MINI-ITX and the Future of PC Case Design? 164
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."
I've been thinking about this (Score:4, Informative)
Be sure to take a look at the [H]ard|Forum worklogs [hardforum.com], there are a lot of active, small form factor projects going on right now. One guy has a SUPER awesome mITX rig in the process of being built [hardforum.com], complete with custom case and watercooling solution.
Also, for kicks, my (non-impressive) [H]ard|Forum sig:
Display: Asus VH236H | Dell 2005FPW
Foundation: Cooler Master Storm Scout | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w
System: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ @ 3.2 GHz | Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 800 | ATI 4850
Internal Storage: Diamondmax 21 system | WD15EADS archives
External Storage: 1.25TB in a KINGWIN DK-32U-S | WDMER1600TN
Input: Kensington 64325 Expert Mouse | Saitek Eclipse II | M-Audio Axiom 25
Headphones: non-amped Audio Technica ATH-AD700
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I'm no expert, but I'm curious (Score:2, Informative)
Microcontroller boards have different I/O. Such as an LCD controller (to connect directly to a panel, not through a VGA cable), general purpose I/O pins to control or take input from any wire you want, SPI and I2C for communicating with other chips. They'll have USB, but are likely to have a device or on-the-go port in addition to a host only port. And they usually need fewer chips to build a working system, sometimes only one, so they can be smaller.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd consider the families a little differently. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I'm no expert, but I'm curious (Score:4, Informative)
There's no such thing as a "basic microcontroler". There's so much variety amon microcontrollers that your question almost makes no sense.
An ATmega88, a lower-end uC, costs $0.50, measures about 10x10x3mm and consumes less than 15mA at 5V when running at full speed, which is 20MHz and less than 250uA at 1.8V, 1MHz. With a few kilobytes of RAM and a few more of flash it might look like a joke, but a skilled programmer can implement quite a lot on one and it will work on a single AAA battery for weeks. Years on a sealed AGM.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:form vs function (Score:4, Informative)
Generic whitebox cases have gotten somewhat better in the toollessness department; but corporate drone-boxes have always been two steps ahead in that department.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:4, Informative)
I have one of these on my desk:
http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure [mini-box.com]
You'd need to throw in an external optical drive, but then you could get whatever you wanted.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:3, Informative)
Small cases do limit the size of the heat sink, though.
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/encyclomedia/
Re:That's cute and everything.... (Score:3, Informative)
You can solve that easily.
The problem is that even if you have properly configured GLX for your Intel GMA or similar, Flash thinks it's not a supported GL environment, and uses software rendering. That's because Flash sucks donkey balls.
Just go and edit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, and set OverrideGPUValidation to 1.
I did that with several atom-based motherboards, including several mini-itx mobos from Intel and Foxconn (with Atom 230, 330 and 510) and several GMA cards, including the 950 and the 3150. I can play HD flash video just fine.
Re:optical illusion (Score:2, Informative)
That "Deco" style case is lovely... My wife would even allow that in the living room, methinks :-)
But would she allow the Manga Doll case there? [mini-itx.com] ;)
Maybe changing the Doll to look like a french maid girl?
HTPC defined (Score:3, Informative)