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Comment by tiffanyh | Hacker News Reader

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tiffanyh

Why Not Smaller?

Why is this board so (physically) large in size?

You can see how much wasted space, by looking at this photo:

https://bret.dk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/radxa_rock_5_itx_...

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Because the form factor is the point of this board. There are already other smaller SBCs with the same SoC but with much less connectivity.

This is aimed at desktop use. I guess it would be hard to mount if it was smaller than mini-ITX spec and/or wouldn't mount firmly on some/many desktop cases.

The whole point of this product is that it is standard ITX sized. Radxa has several sibling products with smaller footprints, e.g. Rock 5C https://radxa.com/products/rock5/5c/

Why not bigger? Why not a full-size ITX mainboard? There's no pleasing everyone.

Your point stands, but I don't think there is such a thing as full-size ITX; Mini-ITX is the largest ITXl; Mini-ITX is backwards compatable with ATX, so perhaps you meant "full-size ATX?"

Its as large as the IO Panel. Also that space is for an M2 drive, no?

Yes, those are the mounting holes for the M.2 that's connected to the left of the photo (visible in other photos)

But Pico-ITX boards exist with M.2 support.

And those boards are about 1/3rd the size of Mini-ITX

https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-amd-ryzen-v2000-p...

That board is double-sided: the CPU and the SSD slot are on the back, while this ITX board has all the connectors and the processor on the top. That makes a difference both for the complexity and cost of building the board, and the complexity of assembling a system with the board, heatsinks and all.

But there aren't really generic Pico-ITX cases are there? What's the point of designing a Pico-ITX board if you need a custom case anyways? Just use the Radxa Rock 5B at that point.

I don't think they were saying that it has to be that big to fit an M.2 drive on it, they're pointing out that in the picture you shared, that space is for the M.2 NVMe drive to be mounted in

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