After reading Dustin's re-review of the SilverStone PS07 it got me thinking some about what size case most people need nowadays and why. I consider a "typical" enthusiast system nowadays to really just be a large video card, SSD and HDD, and a decent CPU and memory. Based on this I can't imagine why ATX is so popular when it's so unnecessarily big. Mini-ITX however is usually too small if you want to use an enthusiast GPU, not to mention expensive.
This makes microATX the sweet spot. Among the microATX options, most are too close to normal ATX size, lack 120mm fans, or some other drawback. Right now the ONLY options I see that are compact and hit all the feature checkboxes are the SilverStone PS07 and Rosewill Line-M mentioned in Dustin's article. Given that it seems the bulk of the market has needs that would be perfectly suited by these cases, I am wondering why similar options are not more plentiful.
So I ask you: if you still use ATX, why? Water-cooling? Dual GPUs? Several hard drives? Are most people in the DIY market nowadays using one or more of these things?
And regarding solid mATX choices, are the pickings really as slim as they seem? Criteria: 1) supports full size video cards, 2) front and rear 120mm fans, 3) SMALL - if it's practically ATX size then there's really no point.
This makes microATX the sweet spot. Among the microATX options, most are too close to normal ATX size, lack 120mm fans, or some other drawback. Right now the ONLY options I see that are compact and hit all the feature checkboxes are the SilverStone PS07 and Rosewill Line-M mentioned in Dustin's article. Given that it seems the bulk of the market has needs that would be perfectly suited by these cases, I am wondering why similar options are not more plentiful.
So I ask you: if you still use ATX, why? Water-cooling? Dual GPUs? Several hard drives? Are most people in the DIY market nowadays using one or more of these things?
And regarding solid mATX choices, are the pickings really as slim as they seem? Criteria: 1) supports full size video cards, 2) front and rear 120mm fans, 3) SMALL - if it's practically ATX size then there's really no point.