I was more talking about the consumer side of things. As you said, there is a disconnect between the OEM and consumer market, which especially shows with thin mITX. It seems to me like mSTX is meant to be used in machines that thin mITX was currently used in, which aren't AIOs, where display control, LVDS, backlight power and other various things thin mITX required to be present are of no value whatsoever.
But yes, I should've worded that differently, and thin mITX will probably stay around, especially in the OEM market.
You are absolutely right, that is a possibility and it would be a shame if mSTX found similarly bad adoption in the consumer market as thin mITX did. But, as I said above, mSTX throws out a lot of unnecessary complications that manufacturers had to go through with thin mITX boards, so maybe they will be less hesitant to design a board around that formfactor and at least test the waters a bit.
If I trust any manufacturer to bring mSTX to fruition by sheer stubornness persistence, it is Silverstone. They were pioneers for SFX PSUs and consistently put out cases that took full advantage of that form factor. I'm pretty sure we'll see others, especially Akasa and HDPlex, jumping on that form factor. Even Intel themselves noted how good mSTX suits itself for passive cooling, and if the early adoption rate of it is at least half decent, it could become quite popular.
Part of it may also be the preexisting market segment. AIOs have more or less been a market where you buy a prebuilt, plug it in, and expect it to work, and upgradability isn't a focus; the mini-PC, while having a lot of those, also has a fair number of barebones systems where you still have to add stuff like storage and memory, so that might help both consumers and manufacturers be a bit more adventurous, though I still suspect a big portion of the market segment will be barebones, just add CPU/memory.
I do think they missed out a bit by not having at least a prescribed MXM slot location and for someone to have showed off one of those small systems with a discrete GPU.
Will you be my partner for a circlejerk around this topic? I am completely with you on every point you mentioned.
HEH
I think they offer advantages as well as disadvantages. We both are aware of the disadvantages so I won't go into those.
I like being able to change power supplies super quickly without redoing all my wiring from a practical standpoint as well as an enthusiast that likes to experiment. I like that breaking up the volume allow the chassis to be transported easier in some cases. I like that DC-DC designs are generally much cleaner and easier to get creative with because removing a big box with an octopus attached to it helps me at least focus on other aspects. Finally, as someone who owns multiple power bricks I do think it helps make my systems more mobile. I just move a chassis that is light and small to the location I want and I already have a brick there. I have one for my backpack, one for my TV, and one for my workstation space.
Fair enough, though I can't say having multiple power bricks is normal, and I'm not sure the majority of people build or buy small PCs for portability aside from LAN rigs.
I agree if you make any claims about being "the worlds smallest" or something along those lines. I don't judge anyone for making claims like that because its hard to get your product out there in this red ocean but they are impossible to define anyways. I will say though I am not afraid of that challenge because after reducing the volume of wires and fan space, and by choosing a brick that fits in nicely to my packing scheme, I can still come under if I was going for that title. Personally I think we should just have respect for each other and stop using language which makes this kind of thing be a competition.
I think it is something of a competition. As far as the actual market goes, case makers like to advertise the diminutive size of their product to stand out to buyers. In the DIY space, while I don't see people using the smallness of their PC for bragging rights as much, or to win something, I do see a lot of people wanting to be smaller than the next guy because of the challenge of achieving it.
This is a genius idea. I would pay $500 for this product without even blinking...as it would save me money. It also has some disadvantages, like all products, but overall this is something that would be absolutely killer!
Ah only if I had a degree in electrical engineering, I'd totally do a kickstarter for that kind of thing, though I think one of the things that interferes with the idea is that there's a lot of stuff that takes different voltages, and plenty of things that will straight up burn out if you plug the wrong brick into them.
I do have to say, if I ever build (or seriously renovate) a house, the wall sockets are going to sport USB ports.
One of the reasons I love this community is that we have all sorts of creative people who have different ideas about how to do small and everyone is quite friendly and supportive. I'm not pushing my point of view on anyone, but rather defending it for the sake of creativity. I would love to be able to do everything internally...I have done AC/DC mods by chopping up power supplies before, but for the sake of the end user I think that power bricks can have their place.
Indeed. plenty of creativity here.
Also there is definitely a case for separating the AC-DC and DC-DC components apart, and cable management is much eased by eliminating most of the wires. I do think a large portion of the presence of bricks is a lack of options, though. I haven't seen too many AC-DC options internally, there's a couple from HDPLEX and one or two from various other places, but it's really hard to find something besides a brick to power a PicoPSU that you don't have to wire up yourself.
The problem is that SFX is still too big.
At least Flex ATX seems to be (slightly) on the rise.
