are the only options? I've got a GTX 1070 in my Mini-ITX build, and since most mini-itx boards have wifi/bluetooth integrated, along with being able to utilize my CPUs integrated graphics as an encoder. It's capable of streaming 1440P reduced to 810 @ 50 FPS just fine.
The only reason I use 810 @ 50fps is due to anyone watching the stream is probably not full screen on a 1080 or larger monitor. Most viewers are on an ipad / smartphone or laptop and sometimes limited by bandwidth.
Here is an example of some of my Mini-ITX builds over the past few years. <blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/m9pAbRZ"><a href="//imgur.com/a/m9pAbRZ">Mini-ITX Build Examples</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
While I do applaud OEMs making more ITX GPUs, calling this "very small for its power" is a bit misleading. There are RTX 2060s in the same size class after all. Nonetheless good to see some AMD ITX GPUs hit the market, as they have been few and far between since the (amazing for its time) R9 Nano.
ITX or not the only reason 5500XT with wonky PCIe 8x only and driver issues can even move stock now is only because NV GPUs has mostly become unobtanium thanks to COVID. During normal times I for one would gladly pay the $50 extra for a 1660S in a heartbeat.
It's a RX5500. I doubt this card would saturate even a x8 connection.
Please go ahead and buy whatever card you like, for whatever reason, at whatever price you're willing to pay. Nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy a card you obviously don't like.
The x8 connection has already shown to be a serious issue when used on 3.0 connections and the 4GB VRAM config. It was all over the internet at launch. I guess you missed it.
... The 1660S is a much higher tier GPU, and if you're looking at that kind of price range, why not then go a bit further and get an RX 5600 XT? The driver issues are also seriously overblown - the vast majority of initial bugs were fixed early, and what remains is generally a tiny but loud minority. Not that exisitng bugs shouldn't be fixed ASAP, but rare and difficult to reproduce bugs take time to fix, and that situation is exactly the same for Nvidia. As for PCIe x8: how does that matter? Only the RTX 2080Ti is noticeably bottlenecked by an x8 link anyhow, so you'll never notice a difference. Also, remember that the 5500 XT is a PCIe 4.0 card and thus has the same bandwidth as any 3.0 x16 card.
A point few seem to have brought up: mATX boards and cases are cheaper than ATX and ITX, and their full ATX PSUs are cheaper than ITX PSUs. Hence mATX is the best choice unless you want an absolute top-end rig, or if looks/space are a critical priority.
ITX is more expensive because it's small enough to make engineering more challenging, which can significantly drive up costs. mATX isn't. Also,premium ITX boards are common, premium mATX boards are rare as chicken teeth.
To be more specific it’s a non-reference design which means they had to engineer their own pcbs. ANY non-reference design is gonna cost more, performance oriented or not.
Perhaps. But unless you go HEDT, top end boards dont have as many benefits anymore.
Theres very little OC headroom in consumer CPUs, with the possible exception of the max core count parts. Onboard sound is OK, and external DACs are quite reasonably priced. 10GBE and loads of M.2 slots are niche features.
To any low-income people reading this comment, please open up ebay or craigslist, and get a RX570 for as low as $65 USD.
To people with well-paying jobs, they would prefer to spend their expendable income on a brand new product. But people lacking $$$ should be looking squarely at the used market. There's never been a better time to go used IMO (even despite the virus). Ex-miner cards are not even a big issue.
I got an RX580 in late 2018 for $80 USD, used it for a while, traded it for $80+1050Ti which I then sold for another $80 USD.
RX570 for $40 USD locally. The other choice was a brand new 1660Ti for like $250.... it's not really worth the upgrade for a 1080p screen!
Ryzen 2600 for $75 USD. A brand new 3600 cost almost 3x that in Canada... for a 15% performance increase, no thanks!
So $115 USD, versus what would have been roughly $450, for just those 2 parts.
If I went the super cheap route, I could have gotten a 2600/16GB/570 system, including all components, for about $330 USD. But I went Tomahawk max, 850W seasonic PSU, WD SN500 nvme, corsair air 740. Gets up to 400fps in CS:GO. Brand new games run fine except Metro which I would never play anyway. I'm in a great position to drop in a 2070S or something, if I ever feel like it.
