While things were pretty quiet on the SFF motherboard and case front at Computex this year, Mini-STX saw a decent number of announced boards and chassis.
Read more here.
SFF.Network Computex 2016 Mini-STX Roundup
- Thread starter jeshikat
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Oh this is interesting! I thought mSTX didn't have a specification for I/O shields, but either that was added or the manufacturers chose to take it into their own hands. And every one of them is doing it that way, not like the cases we saw a few months ago.
What I also find interesting is that Gigabyte presented a somwhat thin mITX Q170 board, that looks quite swell:
They disregard the standard here and there but it seems like that can only help. Looks very server-y with all the jumpers at the top.
Funny that there's more to report about mSTX than about ITX this year.
What I also find interesting is that Gigabyte presented a somwhat thin mITX Q170 board, that looks quite swell:
They disregard the standard here and there but it seems like that can only help. Looks very server-y with all the jumpers at the top.
Funny that there's more to report about mSTX than about ITX this year.
I was under the impression mSTX was going to have a fixed I/o at the back (something like an HDMI/DP, couple USB and a LAN) that would remove the neat for that sort of thing. Guess manufacturers didn't like being limited like that.
Where do they disregard the standard?
Yeah that's one of the problems with Thin mITX, they designed it for a low profile blower connected to the CPU through heatpies off either the front or side of the board, and the latter restricts the length of the PCIe slot to 4x. Not that the chassis (primarilly AIOs) it was designed for tend to be designed for the high heat and power desktop GPUs put out (especially when it was designed, before Nvidia and AMD started chasing lower wattages and better thermals). I have seen a couple boards with an MXM slot on the front and a couple cases that support such a configuration, but they seem to be strictly OEM (not that any Thin mITX stuff is easy to obtain)
Edit:
Hey, speaking of ITX and small stuffs, what ever happened to the boards like this from last year? https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/asus-b85m-view-paker.82/
My mistake I thought I was looking at a future mSTX board. (Reading is fundamental)
Mal
The Techpowerup article says that Mini-STX is compatible with mini-ITX (and by extension ATX/mATX) cases, but I don't see how that's possible considering the mounting holes on mini-ITX are already out at the corners of the board and Mini-STX is a couple of inches smaller. There are no standoff locations in the ATX spec for anything smaller than mini-ITX.
The two first things I noticed were the internal power connector, which has four pins instead of two and the non-standard LVDS connector. I think the Front-Panel connector at the front of the board isn't allowed either, it should be at the top edge. Not sure about that one, though.
You gave a link to btarunr@TPU's article entitled "ECS Shows off the No-frills H110S-2P" and he doesn't bother to mention H110H4-S that's shown in the single photo that he decided to post in the article, or clarify the reason he's calling it by its previously revealed name. And it seems no one reading the article gave a damn.
Right, the Tom's Hardware article you just mentioned and some other news sites that I can find by googling that show a picture of an ECS mSTX board with "H110S-2P" printed on it all date back a week prior to Computex, so it's probably a press release or something where ECS inadvertently included a photo of an earlier sample before name change. Either that, or ECS prepared two different names for exactly the same board, on used for a standalone product and the other for what will be inside the new generation of Liva Pro, for whatever purpose this serves. That's what I'm guessing.
Half a year ago ECS revealed H110SU-02, which has less number of soldered front I/O ports than all the mSTX boards that were shown at Computex 2016 (four soldered ports, all boards having them in the same order at the same locations as far as I can tell from photos) so I think there was some kind of settlement/agreement among the vendors on the soldered front I/O ports within the last several months to make a stricter standard. I think all mSTX board vendors will also conform to the same rectangle size/location for the rear I/O port shield. Tom's Hardware wrote they don't, but I don't think the writer bothered to look at the back side of the case prototypes that Silverstone made: four variations of VT01 (for ASRock, ASUS, ECS, and Gigabyte boards) as well as VT02 (common for all vendors) and VT03 (ditto). I believe they all share the same rectangular cutout on the back as well as the four cutouts for each of the soldered front IO ports, size and location wise. As far as I can tell from photos, the only difference other than aesthetics among the four VT01 variants is the cutout for the extra USB2.0 port that is mounted via cables to motherboard pin headers, which are of course optional.
Half a year ago ECS revealed H110SU-02, which has less number of soldered front I/O ports than all the mSTX boards that were shown at Computex 2016 (four soldered ports, all boards having them in the same order at the same locations as far as I can tell from photos) so I think there was some kind of settlement/agreement among the vendors on the soldered front I/O ports within the last several months to make a stricter standard. I think all mSTX board vendors will also conform to the same rectangle size/location for the rear I/O port shield. Tom's Hardware wrote they don't, but I don't think the writer bothered to look at the back side of the case prototypes that Silverstone made: four variations of VT01 (for ASRock, ASUS, ECS, and Gigabyte boards) as well as VT02 (common for all vendors) and VT03 (ditto). I believe they all share the same rectangular cutout on the back as well as the four cutouts for each of the soldered front IO ports, size and location wise. As far as I can tell from photos, the only difference other than aesthetics among the four VT01 variants is the cutout for the extra USB2.0 port that is mounted via cables to motherboard pin headers, which are of course optional.
I'm not really seeing where we would need a STX board. The NUC boards are a quasi-standard now, have very similar connectivity, and are much smaller. There just aren't many applications that need the marginal compute power improvements that a 65W LGA CPU offers over the soldered laptop processors, while at the same time being unable to support a discrete GPU. Maybe I'm just not seeing it.
Personally, I'd love a home server build with a NUC/5x5 board, but the lack of an expansion slot (for a proper raid controller) makes it a non-starter.
Here's a neat slide I found that lays out what Intel thinks the SFF form factors are:
Personally, I'd love a home server build with a NUC/5x5 board, but the lack of an expansion slot (for a proper raid controller) makes it a non-starter.
Here's a neat slide I found that lays out what Intel thinks the SFF form factors are:
HEY, a Wild Dyson appears.
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I tend to agree with that sentiment, I don't think it has much to offer. It seems to exist nominally to standardize the mini-PC market, but with other form factors existing so close in size, the only real advantage is the ability to upgrade the processor. The problem with that, is it mainly benefits the manufacturer simplifying logistics, since most of the people who would upgrade their CPU probably have additional requirements. We've also seen that the move also means standard coolers, so the mSTX cases aren't even as small.
The PC market has been contracting for a while now since most people no longer need a PC with tablets and smartphones around, and the desktop market has been shrinking longer than that with the presence of cheap laptops not chained to a single spot. Desktop PCs stick around because they offer more power and expandability, so you can make a gaming PC, a workstation, a storage server, etc. Even an ITX can accommodate those, but mSTX only gets you a decent CPU.
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I tend to agree with that sentiment, I don't think it has much to offer. It seems to exist nominally to standardize the mini-PC market, but with other form factors existing so close in size, the only real advantage is the ability to upgrade the processor. The problem with that, is it mainly benefits the manufacturer simplifying logistics, since most of the people who would upgrade their CPU probably have additional requirements. We've also seen that the move also means standard coolers, so the mSTX cases aren't even as small.
The PC market has been contracting for a while now since most people no longer need a PC with tablets and smartphones around, and the desktop market has been shrinking longer than that with the presence of cheap laptops not chained to a single spot. Desktop PCs stick around because they offer more power and expandability, so you can make a gaming PC, a workstation, a storage server, etc. Even an ITX can accommodate those, but mSTX only gets you a decent CPU.
In lieu of actually being able use discrete graphics, that probably IS what mSTX needs.
Something to let you view HD content and play some casual games.
Something to let you view HD content and play some casual games.
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