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MINI-ITX and the Future of PC Case Design?
An anonymous reader writes "One of the interesting things to come out of the recent Computex electronics show in Taiwan was striking new PC cases — in particular systems built around tiny Mini-ITX boards. What may have once been regarded as the weird little brother of the more common Micro-ATX, the popularity of PCs built with these boards seems to be gradually building. This year at Computex saw the first Mini-ITX boards to support USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps, and a variety of new shapes and styles in both Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX case design. This photo gallery shows some of the more striking examples of these new PC cases from Computex, including one that appears to be modelled on an Xbox 360, and one with a VESA mount for strapping to the back of a monitor. Interestingly, while these designs have usually been associated with home theatre system PCs, or for saving space on office desktops, there is also now a trend towards pushing 'gamer' features like windows and multiple fans into these small form factor cases."
what's going to happen with all that heat generated by the processor and all the other components for that matter?
You don't have to use the fastest CPU. You can use a CPU with a lower thermal design power, add liquid cooling tubes, and fit it into a smaller case. Hey, it works for Microsoft (or at least it does as of the Jasper revision of the Xbox 360 console).
You do not need a big case for good airflow. In fact the best cases often have ducts to direct the airflow. Also people are working hard to cut down on heat.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That's cute but if you put those small motherboards in a small case, what's going to happen with all that heat generated by the processor and all the other components for that matter?
I've built several systems using these small form factor items, and with careful placement I've built fanless systems that are still running 2-3 years later. I was on a budget, so I dind't use flash storage, and even then, the heat remained 'manageable'.
What I would do today is this: I'd run a standard wall-wart power supply to provide the DC power and thus remove the powersupply as part of the equation. I'd use the mounting as a heat-sink near the heat generating portions of the board. I'd also use a flash drive for data storage. I didn't do any of those things with my current setup and as I mentioned, it is running well.
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It's probably going to be removed by the means of air ducts and high flow fans. The size of a case is not directly linked to its heat removal capacity. Sure it helps with piss-poor heat management with no ducted or at least heavily directed air flow and semi-random fan selection and placement as seen in most generic ATX cases, but it's still perfectly possible to remove a huge amount of heat from a very tightly packed case. It's somewhat more expensive and requires more know-how and though wchich increases the final cost, but it's nothing for someone who can afford dual 5790s.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Micro-ATX is the little brother of ATX, and Flex-ATX is the little brother to Micro-ATX. ITX is a different nuclear family (call them cousins). Mini-ITX, micro-ITX, nano-ITX, and even pico-ITX boards exist.
ATX was initially designed by Intel and the official updates to it have been specified by them as well. The original design was as a replacement for the dated AT boards as a general-purpose desktop and server role. Smaller versions have become popular as more circuitry has been built onto the motherboard, requiring fewer expansion slots. ATX, EATX, Micro-ATX and Flex-ATX use the same mounting hole layout (except that EATX uses a few extra holes).
AMD designed DTX to be hole-compatible with ATX cases, BTW.
ITX was initially designed by Via, as are the updates. ITX was initially designed as an embedded or industrial form factor where size, cooling, and energy efficiency were key factors. The smaller sizes (mini, nano, and pico) have been around for some time, but have been slow to become popular for general desktop use as they have been primarily built for Via's own low-power processors.
The industrial and embedded form factor PC/104 is actually smaller than all of these form factors, with mobile-ITX (which requires an additional I/O board) being the only open standard board smaller. PC/104 was developed by AmPro and has been around since 1987.
The Beagle Board is smaller still, but is not x86/x86_64 compatible. The only current ways to get smaller that I'm aware of is to ditch the motherboard altogether and go with a computer-on-module or system-on-chip design or to pony up and design your own motherboard standard.
Yeah, I was paging through that slide show thinking "hideous, hideous, also hideous ... and hideous." Are these the more notable ones because they're fugly, or is that just the state of the art? ... such as the "Deco Box" or the "Rundfunker", or even toaster fer cryin' out loud!
I mean, individuals can make cases that are so much more attractive
http://mini-itx.com/projects/decobox/
http://mini-itx.com/projects/rundfunker/
http://mini-itx.com/projects/toasterpc/page3.asp
I was looking for a case for an htpc recently, and the only useful case I could find that didn't come with un-covered front (usb, fiwi, headphone) ports was a Silverstone LASCALA LC16M. Seriously, one case?
"Good news, everyone!"
