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Comment by khaki54 | Hacker News Reader

Looks interesting, not sure what "deep" MicroATX is other than being out of spec for MicroATX by about 19 sq. inches. I like the high core count of the Xeon processors but 15x price premium over top of the line desktop/or enthusiast CPUs is hard to justify for anything outside large corporation or research activity.

Old hotness: Building a computer in a huge EATX case with lots of room to work, multi-gpu SLI, and massive airflow for overclocking that fits (12) 3.5" HDD.

New hotness: Building a computer in custom mini/microatx form factor w/ watercooling and massive amount of cores and memory running nearly silent

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I did a mini ATX build, it is a good way to get some of the old fashioned PC building flavor: Working with terribly un-ergonomic cases, and worrying about compatibility issues.

> Looks interesting, not sure what "deep" MicroATX is other than being out of spec for MicroATX by about 19 sq. inches

Look at the orientation of the ram slots and the fins on the heatsinks, this is clearly designed for 1U and 2U rackmount chassis front to rear airflow. The board being slightly smaller than regular ATX is helpful in fitting more ridiculous-speed 40mm height fans into the center of a chassis that isn't too deep.

> running nearly silent

That's the play.

My play was always to build big cases with water-cooling + low speed fan radiator sandwich for near silence.

Next gen play is to accomplish near silence in a much form factor because super towers take a lot of space and moving them sucks.

Tbh the three main things that suck about desktop computers for me are:

- lots of cables everywhere

- when you bring it with you on travels it feels like it’s gonna fall apart internally

- external monitor is difficult to safely bring as well. (This one is a problem with the laptop as well because I still use an external monitor there.)

This is why I have always been a fan of my work flow being based around thin clients.

You should be able to access your data, projects, anything from anywhere. Then the desktop vs. laptop is a matter of comfort/circumstance.

My toolkit for this now involved tailscale for network, nfs/smb shares for data access, and vscode/neovim for programming.

It's incredibly powerful

> when you bring it with you on travels it feels like it’s gonna fall apart internally

If I had a take a critical desktop-sized PC traveling, I'd consider building it in a rackmount 4U chassis, adding additional bracing (e.g., to keep big GPUs from wrenching on the PCIe and board, and for general chassis flex), and bolt it into a shock-reducing rackmount flight case when not at home.

But I'm trying to stick to just lugging around a vintage ThinkPad, and keeping anything larger in self-hosted servers or at cloud providers.

Or you just get a micro ATX motherboard and a case that mounts it horizontally.

That sounds like a good first-step, when the biggest concern might be relying too much on a PCIe PCB card edge connector as a structural element, as a tower case is bouncing up and down perpendicular to the vertical motherboard.

I was thinking of travel environments more hostile than that, when I might really like a road/flight case with shock absorbing. Without custom-fitting a case, rackmount is a good choice, and (with short depth) has the flexibility of looking like a presentable desktop/under-desk if you want to unrack it when not on the road.

External monitor depends on the stand. If the stand is adjustable it most likely can't be disassembled in a way that saves space. I have a normal 19 inch monitor that fits in a backpack because the stand can be disassembled into two components.

Powerful desktop + cheaper laptop to remote into it or just use. Some cloud service or server for sync. easy. Why are you trying to do something desktop is not designed for?

Have you investigated single phase dielectric liquid immersion?

Yeah, back when I was into overclocking I looked at exotic methods such as chillers, thermo electric, and liquid submersion. The latter one was interesting way of building fully passive systems due to heat diffusion + lightning effects that looks amazing... the downside is weight and having your PC in the aquarium. With chillers / thermo electric, sizing is a problem because modern overclocked CPUs require monstrous amount of power, which means hugely overbuilt and noisy chillers. Thermo electric requires a lot of power + dedicated water cooling setup... was not really worth it for me.

One benefit of tinnitus is that I appreciate white noise, so a silent PC is no longer my goal. I still want well-made fans (Noctua, Be Quiet) but the sound of air wooshing through my PC is welcome!

Big case + noctua fans is silent too. 0 pump noise. 0 mess with water cooling.

Alternatively its fun to see which fan make even comes close to noctua, if not expensive

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