Thin-Mini-ITX or
Mini-ITX motherboard in HTPC
Recently (June 2014) I compared Thin-Mini-ITX
and Mini-ITX motherboards from Gigabyte.
I am surprised why Thin-Mini-ITX
motherboards are not more popular. For some reason there is
perception that Thin Mini-ITX is more expensive than Mini-ITX. It is not
true anymore.
If you don’t need PCI-e 16x and 65W
TDP CPU is fine for your application – there is no reason to go with Mini-ITX
instead of Thin-Mini-ITX.
If you want to build a Music Server, HTPC or
just PC (no heavy gaming – of course) Thin-Mini-ITX is a perfect solution.
It's flat so it’s perfect for fanless chassis because there is no obstruction to
cooling pipes. PCIe 4x is enough for SOtM card or TV tuner.
I compared prices for practically identical
motherboards and found that Thin-Mini-ITX is less expensive than Mini-ITX,
because you save on Pico-PSU.
Look at comparison:
I compared best rated SSDs from Samsung
(recommended). Prices
are close to each other. Still Thin-Mini-ITX has $25.00
price advantage, so why not Thin-Mini-ITX?
| |
Mini-ITX |
$367.00 |
|
Thin-mini-ITX |
$350.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Motherboard |
H87N |
$105.00 |
|
H87TN |
$120.00 |
|
AC/DC |
AC/DC Converter 12V, 150W |
$42.00 |
|
AC/DC Converter 19V, 160W |
$50.00 |
|
PSU |
|
$45.00 |
|
|
$0.00 |
|
Memory |
G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop
Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL |
$80.00 |
|
G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop
Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBSQ |
$80.00 |
|
SSD |
SAMSUNG 840 EVO
MZ-7TE120BW
2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) |
$95.00 |
|
SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-MTE120BW
mSATA 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) |
$100.00 |
Looking at these prices we see, that there is great
base for small HTPC, one step bigger than NUC, so we designed
ultra slim,
active cooled chassis. Looks nice IMO, but you are the judge.
Which HSF to choose?
