I'm experimenting with an SFF case mod that will take a micro ATX board, but cannot see how it will be any more useful to me than the Mini ITX setup I have at the moment. Just to qualify that usefulness: 1. No need for SLI or Crossfire 2. No need for external sound card Would like decent wifi, not a USB dongle and M2 would be nice for the future The ROG Maximus VI Impact (and its younger VII sibling) have plenty of SATA ports, an M2 slot, wifi on mini PCIe and a 'separate' sound card. Other than the last few ROG Maximus Gene boards, I am not aware of any mATX boards that have MSATA / M2 slots or mini PCIe slots onboard, thereby saving PCIe slots. Why do modern boards have the PCIe 16x slot as the first slot with a redundant (most cards are 2 slots wide at least...) PCIe 1x slot next to it? Some boards leave a gap which makes sense, but any wifi or sound card in 1x slot below will potentially reduce airflow to the card's cooler, no? My older lowly G31 mATX boards seemed to have it right with the first slot as a PCIe 1x, and the second slot as the PCIe 16x for the graphics card and PCIe 1x or PCI slots below. I realise I might have unusual requirements, but am I missing something?? I have seen ATX boards with MSATA slots where there there is plenty of room for them and the full set of 7 slots, where there'd be room for all the add in cards you might need...this to me makes least sense, where mATX is still under pressure for getting things crammed in, albeit less so than dear little ITX /rant
Maybe you aren't looking hard enough? While I concede the pcie slot arrangement, and there are few that don't fall into that con where the 1x slot (if it even has any) is under the 16x slot effectively making it unusable... there are plenty that feature m.2 and/or mini pcie (some with msata combo slots) from Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI and others. Even more so true if you're willing to go for x99. Or if aesthetics are not super important... you might have a look into some of the server/workstation/industrial categories. Sometimes it's easier to find motherboards with specific 'odd' features though usually will be considerably pricier. All that said... if you don't need more than 1 x16 / x8 slot then might as well make life easier and stick with itx where those features are more common.
Ivan, thanks for your input. Nice to see someone is prepared to read a half baked vent! I will have a closer look, I hadn't even thought of industrial or server boards. There are still loads of boards to wade through even if the choice is less than a couple of generations ago. H81/H87/Z97 beats all those H61/H67/P67/H77/Z77 options (I won't even get into B series!!) I'll go and look now, beats insomnia.