980 TIs were golden deals for awhile, but it looks like they've dropped of CL.
Every time I look on eBay, its just full of scalper listings :/. I do see some pretty cheap 570s, but TBH thats a pretty low end card now, as its slower than the 5500 and the comparatively ancient GTX 980.
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wr3zzz - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
I don't understand why ITX has gotten so much more popular than mATX in the DIY market. You are limited to the very low end of discrete graphics cards. If space is really that big a deal, you should get a notebook which is far more functional with arguably more performance potential. mATX has the full functionality of real desktop in a small package.I can understand the appeal of ITX for corporate customers, but not for DIY.
edzieba - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
You clearly have not been paying attention to SFF systems for the past decade. A 12L Dan A4 (no cheating with external PSUs) will quite happily host a full-length 2080Ti plus a 9900k with a suitable cooler (low-profile 120mm), and there is a massive choice of cases in the sub-20L range that all take full-size GPUs and often WC loops. And all will beat the pants off a laptop for a fraction of the cost.Unless you have more than 1 PCIe slot populated (an uncommon situation for most boxes) mATX is just a bloated board for no functional gain. As is ATX for that matter.
Valantar - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Completely agree. Saying laptops have "arguably more performance potential" just shows that the OP here has zero idea of what SFF builders do. Though you have the volume for the A4 all wrong - it's 7.2l. Were you thinking of the Ncase M1? Either way, the selection of good cases below 20l is _huge_, and even below 10l there is quite a decent amount these days. Saying mATX is better than ITX just shows that this person only knows of mainstream ITX cases which are almost universally poorly optimized for space (like the NZXT H200 series).I completely agree that mATX has great value (it provides pretty much everything ATX does in a smaller size), but saying ITX limits you to very low end discrete cards .... no. Not even close. Heck, check out the Not From Concentrate site/youtube channel for their S4 Mini 2080Ti builds, and you suddenly see what's possible.
lenghui - Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - link
I too have a NZXT H200 mini-ITX case and I love it. However, I think user wr3zzz is just asking a valid question politely, no need to be OC (overly-critical).Valantar - Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - link
Is pointing out the factual errors in the original post being "overly critical"? The question was based on a series of entirely false assumptions (ITX builds being incapable of housing high end hardware, laptops being more functional and having more "performance potential" whatever that means), so responding to the question would be both disingenuous and pointless. Correcting the false assumptions should on the other hand demonstrate why the question is wrong and why ITX is growing in popularity.krazyfrog - Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - link
I see no question. Only judgement.jtd871 - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
DAN A4 is 7L.Brane2 - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
Which can't be reasonably cooled within that form-factor.mini-ITX is good enough for an APU, perhaps with low-profile extra card, like 10G Ethernet or something.
bananaforscale - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
Actually, you're demonstrably wrong. All it takes is engineering.Reflex - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
Noctua does a fine job. The Dan A4-SFX also supports water cooling if that is your thing, all in a 7.2L case.flyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
100% completely false info.Valantar - Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - link
I've seen ebough tiny builds with 2080Tis (and 1080Tis before that) and various high end CPUs to know for a fact that is entirely false. Go over to the SFF Network forums and have a look. You'll learn something.Reflex - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
Yup, I've got the Dan A4 with a Ryzen 2700X, 32GB PC3000 & MSI GTX1080 from early 2018. It's nearly silent and slays anything I throw at it.There is no need to compromise in this space.
Koenig168 - Thursday, April 16, 2020 - link
mATX is neither here nor there. ITX for a sleek profile or ATX for a full-sized rig makes more sense.deil - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Yup. Most people want EITHER small or powerful. Not many can compromise in kind of smaller but em not really. And itx to mATX is not gaining much as they both end up with 240 water AIO at best.a bit less hassle with cables, but 22l itx box with custom cables provided is even easier to build than full atx.
AdditionalPylons - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
It is of course a matter of personal needs, but I quite like mATX. I often find the single PCIe slot of mITX limiting. But I still think you are right about most people choosing either mITX or ATX.Then there are also a few ATX cases which are smaller than many mATX cases. I remember making a nice i7-3770 build many years ago in the cheap and compact CoolerMaster Elite 361, which is a 25.6L ATX case! It had its PSU cleverly located in the front.
