[SOLVED] What's your favorite form factor when building a PC?

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SHaines

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The Tom's Hardware community is surely one of the best groups of experts in the world for getting advice on building your own custom computers for a multitude of purposes.

With that expertise also comes some aesthetic preferences. Beyond the look of things, some machines being used for dedicated tasks require a whole different mindset.

What is your favorite form factor when starting a new computer build?

Definitely post what different form factors you prefer for different tasks, as folks can never predict what kinds of builds they may need in the future.

We're excited to hear your hot takes!
 
Solution
I'll kick this off.

ATX, all the way. Not EATX or full-size towers -- just a decent mid-tower ATX case will do.

First, understand that I'm a hardware enthusiast and I swap parts WAY more than your average nerd. Even so, there are many other factors at play. I'd really love to be able to say mini-ITX, or even micro-ATX, but the smaller cases are a pain in the butt to build or swap parts in, pure and simple. Plus, cooling and overheating problems pop up over time even with larger builds, and a compact build is basically a commitment to routinely (every three months at least) clean out the dust. I should be better at doing that, but I know I'm not, so give me the bigger case.

Something else that factors into it is the limited choices...

nofanneeded

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LOL. Speak only for yourself, please.

I still use all three.
  • Optical for backups (BD-R), ripping CDs, and reading old disks I burned years ago.
  • 3.5" HDDs for RAID
  • 2.5" SSDs because they're still the most cost-effective and fast enough for most purposes.
I also have a HH/HL PCIe SSD (NVMe 1.0), in one of my systems.

I totally Agree , I also wish some one could make a 1TB Opitcal Disk somewhere ... it is by far the best backup media available after tape backups.
 

nofanneeded

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I'm a fan of the ATX FF mainboard, however I've been using the Cooler Master HAF922 for about 14 years...lol just keep changing out the guts. Thing is a beast for space, and I've been using it more as a split between server/gaming rig lately. Fans for days!

I Miss the HAF days , nowadays cooler master cases are inferior sadly. they need to Bring back the good HAF cases ...
 
I'm Waiting For a 1 GB Processor Cache, Which could be possible in the future.

Considering the advancements with HBM and 3D stacking I would say so. I would say Intel would be first but you never know. AMD sometimes beats them to the punch. But when it comes to something like that and what I have seen recently I would say Intel is ahead in the technology to make that viable.
 
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Why this? Just curious.

  1. Because I do a lot of development and I test apps across various technologies.
  2. I can run multiple networks on different subnets with multiple NICs.
  3. I can also use NIC teaming (I often move lots of data around the network)
  4. To a lesser degree LBFO (Load balancing and fail over)
 
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bit_user

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Considering the advancements with HBM and 3D stacking I would say so. I would say Intel would be first but you never know. AMD sometimes beats them to the punch. But when it comes to something like that and what I have seen recently I would say Intel is ahead in the technology to make that viable.
Funny thing is that the last generation of Intel's Xeon Phi had 16 GB of in-package MCDRAM stacks that you had the option of using as a L3 cache. This was way back in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi#Knights_Landing

Even though Xeon Phi is no more, at least you can truly say that Intel did it first.