Items tagged with SFF
The mental image that appears when you think of a 'desktop PC' is probably a big black box—or beige and horizontal, if you're of a certain age. Certainly there's still a massive market for DIY PCs in tower cases, but the majority of folks buying desktops these days could probably be best served by a mini-PC. For...
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This generation of graphics cards calls for some insanely powerful behemoths, like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080. With great power, usually comes great heat, too. That will mean beefy coolers that are typically large will be the modus operandi - especially since the RTX 4080 shares a lot of designs with the RTX 4090. If...
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In case you missed it, Maingear recently unveiled a 'Drops' program in which the boutique system builder looks to dive "back into our roots" with preconfigured systems based on the hottest hardware (something we can obviously get behind at HotHardware), as well as limited edition runs. Though the program is only a...
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Ace Magician AM06PRO: Starts at $237.95 with Ryzen 5 5500U APU The Ace Magician AM06PRO is a fast, affordable and surprisingly powerful Mini-PC, packing a 6-core / 12-thread AMD Ryzen processor and Radeon graphics. Ryzen 5 5000U 6C/12T CPU with Radeon graphics Compact form factor Great price Includes 16GB RAM...
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Lenovo has quietly introduced one of the smallest GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards to date and it's likely to retain that designation until such time that NVIDIA sees fit to add a lower power GeForce RTX 4050 desktop card to its Ada Lovelace lineup. For now, however, it's the GeForce RTX 4060 that's been squeezed...
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Falcon Northwest FragBox SFF Gaming PC: $5,489 (As Tested) The Falcon Northwest FragBox takes the crown as the fastest pre-built PC we've tested to date, even with its relatively small and portable form factor. The fastest hardware money can buy Impressive thermal management Low noise levels Premium fit and...
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Intel NUC 13 Extreme - Starting at $1179 ($1549 w/ Core i9-13900K) The new Intel NUC 13 Extreme is the fastest, most powerful NUC yet, but it's also the largest. Ultra High Performance Relatively Quiet Supports 3-Slot GPUs Easier To Build Pushing The Limits Of SFF Price Premium Intel has consistently updated and upgraded its...
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Lenovo is rolling out its smallest workstation to date, though don’t be fooled by the diminutive size of its latest iteration. The new ThinkStation P360 Ultra crams some seriously impressive hardware into a chassis that is less than 4 liters in volume, or around half the size of traditional small form factor (SFF)...
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It didn't take long for EVGA to announce a custom graphics card based on NVIDIA's just-announced GeForce RTX 3050, the latest addition to its growing line of Ampere GPUs. And actually we're looking at two models from EVGA, including the GeForce RTX 3050 XC and LGeForce RTX 3050 XC Black, both in a relatively compact...
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It may be hard to believe, but up until this point, none of AMD's OEM partners have released mini-ITX versions of RDNA 2 graphics cards. Well, that drought ends with ASRock's Radeon RX 6600 XT Challenger ITX, which ditches a full-length board design with triple fans in favor of a truncated board with just a single...
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Full disclosure, I've never been much of a mini-ITX form factor kind of guy. I mean I get the allure of a space-efficient PC design that can more easily integrate in to an office or home environment, but there are almost always caveats. Typically the trade-offs are either sacrificing performance and features, or you end up having to tolerate...
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Intel has been steadily updating, upgrading, and augmenting its line-up of small form factor NUC systems for many years now. Initially, most of the systems had a similar design language, but over time, Intel has expanded its offerings to address the needs of many more customers and potential use cases. Recently, we...
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We first got a taste of the Intel NUC 9 Extreme, codenamed Ghost Canyon, back at CES 2020 earlier this year. Like previous Intel NUCs, the NUC 9 is a small form factor system that will be sold in a variety of flavors. The NUC 9 extreme will be offered in barebones configurations, where customers must purchase memory...
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Intel has embraced small form factor systems for many years. Whether it be high-end mini-PCs like the Hades Canyon NUC, complete with discrete graphics for gamers, or ultra-tiny devices like the Compute Card, Intel has consistently pushed small form factor markets forward, for just about as long as ‘performance...
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The Intel NUC8i7HVK, codenamed Hades Canyon, is an interesting product for a number of reasons. First, because it’s the most powerful NUC released to date and packs more I/O and connectivity than any of Intel’s previous mini-machines. It also has user-configurable lighting and activity LEDs and an...
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MINIX offers a wide assortment of ultra small form factor systems (SFF) targeting an array of use cases, from home theater PCs and digital signage to other industrial applications. Despite their diminutive size, the machines are typically full-featured and come with memory, storage, and an operating system...
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We dig burly, decked-out gaming PCs stuffed with powerful hardware as much as the next guy around here. Sleek, ultra small form factor systems like the MINIX Neo Z83-4 we’ll be showing you here today, however, also have a certain appeal. Powerful gaming PCs are awesome for their intended purpose, but try sticking one...
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It used to be that large physical dimensions were a telltale sign of a Herculean gaming PC. Looming desktop towers with wild looking exteriors indicated the presence of serious hardware inside. Cracking one open might reveal multiple graphics cards and fancy liquid cooling setups, both almost considered prerequisites...
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The Gigabyte BRIX Gaming UHD is an exciting small form factor PC prospect. It packs a surprising amount of muscle into a tiny frame. This little flyweight may not sound too beastly with its GeForce GTX 950; Gigabyte, however, reckons it is more than capable of streaming 4K UHD media and taking a few swings at 1080p...
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Intel's first generation Compute Stick turned quite a few heads, including ours, as it was a remarkable thing to consider that a fully functioning PC could be crammed onto a device roughly the size of a bloated USB flash drive. It wasn't especially powerful—Intel pairing an Atom processor based on its Bay Trail-T platform with just 2GB of...
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As longtime enthusiasts, we tend to get most excited for the latest, big, bad, benchmark-busting specimens of PC hardware to hit the lab. However, there’s something about ultra-small form factor devices that’s intriguing as well. The focus on power efficiency and performance-per-watt from virtually all semi-conductor manufacturers over the...
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As much as we like piecing together formidable desktop systems crammed full of high end hardware, the future of PC gaming for many mainstream users may lie in more compact setups. Certainly there's been a push to get PC players out of a dank basement and into the living room with Steam Machines and similar...
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