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micro-ATX seems to be being pushed out of the market honestly. If you go on Newegg right now and compare stock between micro-ATX and mini-ITX you'll see that (at least as of yesterday) there are 8 mATX Z170-chipset motherboards vs 9 mITX boards. Likewise, all the case innovation right now is happening either in ATX or mITX. There have been very few new mATX designs as of late, while over the last year there's been a ton of movement in ATX and mITX.

mATX seems like a nice inbetween but when you really start comparing the numbers in terms of case dimensions, component capacity, etc. You'll start to notice that the majority of mATX cases are barely smaller than ATX. The Silverstone TJ08-E is the "de facto" mATX option and it's only about 1.5" on height and depth smaller than a mid tower ATX case, that's not much benefit. While mITX can provide a real down sizing benefit.


CES this year I don't recall any noteworthy mATX cases being show cased. There was tons of mini-ITX cases and a lot of ATX cases focused on watercooling.

slowriot wrote:

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv is the case I'd go for building an all-out monster rig. It's not crazy huge but....

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/71321-phanteks-showcases-ambitious-project-916-concept-case.html

There. Phanteks solved that problem for you.

(thanks to the TR Readers Other Frequented Sites thread for leading me to that...WOW)

pikaporeon wrote:

Don't forget another big reason why big towers are out of vogue, looking at something like this is kind of silly

Reminds me of those netbook-SoC-in-a-desktop towers. With a laptop power brick running into the motherboard too.

The funny thing though is that you end up needing a bunch of these slots these days because video cards hog a bunch of space for heatsinks. Not enough to justify a full ATX tower (particularly with one video card) though. I'm curious though - for a budget micro-ATX build, what case would you use? (Mini-ITX feels a bit too cramped... install a video card, use that one slot, and what if you want to add a USB type-C PCIe card later? I already have a USB3 card in my Sandy Bridge machine.)

tanker27 wrote:

I think the Corsair Obsidian 750D is probably right up your ally.

(BTW I have one running as a file server)

I'm running a 700D as an ESXi server.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

Oh great, another car analogy on a tech site.

Yes. Car analogies happen... because so many of us spend as much time on our cars as we do on our computers.

I spend all day at work debugging and designing electronics and software. There was a time when I used to go home every day and tinker with computers and electronics. Lately (as I approach 50), I'm spending more time at home working on my hot rod project(s). It's the hobby I use to get away from my job for a couple of hours, and spend time with my teenage son who's just not that interested in programming. I am certainly not unique. So, car analogies are going to happen.

Krogoth wrote:

The era of big desktop system is over. They have become the big iron/mainframes of yesteryear. An anachronism that caters to certain niches.

You can still find such chassis but they are only found in Enterprise/Prosumer markets.

Agreed, even most enthusiasts don't need more than 1-2 GPUs and possibly a sound card. With terabyte SSDs flirting with $250 a lot of users don't even need a 3.5" bay anymore. As USB DACs become more of a thing I expect mATX to become a niche product, too.

There's a couple caveats to that, though.

First off, if things start taking advantage of high-performance SSDs, a true PCIe x4 slot may be desirable (although U.2 is also an option that likely won't result in throttling, unlike M.2), or even a x8 slot like some of the datacenter SSDs that Intel is selling use. And then there's 3D XPoint, which may call for more DIMMs.

Second, if HEDT (X99 right now) takes off, Mini-ITX is rather cramped for a HEDT platform - the one Mini-ITX X99 board only has two DIMM slots (X99 supporting quad-channel), and has to run a narrow ILM, significantly restricting the heatsink options. So, Micro-ATX is better suited there.

HEDT won't take off, but yes there will always be a slice of the market that needs it and a suitable case to match. Same for people that plan to run high-end systems under 24/7 loads and want a proper, low-noise cooling solution that will preserve the hardware whether that requires large fans and coolers or DIY watercooling.