Hacker News Reader

Comment by greggsy | Hacker News Reader

The NUC Extreme line is basically that, which IMO is a really good form factor.

Memory and nvme storage are dense enough to make anything larger obsolete for the practical needs of most users. Emphasis on ‘practical’, not strictly ‘affordable’.

The only advantages of larger form factors are the ability to add cheaper storage, additional PCI-e cards, and aftermarket cosmetic changes such as lighting. IMO, each of these needs represent specialist use cases.

View on HN

Pretty much, but I'd change the dimensions of the graphics card to match mini ITX, and so that it could be bolted to the case. This provides two benefits: It can support a bigger and heavier heatsink and it also allows you to spread the VRMs around the chip and DRAMs for more consistent power flow.

Okay, how about this: The PCI slot goes on the bottom of the mini-ITX motherboard, and extends out of the bottom of the case. The GPU is in its own enclosure, with a PCI edge connector on the top, and you stack one on top of the other.

I'd really like to find a way to daisy-chain them, but I know that's not how multi-gigabit interfaces work.

Raspberry Pi hats are cool. Why not big mini ITX hats? Yes, I just want to go back to the time of the Famicom Disk System, the Sega CD or the Satellaview.

> The NUC Extreme line is basically that, which IMO is a really good form factor.

Missed that one. I still mourn BTX.

I wish a PC form factor like NLX[0] had become popular where the CPU and memory is on a board that's inserted into a backplane parallel to the add-in cards (similar to VME[1]). IIRC NLX was mostly intended for low-profile applications like corporate desktops and retail systems (point-of-sales) but it never caught on. I can see the edge connector and backplane potentially being an issue with old school parallel PCI (that's a lot of pins) but the serial nature of modern PCIe and the advent of PCIe switches would significantly reduce the number of signal lines.

[0] https://www.halolinux.us/hardware/images/2249_56_22.jpg

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus

> The NUC Extreme line is basically that, which IMO is a really good form factor.

Is there a case like this, but that is not part of a prebuild computer?

Yes, there is a standard called PICMG used in “portable/luggable computer” industry - oscilloscope-shaped PCs for field uses. Kontron and Advantech seems to be major suppliers there.

I have been thinking about picking up this miniITX, Cooler Master NR200P[0]. Similar form factor that would be completely adequate for a daily driver and could accommodate a sizeable GPU if required. The problem is that the smaller builds are still niche so you have to pay a premium on an appropriate motherboard and power supply.

[0]: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/29drxr/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com