SilverStone Wins CES 2019 Innovation Award for Its Nightjar NJ450-SXL Power Supply

Very cool...Congratulations SilverStone, it's nice to see someone innovating in this space.

I used to build Small Form Factor PC's for myself, but gave it up years ago because I had to make too many sacrifices versus with a more traditional footprint (PSU's just being one of them).

However SFX *can* be a viable platform, even for serious gaming, if done right and component makers are willing to invest a little in addressing the constraints associated with it.

21472402 said:

Very cool...Congratulations SilverStone, it's nice to see someone innovating in this space.

I used to build Small Form Factor PC's for myself, but gave it up years ago because I had to make too many sacrifices versus with a more traditional footprint (PSU's just being one of them).

However SFX *can* be a viable platform, even for serious gaming, if done right and component makers are willing to invest a little in addressing the constraints associated with it.

If I may, things changed a lot over the years. A case like Silverstone's own SG13 will fit a full-sized ATX power supply, full sized GPU like the 1080Ti and any ultra high-end CPU with water cooling at max performance and with no thermal constraints, in a case the size of a shoe box with airflow beating many ATX cases. I don't think there are many sacrifices to building small these days, unless you need more than 2 drives, more than one m2 device, more than 2 RAM sticks etc, or otherwise deviate from mainstream high-end. Then you can build with mATX, as it delivers every single feature of full ATX in half the size.

Unless you actually prefer your computer to take more space, I have a hard time recommending anything but SFF these days. To a point, as you can go so small that you have to make sacrifices. But you can go to 1/4th the size of your average ATX case while not making a single performance downgrade or having to rely on any non-standard hardware choices. I crammed my whole 4K-gaming ATX setup as is (minus motherboard switch and CPU upgrade) into a case 20% the original size only last year and felt rather silly about waiting so long.

21472735 said:

21472402 said:

Very cool...Congratulations SilverStone, it's nice to see someone innovating in this space.

I used to build Small Form Factor PC's for myself, but gave it up years ago because I had to make too many sacrifices versus with a more traditional footprint (PSU's just being one of them).

However SFX *can* be a viable platform, even for serious gaming, if done right and component makers are willing to invest a little in addressing the constraints associated with it.

If I may, things changed a lot over the years. A case like Silverstone's own SG13 will fit a full-sized ATX power supply, full sized GPU like the 1080Ti and any ultra high-end CPU with water cooling at max performance and with no thermal constraints, in a case the size of a shoe box with airflow beating many ATX cases. I don't think there are many sacrifices to building small these days, unless you need more than 2 drives, more than one m2 device, more than 2 RAM sticks etc, or otherwise deviate from mainstream high-end. Then you can build with mATX, as it delivers every single feature of full ATX in half the size.

Unless you actually prefer your computer to take more space, I have a hard time recommending anything but SFF these days. To a point, as you can go so small that you have to make sacrifices. But you can go to 1/4th the size of your average ATX case while not making a single performance downgrade or having to rely on any non-standard hardware choices. I crammed my whole 4K-gaming ATX setup as is (minus motherboard switch and CPU upgrade) into a case 20% the original size only last year and felt rather silly about waiting so long.

I think I can agree with almost everything you say except the part about thermal constraints. In fact I'm typing this on an mATX Maximus Gene V...an outstanding motherboard...installed in a SilverStone Fortress t103 which, while not exactly small form factor, is certainly on the smaller side of footprints with a mere 11" x 9" base. Prior to that I built into Shuttle small form factor PC's, and both of these cases accommodated high end GPU cards and the fastest CPU's available for their time. So my historical experience says that you are correct...you CAN build anything you want into a small package.

The reason I abandoned the approach and went with relatively huge Define R6 this time around (and it's not *ridiculously* large) is that you cannot overbuild cooling systems for small PC's to the point that they are silent. With my new Define R6 I was able to install a 360mm AIO and a 2.75 slot RTX 2080 which both have such huge radiators that the fans don't even kick on....at all...until I seriously game, despite keeping the CPU at just 31 degrees idle. There's no way I'm going to attain that thermal performance AND silence with the new i9 and i7's inside a shoebox, never mind that overclocking is going to make it sound like a jet plane. And don't even get me started about having to use Blower style GPU cards.

Additionally, after convincing and proving to myself for years that I COULD have a tiny PC case, I asked myself what it actually did for me....what value I got over having a slightly smaller case on the floor next to my desk then a traditional footprint. And the answer was nothing. I have the extra 9 inches of floor space to spare and I can fit anything easily inside a traditional case. But having said that, if I wasn't a gamer who didn't want to ever compromise on GPU's and thermal performance, then absolutely. Small PC's are the way to go, and they get better every year.