I run a mini-ITX with Core 2 Duo Mobile chip and it runs fast, cool, completely silent and still plays HD video flawlessly. Having a large case actually makes it harder to move the air since there's more volume to be moved. The low volume of a mini-ITX case allows it to exchange it's hot air for cool air much faster even with low RPM quiet fans.
Well, I can dream anyway...
5 years ago I had the idea to build a briefcase sized laptop. I was going for style over performance, and changed my design half-way through due to the expense (I was just out of college and still on ramen budgets) so I didn't invest in a laptop LCD. However, I kept the laptop formfactor for my internal components. Here is what I did:
Using only non-laptop components. I found a very slim power supply that was typically designed for a 1U rack. This ran alongside the motherboard and was about as tall as the entire board (PCB+RAM height) I used a board that had built in video,ethernet,sound so I wouldn't have to have any vertical PCI cards. Since I didn't have to use the PCI ports, I placed the HDD over this location and it rested on the plastic risers (Top of the HDD on the plastic) I couldn't do much about the RAM but it didn't stick up above the capacitors very much. I used a processor heatsink with a fan since this would let me get away with a smaller heatsink, though the processor in the board would probably run with just a basic heatsink and no fan. I used a standard 5.25" DVD drive which sat next to the power supply and next to the motherboard.
I took two aluminum sheets and drilled holes to attach the motherboard to the bottom sheet, and the HDD, DVD, and Powersupply were attached to the upper sheet. They were then sandwiched together and I used short bolts to hold the two halves together.
The result was something on the order of 12" x 12" x 1.75" (can't remember the exact dimensions). Due to the way the components were sandwiched, it was fairly robust and I was able to mount it with shock absorbers inside a travel case.
Later when I had more cash, I built it into an ammo-can and included a fold-out monitor and keyboard/touchpad. It turned into an AMAZING little portable server for things like LAN parties.
With it's 1'x1'x1.75" dimensions, I'm sure that I could have easily put it inside a briefcase and built in a display. I just went with the ammo-can because having a truly rugged portable computer was useful to me. (in addition to being waterproof)
With today's boards and SSD storage It would probably be no trouble at all.
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They'd be more successful if they took it easy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Looking at the "striking examples" I have to ask, does anyone other than 14-year-old gamers build computers anymore? Whatever happened to six flat sides? A basic cube-ish design is inexpensive to manufacture, easy to open up and get into, minimizes wasted space (are any of your components curvy? no? then your case shouldn't be either!) and you can easily lay it down, stand it up, or put things on top of it. I can understand no one wanting to put together a gallery of beige boxes but it would have been nice to see at least one clean example.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
having a large case actually makes it harder to move the air since there's more volume to be moved.
No. It is easier to move a volume of air through an unconstrained space than it is through a constrained space. Just try breathing through a 2-inch PVC pipe and then a garden hose, and tell me you're getting the same amount of air for the same amount of work performed by your lungs. Ducting is essential to cooling inside of a case (thus the enclosed space), but wider-open ducts are way less of an impediment.
Small cases also have the disadvantage that the airflow is rarely straight-through: there are often very tight turns inside the case required to pack so many components inside. Every time the airstream has to turn, it slows down. An open mid-tower ATX case has very few blockages between the front and back, so airflow is much less impeded.
The low volume of a mini-ITX case allows it to exchange it's hot air for cool air much faster even with low RPM quiet fans.
That logic is terrible. Just because you can replace the air inside of a case faster with air outside does not mean you are cooling things faster. It's not the air volume of the case that matters, but the continuous air flow that cools things down. The size of the case has NOTHING to do with cooling potential, so your sentence shows you have no clue what you are talking about.
As far as airflow goes: smaller cases are typically limited because they cannot use larger fans - and since quiet operation is usually the goal for these things, you are severely limited by how much airflow you can push through while maintaining silence.
Most MiniITX cases use 60mm to 80mm fans for airflow, as-opposed to the much more efficient 120mm (and larger) fans used on quiet ATX cases. It's a well-known fact that the larger an axial fan gets, it can generate more CFM per watt / per decibel. Smaller cases just can't leverage that fact, and so they are limited to low-wattage operation only.
I'm not trying to disrespect your setup, but PLEASE don't spread bullshit you know isn't true. The only reason your MiniITX system is silent is because you started by paying extra for (or compromising on) low-power components (like your mobile core 2 duo, which is slower than desktop equivalents, and costs more). You really can't build anything like a powerful gaming system or a 6-core processing behemoth, and expect it to remain silent inside of a MiniITX case (it's going to sound like a wind tunnel). But you have the potential to do this in a full-sized case.
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