SFF.Network Silverstone at CES 2018

On day two of CES 2018, our team hit the Silverstone booth to check out the innovative company's projects and new products!

Read more here.

 

[Bruman]

Emailed Silverstone and the Fanless SFX will be avaliable Q2

https://i.imgur.com/8sVHzmq.jpg

 

[SilverStone]

Maybe. I'd make the case that they spent the last year demoing two prototype cases that wernt (by the accounts of people who handled them) all that well built compared to ASRock's stock chassis. I'd also make the case that their efforts had absolutely nothing to do with trying to push microSTX into the hearts and minds of consumers as a platform and everything to do w/ them trying to advance their own image of being market leaders ready to jump onto anything that has even a slim chance of being the next big thing, the next multi-million cases sold. As has been said elsewhere ASRock arent selling bare boards directly to the public either so its of little wonder that Silverstone has lost all interest...

I agree, Silverstone seems to think they've done their best to promote the platform but with two lackluster cases and no boards in sight, there is little momentum to be had. Silverstone produces the largest SFX PSU lineup and their case lineup is lacking in SFX support too, go figure (keyword: synergy). It's a brand that's all over the place but needs to embrace other companies to make a platform succeed. MITX didn't become this big (dual-hit pun) because VIA was selling Epia boards to consumers like hotcakes. SFX didn't become a success because Silverstone had a few random cases that uses them.

Silverstone: less pointing fingers, more looking into mirrors.

Wow, didn't know we had such bad reputation in the community here as a company that cared more about brand image and did little to contribute to small form factor market?

First of all, we are sorry that Micro-STX isn't working out the way we all envisioned, but we did much more under the surface than showing off Micro-STX prototype cases you guys saw at the trade shows / product launch events. Many of these you don't see in public. We are SFF enthusiasts ourselves too and were genuinely excited when ASRock created Micro-STX (we even built some of their early demo cases). Along with them, we also engaged nearly all of our industry partners/customers/media contacts to get behind it. But as you've seen now, the fate of this form factor will be restricted mainly to system integrator business for the foreseeable future, which may be fine for ASRock because they offer barebones, but not for SilverStone and other case makers as we are not in the business of selling motherboards and graphics cards. Without solid support industry-wide, there's very little else we can do unfortunately. So again, sorry we couldn't have done more to promote Micro-STX in a way that you guys can appreciate or felt genuine.

As for the lack SFX support in cases, we already make more SFX-only retail case models (15 and counting) than everyone else in the industry. We make even more as OEM for various system integrators. And we also recently announced a Micro-ATX case (CS381) that takes only SFX PSUs, which is very rare thing for a mass-market case brand to do. More SFX-only case models are planned for this year too. We have in the past even encouraged our competitors to make SFX PSUs both in public (http://www.overclock.net/forum/161-...ni-itx-what-do-you-want-100.html#post21481093) and privately. Adoption and product proliferation take time so if what we've contributed to SFX as a whole thus far still disappoints you guys, then sorry about that too.

Phuncz is correct that Mini-ITX never took off in 2004 when we cooperated with VIA because it was too low powered (compute-wise) at the time so interest outside of specialized system builders were lacking. When Intel tried to bring it back in 2008/2009, they had the vision of mini PCs with no discrete graphics cards and the first wave of Mini-ITX cases in that comeback reflected this. We were the only one to design a case around it with discrete graphics card at the time because of our prior success in pushing Micro-ATX into enthusiasts builds with our line of Sugo cases. We are not saying we single-handily popularized Mini-ITX into mainstream DIY market, but someone had to start it for the positive cycle to begin and we were fortunate enough that board makers such as MSI and Zotac came along with first Mini-ITX boards that integrated PCIe slot to help made all what we see happen today. There's a lot more money to be had making ATX stuff than SFF but there's always something about cramming lots of power into a smaller case designs that appealed to us and we are glad that enough of you felt the same and supported us over the years!

 

[jØrd]

I dont think anyone was implying that Silverstone is / was a bad company. Whilst I can only speak for myself i can say my anger was aimed at the video presenter in question and not at Silverstone. At the end of the day if there isnt a viable business case for bringing mSTX cases to the market then its not good business to continue to do so. My point was that the inference that microSTX as a formfactor was dead because Silverstone wernt making cases for it is a gargantuan leap of logic that wasnt backed up w/ anything more than oppinion and additional leaps of logic.

I didnt want to keep flogging a dead horse earlier so i left this bit out but the guy over at gamers nexus was actually very careful in the video not to definitively say SIlverstone were shitcanning the cases & also couched his inferences as such at both the beginning and the end of said video.

EDIT: perhaps another way of looking at this is w/ another example of the same logic applied to something else. "Gigabyte stopped making mITX boards, the form factor is dead"

 

[Phuncz]

I may have run off with the idea the one person claiming "mSTX is dead" was representative of Silverstone, I certainly value the company for all their contributions to SFF. The SFX PSUs inside my PCs are a testament to that, even though there have been difficulties getting to the quality level they are now and I'm happy we're there ! I should have been more clear my SFX comment was meant towards SFX-L, which has been an issue in Silverstone's lineup for a while.

I'm happy that Silverstone has embraced mATX with SFX, we need cases like these when there's a genuinely SFF ATX case (although crap quality) in the market that supports SFX-L and considering Silverstone already has the most powerful SFX-L PSU on the market, it shouldn't be a problem to convince people of it's space savings.

But seriously, Silverstone: your company, along with ASRock and Zotac have most of the SFF communities eyes on you. All we need is the one truely awesome synergy project to bring SFF attention to the market like no one else.