SFF volumes for form factors

[Duality92]

I've been thinking about this lately, but for you guys, what are the volumes you consider SFF for various form factors? Intel documents, say anything under 20L is SFF. But what does the community think?

Personally, I think that 20L for an ITX, isn't really a small form factor. I know this is kind of subjective, but I'd curious to see what do you all think! I'm going to tally up your opinions and we'll see if we can reach a common ground to what we consider SFF!

ATX (average = 25L)

• VegetableStu - 30L
• owliwar - 25L
• AMv8-1day - 25L
• Duality92 - 20L

micro ATX (average = 18.33L)

• owliwar - 20L
• AMv8-1day - 20L
  
• Duality92 - 15L

mini ITX (average = 13L)

• owliwar - 15L
• AMv8-1day - 15L
  
• rook - 12L
• Duality92 - 10L

micro STX (average = 5L)

• Duality92 - 5L
• AMv8-1day - 5L

mini STX (average = 2.25L)

• AMv8-1day - 2.5L
• Duality92 - 2L

 

[VegetableStu]

maybe the question could be rephrased to "how small is small enough outside of the 20L SFF definition?"? o_o because I would totally say 30L is small enough for ATX while not technically SFF

(also with the Cerberus beside me I'd say 20L is right on ceiling point for mATX)

 

[owliwar]

the last atx case I've done had support for 360 rad on front + 25mm top exaust, not much dedicated space for cables whatsovever and just a bit over default gpu height support at 30L. if the rad was removed, EATX would fit. and that was with atx psu as well.
with that said, I think around 25~to 30L is good enought for atx. 5L at that size isn't that much after all.
for Matx I think 20L is fine, and for mini ITX I think over 15L is very spacious

 

[loader963]

Doesn’t really matter much to me what peeps want to classify it. But I would say anything, whether stx to eatx, under 20L is SFF and anything over is regular. And I think under 4L is ultra sff. Whether it’s packed to the gills like a dan case with an aio or a Cerberus with an itx, no GPU and a pico psu.

 

[Gautam]

The ITX specification defines them as:

• Small Form Factor (SFF) 8-19 liter chassis
  
  
• Ultra SFF (uSFF) 4-8 liter chassis
  
  
• Tiny PC Less than 4 liter chassis

In my head, I group cases as "about as big as an NCASE", "about as big as a DAN case", and "about as big as an S4 Mini," which sort of fits the "official" specs, too. Maybe I need to add "about as big as a NUC" and "about as big as a Cerberus" to my mental classification...

Anything larger tends to fall into the typical micro tower, mid tower, full tower, etc. (Which I don't pay much attention to)

 

[rook]

Personally, water-cooled or not, I think 12L should be considered the upper limit for ITX SFF. Anything below itx, I'd have to agree with @loader963; 4L max.

My first sff was in an SG13 @ 10.8L but I realize that was just child's play now.

 

[el01]

I think <37L(excluding case feet, screws, etc.) is acceptable for ATX... The Meshify C is what I consider to be somewhat "SFF", considering that when you compare its layout and the amount of hardware that you can fit in it compared to something like the 270R or basically any Corsair tower, while retaining lower volume. I personally like to judge ATX cases by "how much empty space is there" when there is an average-length GPU, ATX motherboard, a larger tower cooler (anything with fans above 92mm), PSU, 2 3.5" drives, and 2 2.5" drives. The R6 is what I would consider a "SFF" full-tower (lmfao those words don't fit together) because of this: you get 9 drives, up to 3 GPUs, and 360mm AIOs in a very compact package compared to something like the Dark Base Pro 900.

For "SFF", I think my initial impressions of a case make it seem (in my mind) smaller than it actually is, so that Streacom case with no GPU support looks properly "SFF" to me. I couldn't care less if you're running the max amount of hardware you can stuff in the case and there's still no empty space (example: The Thermaltake V20 and H200i don't satisfy these requirements since there's still gonna be wasted space, especially in the H200i, where you have max fans and such and still have empty space.

 

[SeñorDonut]

I think 20L mATX/ATX (with 7 slots) is somewhat reasonable. For ITX, I'd say 10-15L if you want watercooling and an internal PSU, but if you're okay with small coolers, risers, and possibly power bricks, 10L becomes more of a maximum. Of course, you can always make a case much smaller - there exist STX cases under 2L so the sky's the limit!

 

[AMv8-1day]

With ridiculously small cases like:

Mini-STX cases:
Silverstone VT01B (1.53L)
Silverstone VT02B (1.88L)
ASRock DeskMini (1.92L)

Thin Mini-ITX cases:
Silverstone PT13B (1.4L)
Realan E-W44 (1.98L)
Luna Design's DNK-H (2.12L)

Mini-ITX cases:
Logic Supply MC500 (2.31L)
Mini-Box M350 (2.5L)
MITXPC MX500 (2.84L)

Micro-ATX cases:
Jonsbro C2 (12.1L)
InWin BK623 (12.5L)

ATX cases:
Streacom FC5 Alpha (8.48L)
Thermaltake Core G3 (23.58L)

And then more gaming focused models we are all familiar with:

Micro-STX:
ASRock DeskMini GTX/RX (2.7L)
Digital Storm Project Spark (4.7L)

Mini-ITX:
NFC S4M (5L)
Dan A4-SFX (7.25L)
NCase M1 (12.6L)

Micro-ATX:
Chimera Cerberus (18L)
Chimera MachOne (18.5L)

ATX:
Chimera Cerberus X (19.5L)

There are MANY other cases in the 1.5-25L range that I'm familiar with and taking into account, but I thought this cherry picked list nicely highlighted my argument without just being exhaustive.

Mini-STX/Thin Mini-ITX: 2.5L
Micro-STX: 5L
Mini-ITX: 15L
Micro-ATX: 20L
ATX: 25L

 

[Duality92]

updated

 

[miptzi]

Stx is not my cup of tea, so I won't talk about it, but for me:

M-itx ~>15L
M-atx ~>20L
Atx >30L