Yep. I think the only time I've been tempted to add a second PCI-E card has been when my previous PC was getting a bit long in the tooth and shiny things like USB 3 appeared, but that motherboard was from the C2D days! Boards these days are feature-rich enough for the overwhelming majority of users to never have to worry.
Yep, it wouldn't take much redesigning and the size/volume increase would be minimal. It would be WAY smaller than those scurrilous wastes of space, the Manta and Evolv ITX... Agreed, as Dave has said below, ATX makes little sense for the majority of PC users. I can see a strong use case for 1 or 2 additional slots, which mATX does perfectly. ITX adopting dual M.2 has knocked off another reason for using mATX. Most premium ITX boards have decent sound and WiFi, so that it 2 slots saved. Absolutely! I last bought an ATX board in 2008, S775. I bought the Asrock B450M Steel Legend as I wanted to play with Ryzen, and put a lot of thought into the mobo choice. B450 ITX didn't have 2 M.2 slots as a rule, and the Asus B450I was twice the price of this. I see that B550 ITX boards pretty much all have dual M.2 slots, which is a great development. Some have 2.5Gb networking too, which will be handy in the longer term. The other possibility was the MSI B450M Mortar/Max, which also has great reviews and specs. I personally liked the fact that the Asrock had a PCIe 1x slot nearest the CPU, ideal for WiFi / Ethernet / sound cards, and the 16x PCIe slot below. Slot 3 was empty, making room for a SATA only* M.2 drive on the board, and the bottom slot was a full length PCIe 4x slot; great for an additional MVMe drive on a PCIe card. * Using this would knock out one of the on board SATA ports, no great loss Conversely, the Mortar had the main 16x slot nearest the CPU, and a 'useless' PCIe 1x slot below it which would always be covered by all but the weediest GPU. Slot 3 was a PCIe 1x (disables slot 2 if used...), with slot 4 again being a full length PCIe 4x slot, which would be disabled when the 2nd NVMe M.2 drive was fitted. So, the Mortar Max could only use 2 slots of a possible 3 if 2 M.2 drives are fitted, whereas the Steel Legend could use 3 as long as you were OK with your 2nd M.2 drive being 'only' SATA! The only other downside of the Steel legend would be that you'd lose the 4x slot at the bottom if you had a triple slot GPU fitted.
It would help if ITX boards weren't among the most expensive available! SFF is certainly on the up now though, so I think it will pick up some more traction.
Boards in general seem to have become brutally expensive, but the prize for stupid money boards still goes to the top-end ATX (and larger!) efforts.
Aargh! Now you’ve got me thinking of buying a BIG560 and offloading the T1 as it would be far better for water cooling. You’re a bad influence!
I hope to have one in hand in around 6-8 weeks. There is currently a design revision ongoing to add two radiator brackets, so you don’t have visible screws on the radiator / case panels. Theoretically you could do 3 x 280 rads...
I think 2x 280s would be enough for most hardware, but then overkill is kind of in our nature I’ve been lurking on the sff forums watching it develop since you posted the link. I’d not been on there for a while before that, I’m not sure my bank account is happy about it though.
So...I'm really, really late to this particular party but what the heck happened to ITX in 2018-2019? There are literally like 3 ITX motherboards that support 9th gen. At all. One is Z chipset, so horrendously expensive and rare; the other two are, well, iffy. Here's the one that's baffling me right now, it's the Asus Prime H310I-PLUS: The mystery is, all of the spec sheets, blurb, official documentation etc. refer to the board having both an E-key M.2 (for wifi and bluetooth cards) and an M-key M.2 (for SSDs). But...can you see an M-key M.2 on there? I've been playing Where's Wally for half an hour now and I can't. edit - Holy hell. I just found it deep in google image results. It's on the rear?
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes - the risers create a perfect-sized gap for M.2 SSDs. But jeez it was hard to find any info on it. Not mentioned anywhere. Also this 2-year-old niche board is still £80, I might just sling ITX out the window and go back to mATX at this rate...
M.2 on the back of the board is not a new thing, mate. I have a 2015 Sky Lake ITX board with m.2 front and back
Me too, I think Asus were the first to offer dual M.2 slots, which is why I have an H370i board. I really try to buy decent used these days, and stay behind the curve for green and financial reasons. If you get the right seller, a used board will be fine and give you a wider choice of options. (obvs!) Looks like AMD ITX has taken until B550 to catch up with dual M.2 action.
Its all kicking off now that Mjolnir's are being received. Cosmetic defects (which on a £3-400+ case is unacceptable) and no replacement units to swap them over. Eeek!
