[SFFn] How STX Changed My View of SFF

[Arboreal]

That size board does exist in a less useful form... I own an ECS H81H3-M4, which is the right size, but there's the small matter of the 1st slot only being 1 lane not 16 lane

 

[confusis]

Yeah, alas the manufacturers didn't see the importance of doing an enthusiast grade board of that form

 

[zovc]

NZXT was able to make their weird (but cool looking) ATX board last year(?), going through a lower-tier vendor like ECS.

Perhaps our path to our own motherboard standard would be through someone like ECS, provided we could get a hold of the right people and lure them in with the right up-front investment and a promising projection of adoption.

The thing is, I think this kind of progress would need to happen at the same time as better MXM and single-slot/low profile GPU adoption.

 

[CircleTect]

We tried the community supported form factor years ago...

Wow, very cool to see. Thanks for digging that up. How did that project play out?

All of the form factors that have been successful have been pushed by VERY big companies (or multi-company conglomerates) with a LOT of clout

Fair enough, and all good points. It's still nice to dream.

I will say, that AsRock seem particularly interested in leading this segment with innovative products. They develop concepts in-house presumably. I don't know what their internal metrics for design success are, but surely something like STX was designed with our community in mind. This may be where we could make an impact.

 

[jØrd]

From what I remember the response to the Losias design basically boiled down to too much cost and too much risk. This was a long time ago so my memory may well be wrong but essentially we were told it would cost a metric fuckton of money (i want to say ~ $400,000 but dont quote me on that) to dev a board and get it certified and whatnot, even starting from an existing design thats already been bought to market and using an existing form factor (mDTX in that instance iirc), & money to actually bring it to market, drum up interest, etc. This is going up against the retentively small, and more importantly, unproven market for such a niche board. Whilst the SFF space is much bigger now that it was then i would hazard a guess the market conditions arent so different that it would rebalance the equation for any vendor w/ a strong enough reputation w/ buyers to actually have a chance. OTOH ASRock are killing it right now, if someone doesnt take a chance to compete & start trying new things soon then they might end up leaving it too late to have a chance.

EDIT: I for one would instabuy an mDTX board w/ dual x8 slots in it and a couple m.2, enough for high speed storage, high speed networking and a decent GPU.

 

[trail582]

I am surprised that no one talks about Deskmini 310 is already on the market? It is being sold in Taiwan.

 

[BenX]

I am surprised that no one talks about Deskmini 310 is already on the market? It is being sold in Taiwan.

Probably because its expensive ... The selling price is 207 Euro, when the old Deskmini 110 is 135 Euro.

If you look up the specs, they simply took the Deskmini 110, removed the H110, added the H310 and slapped a 80 euro price increase on it. The motherboard connectors are the same. Even the layout is identical. Very lazy up-selling as new product.

For that money you buy a matx, psu, i3 8100 and a cheap case.

 

[John4you]

$400,000 for a full custom mainboard, do I understand that correctly?

What if Asrock or another company took a mainboard and changed a few things.

Take the DeskMini GTX-Board:
- Put 4 so-dimms on it
- Leave all inputs and outputs
- Add two or three Thunderbolt 3-controllers, route everything through it (docking station)
- And maybe solder an i9-8950HK on the board.

Would something like that be possible, if yes what about pricing, lower than 400k ??

 

[Nanook]

Any mod requires some level of tooling change. There’s where the massive costs come in.

 

[Solo]

So, like, are 8th generation compatible DM's just some mythical beasts that I have no way of getting my hands on?

 

[confusis]

https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/deskmini-z370-is-available-now.7427/#post-96982

But yeah, no sign of it on the western market yet. Will query ASRock on this at Computex next week!

 

[Solo]

Sick. Looking to go even smaller (while keeping my 8400).

 

[changguangyu]

STX is future

 

[theGryphon]

Where is STX for AM4?? Come on Asrock!