To SFF or not to SFF

neo-omega · 27 Mar 2012 at 20:09

Hey everyone! It's been ages since I've tinkered with my pc (unchanged from sig) and after seeing the hype of the Ivybridge and the excellent performance of both the HD7970 and GTX680 I thought now is the time to upgrade.
I'm certain I'm going to go for a i7 3770K, 2 sets of samsung green 8gb, nvidia gtx 680, blu ray drive and a 3tb hdd for storage (i already have a crucial sdd for the system).

what i don't know is: do i go big or do i go small? i am torn between going for an 800d with full watercooling, or to go for something like the new Shuttle SZ77R5 (link to the left).

As far as I can tell, other than the lack of being able to put in a dedicated sound card and having to deal with slightly higher temps, there is no difference in the performance of these 2 form factors. Given that the shuttle would be considerably cheaper why should I consider the 800D route?

Essentially, what would the noticable differences be between SFF and full size? What would I miss out on?

gropingmantis · 27 Mar 2012 at 20:24

You would miss out on that second set of RAM and extra expansion slots. No easy custom water either but not too huge of an issue.

Basically if you want more than 8GB (16GB if you can find the 8GB sticks and dont mind the price) and dedicated sound cards and/or SLi/Crossfire then teeny tiny ITX is not for you.

But you could meet in the middle and go mATX which would allow you to have your 4 RAM slots and extra space for multi-GPU/soundcard setups but you could put it all in a fairly neat, small package.

edit: just realised you linked the Shuttle which DOES have 4 RAM slots so pretty much you are just missing out on custom cooling and extra expansion slots.

neo-omega · 27 Mar 2012 at 20:41

Exactly, and I can get the mini PCIe cards for wifi and for an SSD as well, so basically all that i'm missing out on is a dedicated sound card I guess?

How are the temps in a shuttle? Would I be restricted in the clocks I could get? I'd be looking to get a sealed WC unit for the CPU like SimonMaltby's.

If there's no other catches then why doesn't everyone go SFF? It seems to be a very well kept secret!

gropingmantis · 27 Mar 2012 at 21:21

Its because until very recently SFF basically meant low power and rubbish but now you can have a proper CPU going full tilt and any GPU. There is still a price premium to pay of course which I guess may put people off and the fact that often you have to research to make sure things will fit rather than just whacking stuff in willy nilly.

RimBlock · 28 Mar 2012 at 05:23

I had the same choice a little while ago and stuck with my ATX board rather than moving down.

The deal breaker for me was the single usable PCIe slot with my HD6970 installed. After getting my Asus Xoner DX (for music rather than games) I find the onboard audio chipset to be a bit lacklustre.

It is worth noting that it is also not uncommon for the mSATA ports to share the standard SATA bandwidth. mSATA SSDs are also still pretty small (20/40/80GB range) and fairly pricey. Whilst the Shuttle does have two PCIe slots, one will be unusable if you use a dual slot graphics card.

The Shuttle looks like a pretty nice unit all in.

I have a mITX WHS 2011 box and a mITX ESXi Virtualization server at home but my main machine will stay MATX as a minimum for now.

RB

gropingmantis · 28 Mar 2012 at 08:52

The alternative of course, that I use, is to get a board with digital audio out and plug that into a DAC. Yes it can add more money but you can buy DACs for the price of soundcards but it does add yet another box to my desk but my whole system is still significantly smaller than most people's much less capable rigs.

hawker1986 · 30 Mar 2012 at 08:35

I had my main PC as mATX for a good few years and tbh I have reverted to full ATX size because you just dont have the versatility and fitting things is cramped if your always on the upgrade

. Also temps were a problem, things are better now but from here on out my main PC is going to be ATX. To balance the arguement the Mrs has a mITX quad core PC because she doesnt do much with it its great for her to have something small and quiet, ive also got a mITX server and a mATX HTPC, so I really think small PCs have a place, but for me that is not with a high end rig.

Hawker