Random_User.....
I understand the wish of the lesser PC footprint. But that is not always a case (no pun intended). There are several reasons:
1. The SFF often is much more luxury hobby, than to build in an ordinary ATX case, with ATX motherboard, with both having the same price or cheaper, than mATX and SFF chassis.
2. The SFF chassis take not much more horizontal desk space than an avarage medium tower, as it mostly takes up the vertical space, which is a non issue, if ofc, the user doesn't live with a celling right above head.
3. Considering the price on the ATX motherboards is usually is the same, as decent mATX and mini-ITX ones. Hence the connectivity and features of "bigger" ATX MBs comes for free.
Again, this is obvious, that many people woud like to reduce the footprint of their PCs, considering the advancement in the technology, this became even more possible. But unfortunately, this still is a premium endeavor, and the space that being excluded from the size of the case and motherboard, might eventually return in the form of additional devices and hubs, etc, which in its turn raises the expences even more.
4. SFF cases do not suit everywhere. Considering, that it often takes a decent medium tower, with a lot of cooling capabilities to tame the powerful GPUs and CPUs. Doing the same in a tiny box might be a torture for the HW, unless it has its performance manually and deliberately reduced. This is just physics. There must be the room for breath, even for PC components.
Of cource, there are many cases with good ventilation, but almost all of them are supposed to avoid any dust filtering, as it will drive them moot otherwise. And there are areas, where the cases without filtering are incceptable. Not because the owners don't clean their rooms, but the air outside is dusty.

The Von MatricesWhat frustrates me most about recent motherboards is that manufacturers have prioritized M.2 slots over PCIe slots. These motherboards now only have 2-3 PCIe slots negating the main advantage of ATX over mATX which is the ability to use 3 extra PCIe cards.

I personally want a motherboard that exposes all the PCIe lanes as x4, x8, and x16 slots so that I can use regular PCIe cards for all of them. They way, I can use an m.2 adapter card if I want m.2 but also have the flexibility to use a disk controller card or network card or capture card or an extra GPU in the slots if I need it.

tommo1982Those M.2 adapter cards with two NVMe PCIe are expensive. I was looking for a used one with RAID, but even the used ones cost too much.
I buy stuff to play with hardware a little, get bored and sell it. It'd get really expensive with new stuff.

The Von MatricesThe cards with more than one slot and a switch chip are expensive, yes. But you can just put in multiple single-drive cards which are dirt cheap since you have 7 pcie slots to work with on an ATX motherboard (maybe a few less if you have a GPU).


I have a stack of about 20 of the PCIe to M.2 cards that I no longer need if you want any. I used to need them for servers before M.2 boot ssd slots became normal and adapters were no longer required.