DanNeely - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
It's less the single PCIe slot (I think the last time I had 2 cards installed were SLI GTX260's a decade ago) that's always had me avoiding mITX than it has been everything else.The biggest issue is that a lot of my boxes eventually end up with 4 sticks of ram because going from 2 to 4 is the cheapest way to double capacity, and without going SoDIMM and taking a performance/high end capacity hit in doing so mITX is normally limited to 2 slots.
Beyond that lower margins for overclocking due to limited space for power options, generally needing kludgy setups to have room for multiple M.2 drives (wasn't an issue last build, will be in the future), along with a price premium for higher end mITX boards(not sure if still an issue, but it was a few years ago) always put me off them.
I have nothing against mATX; but lower product volumes make trying to find a board with all the features I want tricky (last time around the biggest missing feature eliminator was dual USB3 headers) for my primary system, and unless i go all in I still need to buy full ATX cases to be freely able to swap parts around. (At present I'm maxed out on the number of boxes I run, so it effectively means that even if I got new mATX boards I'd still be reusing old full ATX cases unless I wanted to spend extra for otherwise unneeded replacements.)
Selicos - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
That makes sense. I stick to ITX but have plenty of RAM from the start, at least based on my current and planned future usage. I've offloaded tasks and storage to a NAS and VM box with only a GPU upgrade planned for this system before a full refresh in 2-3 years. That will probably mean a jump to DDR5 (hopefully) and other advances.amnesia0287 - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
For the record, using 4 sticks instead of 2 will impact performance to a degree, though only if you are trying to use really fast memory. But if you are building a kit fresh, you can easily get 32gb in 2 sticks and I don’t see how anyone NEEDS more. Almost nothing but chrome will use the extra ram.DanNeely - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
2 dimms/channel is only a percent or two; if you're sacrificing timing numbers to get a bigger size you're going to end up behind.And when I built my last system 5 years ago fast 16gb DDR3 was either stupidly expensive or not available at all. Since it's only available at DDR3-1600 now I'm assuming the latter. Even if faster higher capacity dimms had became available in the interim, I was already bumping off the 18gb I had in my previous LGA-1366 box (3 channels, 4+2 in each); waiting for higher capacity fast dimms that never came wasn't an option.
If I were to build now, 2x32 GB looks pretty sweet if I went with a basic 8/16 core setup. If I were to splash out on a Ryzen 16/32 I think I'd want 128gb for headroom. It'd be running Einstein @ Home during it's idle cycles; and while the current CPU app needs about 1.3gb/core which is probably manageable, based on past history it'll probably grow to ~2.5gb/core during the systems lifetime at which point 64gb won't be enough even if it gets semi-retired from my main system to a dedicated crunchbox. While I doubt I'd spashout $750 for that chip today, 2 years from now I suspect it'll be the $300-400 option I do go for. Which means unless big capacity dimm ram prices drop a lot I'll be going 4x32 for a 2/channel setup again.
flyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
There are ITX boards with 4 sticks of RAM. They exist. They could be made.Reflex - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
Honestly 16GB DIMM's are fairly cheap now, and even 32GB is available although expensive. 2 sockets isn't a huge limitation.TheUnhandledException - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
I wish mini DTX had caught on. Large enough for two slots still smaller than mATX (same width as ITX). It should also have enough room for two front mounted m.2 drives. Alas it really never went anywhere. I guess the market isn't big enough for another form factor.amnesia0287 - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
I like Flex-ATXflyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
mini-ITX is too small, pointlessly small. I can't really think of any reason to buy full ATX anymore.Micro-ATX should probably take over as the new standard.
