Conclusion

Benefit of the NVIDIA SFF-Ready Initiative
The NVIDIA initiative is obviously geared to put its products at the center of your next SFF build by offering you a list of GPUs that fit a wide spectrum of budgets as well as performance. There is definitive usefulness once you combine the list with compact enclosures - knowing no matter what pair of components you pick, it will fit. We hope that NVIDIA continues to update the list and widens beyond just the currently listed 4070s and 4080 Super SKUs.

Additionally, while NVIDIA's mix of the GPU list is already extensive, the fact that you are also provided with not just a complete set of dimensions, but also clearances, means you could also dive into our NVIDIA GPU database and peruse all kinds of GPUs to educate yourself about options that will fit in the SFF case list.

Barrier of Entry to SFF System
What this NVIDIA SFF-Ready "Build Small, Play Big" push illustrates really well is that while, to the uninitiated, it may seem daunting to build a tiny gaming system, there are way more options out there than you may think. Long gone are the times when ITX gaming was a niche and demanded a huge price premium. In the early days, even if you were able to find an SFX PSU that would provide enough power, it was a costly investment. In contrast, the cost per watt is now much closer to ATX variants, and you have plenty of options to pick from, even above 1 kW. To add to that, SFX-L also offers a viable, even more price conscious path forward. Similarly, SFF enclosures themselves were from boutique brands, with 3-4x the price when compared to microATX or ATX cases but can now be found at all price brackets.

Compact Performance
The same holds true with the compromises around hardware, power, thermal or noise that had to be made to build such a small rig. Nowadays, these systems, just like our own build using the NVIDIA SFF-Ready initiative as a guide, are not just quiet, but also have no compromises thermally or regarding performance. The ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER OC not only comes with a guaranteed boost speed of 2640 MHz, but manages to go well beyond that to 2775 MHz when gaming. Even so, it stays cool at below 70° at all times.

On top of that, pure, raw pixel power is purely a base for your performance as NVIDIA has invested heavily in technologies to add performance—or simply said, frames—to your gaming experience through other means. This results in more games being playable at 4K even if you go for a GeForce RTX 4070 or 4070 Ti for example. Frame Generation always provides a huge bump to the raw performance of your GPU. DLSS Super Resolution means you can still get a 4K output, even when dialing back the native resolution.

Additional Technologies
Those type of technologies are helpful as more and more games offer ray tracing. In fact, most of the games we highlighted in this article do. Games like Star Wars Outlaws also allow for RTXDI and ray reconstruction for even more fidelity. Cranking everything to the absolute max pushes even the biggest and most powerful GPUs, but combine that with DLSS and Frame Generation, and you can look forward to playing your favorite titles or the newest releases smoothly.

While the NVIDIA SFF-Ready "Build Small, Play Big" isn't some big revelation that playing in a small form factor is possible, it does give you the direction, choices and clarity to know what parts to plan for, so you can build something like this with the same confidence as if you were assembling a classic mid-tower gaming system. While using the ITX standard, SFF systems have manged to come a long way into the mainstream, it is nice to see NVIDIA push to break down the last potential barriers. If you want to learn more about this, check out NVIDIA's dedicated page to find a combination of NVIDIA GeForce RTX and SFF chassis for your next build. I can't wait for next week, to play STALKER 2 on my new compact gaming rig!