Solved: ATX Board sizes

micro-atx are usually for budget builds, they almost always have ob gfx in addition to sound and nic, but have fewer features and pci slots, its not like atx is being phased out with micro, and smaller isnt always better

also micros sometimes have a hard time fitting any real sized gfx card so keep that in mind

I some of my recent builds for clients who wanted just basic office machine/lite home use, lite gaming, the micros have worked out to be the cheapest solution, no separate gfx/sound/nic, the mbz were in the $40 range, Biostar brand, throw a Sempron in there with 512 ram, under $150.

jackdw said:

John, two things:
1. Whats rebate?
2. It looks like a server

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$40 rebate from Ultra, good case, mini-tower size, NOT anywhere near a server size, built with one of these and got a $29 rebate. For a decent case for FREE you really cant beat it, pretty solid also for dragging around to lans.

Rich-M said:

JW I don't even need one but the shipping is free and so is the case, Hell I bought one anyway. Who doesn't need a free case.

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LOL, I know John has been trying to sell those free cases for a week now

JohnWill said:

I just realized that he's in the UK, so I guess the rebate is a non-issue, and the shipping would kill him!

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LOL yeah that could be a problem, case=free, shipping $500

yeah the Antec Super Lan Boy is a classic, handled those in person, very sturdy and very light for a case of that size and of course they have to have them in UK area also.

JohnWill said:

This case is not really heavy, and it has excellent airflow. I don't know how old the design is, but it works for me just fine. This case is steel, not aluminum, but not real heavy.

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i think by old he means the style of the front, that design has been around for a while, chieftec comes to mind, as far as everthing else its pretty much standard atx case stuff, fan front and rear, the clear side one I had, had a 80mm side intake with air duct, worked great for Barton core XP cpu with 6800 GT so cant imagine it would have a hard time with cooling anything

yeah its not fancy at all but i thought is was a good overall basic case, lots of folks dont like spending a $100 on just a case, they just dont care....how can this be?
actually the clear sided one i used, i put some blue cold caththodes in it, with a red led 80mm side fan, it was pretty friggin cool looking.

Lian Li if youre going into the $100 realm.

jackdw said:

Is it easy to add one of those clear windows to a case?

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depends on the case, depends on your sheet metal cutting skills. I had a side panel cut out with a laser cutter, did a custom pattern in AutoCAD, had that translated in the CNC software that ran the laser cutter, came out beutiful, but is costly $100 plus the cost of the plexiglass and other hardware.