Thank God we have all 3, but I think we should have even more options.
zamroni - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
because most users only utilize 1 pcie slot nowadays, i.e. for gpu, and the most desktop processors only have 2 ram channels that can be utilized by itx's 2 dimm slotsTheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
You can run 2 sticks per channel. That's how multiple sticks of RAM have worked going back to the intel 8086.Flunk - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
The reason is that itx allows for a discrete GPU... and discrete GPUs are the only expansion card most people care about these days. Space for a few more slots isn't on most people's want list.You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty. These "ITX" branded GPUs are mostly a marketing exercise. The ITX spec doesn't specify a maximum GPU length, it's just based on the case you buy.
romrunning - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Yeah, I don't know why the author keeps referring to the graphics card as a "new mini-ITX card" when it's just a graphics card designed for mini-ITX systems.Mini-ITX refers to a specific type of motherboard size, not the graphics card itself.
johnthacker - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
"You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty."Or you can get a mini-ITX motherboard (since, as you point out, most people only need one slot, for the GPU) and put it in a mATX case if you're worried about GPU fit.
Selicos - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
The advances in power usage and heat generation specifically with Intel 14nm and AMD Ryzen was a game changer as well as the efficiency of Pascal GPUs (NVidia 10 series). In laptops this was great for battery life but in desktop it means my i7-7700 generates significantly less heat than my old i7-4790 inside an ITX system using a Noctua L9i. I picked up a Sentry 2.0 by Zaber last year and had issues with the 4790 as it ran too hot for comfort peaking at about 80C. I went back to a 120mm AIO on that which is now with my partner. But the L9i on the 7700 peaks at about 65C in the Sentry. AS I no longer needed to cram the AIO in there, I could go up to a full size dGPU if needed though I'm running an ITX EVGA 1050ti for now.I may be limited in expansion but I already have a 1tb SSD, capable SFX power supply for a beefier full size dGPU, plenty of USB ports including Type C, and solid temps. Many of us who build our own computers are able to do 99% of our tasks on an ITX system like this and many can go even smaller than typical ITX as there are capable high end mini GPUs like the Zotac 1080ti Mini and successors. They may run a little warmer than their triple fan counter parts but with efficiency improvements in the 20 series it's an even better ITX setup and still within safe operating temps.
If you need capture cards, disk space, expansion cards, etc, then ITX and super SFF isn't the best option. But for the majority of builders this isn't the case. You can get great temps even under 10L plus I find it more fun and challenging to build in sub 20L systems and see how far I can push the form factor. It's easy to offload tasks or just disk space to an old or second PC as a NAS too, if you have one, which may end up as a better long term setup overall.
29a - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
My current computer is uATX.xenol - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
Take a look at the Dancase A4-SFX or Silverstone's FTZ-01 (or its cousins like the RVZ or ML-08).It proves you can build something small without sacrificing performance. I should know, I built a gaming PC in one.
MASSAMKULABOX - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Not really .. I would say that most ITX cases will accommodate all but the the very largest /3 slot cards. So even 5700, 2070 will fit in many itx cases. These super small cards are for v small cases and those who are "wary" of getting an unsuitable card. I love itx and you''ll pry it out of my undervolted dead hands( see CH)sunshinerevans55 - Sunday, May 3, 2020 - link
I basically make about $12,000-$18,000 a month online. It’s enough to comfortably replace my I was amazed how easy it was after I tried it . This is what I’ve been doing old jobs income, especially considering I only work about 10-13 hours a week from home… www.iⅭash68.ⅭomKohlhagen - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
Why do you think low end cards are the only options? I've got a GTX 1070 in my Mini-ITX build, and since most mini-itx boards have wifi/bluetooth integrated, along with being able to utilize my CPUs integrated graphics as an encoder. It's capable of streaming 1440P reduced to 810 @ 50 FPS just fine.The only reason I use 810 @ 50fps is due to anyone watching the stream is probably not full screen on a 1080 or larger monitor. Most viewers are on an ipad / smartphone or laptop and sometimes limited by bandwidth.
