Silverstone/Gigabyte Mini ITX Build

[beestee]

I wonder how a workstation based on this small form factor would perform?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/19641

EDIT: After putting a few iterations together myself on newegg, the reasonable range seems to lie somewhere between $1000 and $2000.

[Donald2B]

What would be the purpose for the machine? Size, cost or performance?

It seems to be very limiting, and pretty expensive. For $1500 you can build a pretty decent full blown iCore7 machine and be able to use a full size nVidia/AMD video card.

[beestee]

Size/portability would be the main reason. The beauty of this particular case and mobo combo is that it can handle the large graphics cards, even the small form factor single rail 600W PS that is included with the case could handle the draw of a corei7 and Fermi GFX card...so not really any worries there. My main concern with the setup is that you would be limited to 8 GB of RAM (2 slots x 4 GB).

I have 8 GB in my current workstation and it performs well, but the processor is an older core 2 quad so not as memory hungry as an i7. I have 6GB in my i7 920 setup at home, and it seems to run just fine, but I haven't done much with MAX on it.

[Donald2B]

With only two slots you are going to get a performance hit with the iCore7 system since it prefers to use triple channel memory (3 sticks). That may be interesting.

At this point, I would probably just spend $2k on a decent laptop and be done with it.

[jujubee]

I have a bunch of MicroATX cases and motherboards for my farm versus costlier server rack mount 2U units. I also have a bunch of graphics cards that refuse to fit in the cases. You'll also run into potential upgrade issues if you choose to later on. I'd recommend against it as a workstation, but would be fine for an expensive slave.

[beestee]

Page 4 of the article I linked to above says that the case with the 600W PS included can handle very large modern cards.

I have a co-worker considering this for a gaming rig, maybe I can get him to bring it in to work for some show and tell if he decides to build one.