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The Framework desktop seems like a next step.

Although I appreciate the drive for small profile I wonder where the limits are if you put a big tower cooler onto it, seeing as the broad design direction is for laptops or consoles I doubt there's too much left on the table. I think that highlights a big challenge - is there a sizeable enough market for it, or can you pull in customers from other segments to buy a NUC instead. You'd need a certain amount of mass manufacturing with a highly integrated design to make it worthwhile.

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> can you pull in customers from other segments to buy a NUC instead

I've never understood the hype for NUCs for non-office settings. You can make SFF builds that are tiny and still fit giant GPUs like the RTX 3090 /4090, say less for something like a 4080 Super. And then you can upgrade the GPU and (woe is you) CPU later on. Although a high-end X3D will easily last you 2-3 GPU generations.

i feel like high-end mini-ITX builds only became viable a few years ago with the introduction of 700W+ SFX PSUs.

The size of NUCs is much smaller than any SFF builds with RTX 3090. Some people just like smallness.

Closer to a phone than a laptop, in size!

You can’t mount an SFF build unobtrusively behind a monitor or under a desk, it’s much larger and heavier than a NUC.

Agreed, although this is the smallest I've seen:

https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX/blob/master/images/m...

It's currently got a 5700G - Zen 3 in it and 64GB RAM. I'd like the next one to hang on the back of a monitor or TV via the standard mounting holes.

You could fit a NUC in a pair of cargo shorts, FWIW. Or many bicycle under-seat bags, which was nice for biking to school without needing any backpack. They were in a sort of… qualitatively smaller size class than laptops.

Versatility. They're well-suited for a lot of environments where a normal desktop or laptop aren't.

They're great shop computers, for example. It fits anywhere, it doesn't wreck your energy bill if you leave it on all the time, and the nicer ones have juuust enough oomph to load up 3D CAD files or whatever else you might need.

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