People's choices in case size (poll)

[Dedaciai]

Hi Everyone,

I've seen more "real world" gaming systems than I can shake a stick at. That is, not the sweet crazy builds you see in modder forums, but the builds the common gamer and regular professionals use every day. Just from my observations, the vast majority of users could easily get away with a decent mITX or mATX system yet most manufacturers still push these gigantic systems on people with tons of SSD/HDD slots, massive cooling configurations, etc. For these everyday systems, the vast majority of these overly large cases have only one PCIE slot taken up and one HDD or SDD...maybe one of each if you're lucky.

What are your thoughts, do you think most gamers and regular professionals could get away with a smaller system that still serves their needs?

The reason I bring this up is that a good friend of mine is a professional photographer/videographer and built himself a pretty beastly (in size) photo/video editing rig. After about a month he's told me he wished he would have bought an mATX rig...planned a little better probably even an ITX rig because of the space savings on his desk/office.

 

[onlyabloke]

I think it really depends on the person, but that's just me.

For someone like myself who lives and jumps from small apartment to small apartment (can thank my job for that) a smaller ITX is more practical for me. Also because I like minimal design type stuff, but that's beside the point. If I had more space, would I get a bigger setup? Maybe.

But I've also got friends who rarely move, or have more space or deeper wallets and have behemoths in their offices/rooms/whatever and absolutely love it and wouldn't change it. Why I don't know, but meh.

 

[jeshikat]

ve seen more "real world" gaming systems than I can shake a stick at. That is, not the sweet crazy builds you see in modder forums, but the builds the common gamer and regular professionals use every day. Just from my observations, the vast majority of users could easily get away with a decent mITX or mATX system yet most manufacturers still push these gigantic systems on people with tons of SSD/HDD slots, massive cooling configurations, etc.

As a computer repair tech in about the only store that really stocks high-end hardware within 100 miles, I find this to be completely true. Especially first-time builders have this notion that "one day" they'll get a second video card, multiple hard drives, sound card, custom loop, etc.

Yet less than 1% of the gaming/workstation computers I see actually justify the full-tower case they're housed in

 

[jtd871]

The only desktop in my house currently is a way old (Core 2?) machine with XP on it in the unfinished basement. We only turn it on when we want to use the attached flatbed scanner. I got it from work for free when they upgraded ages ago.

Our other computers are all currently laptops: 1 for the wife (furnished by her employer), an HP with a Haswell mobile i5(?) for the kiddos (which they use to watch YouTube and I use on rare occasions for doing CAD work at home), and my gaming laptop (with Optimus which borks using it for CAD). I'll be building a new system in a DAN A4 this fall. I don't need or want anything bigger, and I couldn't bring myself to get an upgraded gaming laptop.

 

[Phuncz]

I've come across many more inefficienty built cases, but this one takes the cake: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/the-space-inefficiency-thread.471/page-3#post-15538

It all fits ofcourse, but so would 4 times the hardware in that case. This is wat mITX and mATX are for.

 

[Dedaciai]

I've come across many more inefficienty built cases, but this one takes the cake: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/the-space-inefficiency-thread.471/page-3#post-15538

It all fits ofcourse, but so would 4 times the hardware in that case. This is wat mITX and mATX are for.

OMG...the link with the inefficiency thread just proves my point and saddens me a bit.

With all of the new SFX PSUs coming out, I'm hoping that SFF cases gain more tracking and people start to realize that SFF configurations will most likely meet their needs.

Reminds me of folks who go overkill on GPUs to play at 1080. I've got a gaming friend who has three 980s underwater playing at 1080 at 144Hz. For the longest time, I thought he was on three 1080 monitors for surround. Nope, just one 1080 monitor and three high GPUs just for gaming.

 

[jeshikat]

I'll never understand why anyone would go past dual GPUs for gaming. Half the time the performance is no better with 3 than 2, and sometimes it's actually worse.

 

[Phuncz]

Coolness factor mostly, and mixing gaming with compute/rendering are the things I can think off. I know someone who has 4 GPUs but uses those for rendering, but also plays games on that same system.

Although DX12's Multi GPU might spark new possibilities maybe ?

 

[danielbatmanj]

I for a fact am one of those who gets a case way bigger then I need, as I have an apu and have a 45L case

 

[BirdofPrey]

I'll never understand why anyone would go past dual GPUs for gaming. Half the time the performance is no better with 3 than 2, and sometimes it's actually worse.

Even 2 GPUs has become an iffy proposition lately. There's been more than a few recent games which don't scale well at all where multi GPU is concerned, though maybe we might see some improvements with DX12.

I'm pretty sure the 3-4 GPUs is bragging rights and because I can more than any actual usefulness.
Some people just like to spend their money.

 

[jeshikat]

If someone wants 3-4 graphics cards for bragging rights, a mod project, compute, rendering, or similar that's fine.

But if you get it for better gaming then you're either ignorant, deluded, or both.