Kohlhagen - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
Here is an example of some of my Mini-ITX builds over the past few years.<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/m9pAbRZ"><a href="//imgur.com/a/m9pAbRZ">Mini-ITX Build Examples</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Kohlhagen - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
Example of some of my Mini-ITX Buildshttps://imgur.com/a/m9pAbRZ
Valantar - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
While I do applaud OEMs making more ITX GPUs, calling this "very small for its power" is a bit misleading. There are RTX 2060s in the same size class after all. Nonetheless good to see some AMD ITX GPUs hit the market, as they have been few and far between since the (amazing for its time) R9 Nano.StrangerGuy - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
ITX or not the only reason 5500XT with wonky PCIe 8x only and driver issues can even move stock now is only because NV GPUs has mostly become unobtanium thanks to COVID. During normal times I for one would gladly pay the $50 extra for a 1660S in a heartbeat.jtd871 - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
It's a RX5500. I doubt this card would saturate even a x8 connection.Please go ahead and buy whatever card you like, for whatever reason, at whatever price you're willing to pay. Nobody's holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy a card you obviously don't like.
TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
The x8 connection has already shown to be a serious issue when used on 3.0 connections and the 4GB VRAM config. It was all over the internet at launch. I guess you missed it.Valantar - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
... The 1660S is a much higher tier GPU, and if you're looking at that kind of price range, why not then go a bit further and get an RX 5600 XT? The driver issues are also seriously overblown - the vast majority of initial bugs were fixed early, and what remains is generally a tiny but loud minority. Not that exisitng bugs shouldn't be fixed ASAP, but rare and difficult to reproduce bugs take time to fix, and that situation is exactly the same for Nvidia. As for PCIe x8: how does that matter? Only the RTX 2080Ti is noticeably bottlenecked by an x8 link anyhow, so you'll never notice a difference. Also, remember that the 5500 XT is a PCIe 4.0 card and thus has the same bandwidth as any 3.0 x16 card.brucethemoose - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
+1A point few seem to have brought up: mATX boards and cases are cheaper than ATX and ITX, and their full ATX PSUs are cheaper than ITX PSUs. Hence mATX is the best choice unless you want an absolute top-end rig, or if looks/space are a critical priority.
ITX SHOULD be cheaper... but its not :/
Valantar - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
ITX is more expensive because it's small enough to make engineering more challenging, which can significantly drive up costs. mATX isn't. Also,premium ITX boards are common, premium mATX boards are rare as chicken teeth.amnesia0287 - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
To be more specific it’s a non-reference design which means they had to engineer their own pcbs. ANY non-reference design is gonna cost more, performance oriented or not.TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link
What are you talking about? No motherboard is reference, there are not AIBs working with GPU PCBs. ITX is a standard just like ATX.brucethemoose - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link
Ugh why can I not reply to comments.brucethemoose - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
Perhaps. But unless you go HEDT, top end boards dont have as many benefits anymore.Theres very little OC headroom in consumer CPUs, with the possible exception of the max core count parts. Onboard sound is OK, and external DACs are quite reasonably priced. 10GBE and loads of M.2 slots are niche features.
flyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
To any low-income people reading this comment, please open up ebay or craigslist, and get a RX570 for as low as $65 USD.To people with well-paying jobs, they would prefer to spend their expendable income on a brand new product. But people lacking $$$ should be looking squarely at the used market. There's never been a better time to go used IMO (even despite the virus). Ex-miner cards are not even a big issue.
I got an RX580 in late 2018 for $80 USD, used it for a while, traded it for $80+1050Ti which I then sold for another $80 USD.
RX570 for $40 USD locally. The other choice was a brand new 1660Ti for like $250.... it's not really worth the upgrade for a 1080p screen!
Ryzen 2600 for $75 USD. A brand new 3600 cost almost 3x that in Canada... for a 15% performance increase, no thanks!
So $115 USD, versus what would have been roughly $450, for just those 2 parts.
If I went the super cheap route, I could have gotten a 2600/16GB/570 system, including all components, for about $330 USD. But I went Tomahawk max, 850W seasonic PSU, WD SN500 nvme, corsair air 740. Gets up to 400fps in CS:GO. Brand new games run fine except Metro which I would never play anyway. I'm in a great position to drop in a 2070S or something, if I ever feel like it.
brucethemoose - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
980 TIs were golden deals for awhile, but it looks like they've dropped of CL.Every time I look on eBay, its just full of scalper listings :/. I do see some pretty cheap 570s, but TBH thats a pretty low end card now, as its slower than the 5500 and the comparatively ancient GTX 980.