Serious question that I’ve asked myself for a while about the smaller builds: do people do them mostly because they live in very cramped spaces and can’t have a full size ATX board and the case to fit it in? Or because they want to have it next to the TV or something as an HTPC? Otherwise I don’t get why people do this, unless it’s because they want a challenge and just think “small is beautiful/elegant.”
It kinda seems like an unnecessary PITA to me.
stusser
10053
Mostly they just think it’s cool.
It’s going to be tough to top the Xbox Series X for a small form factor PC design.
stusser
10055
20 years from now there will be articles about how beautifully and functionally designed the XSX was.
tomchick
Split this topic
10056
rei
10057
I like to make it a small appliance-sized box. I don’t need it to be portable to carry between different rooms or to any LAN parties or anything.
Well, I have a small box on my desk these days, instead of a massive tower underneath. It’s nice.
@rei and @Misguided Thanks for the replies. Different strokes and all. I gotsta have my expansion slots for hard drives, optical drives etc. Plus, in my case “cable management” is honored more in the breach than in the observance. ;-)
lordkosc
10062
If you don’t close it up, the airflow will be great. :)
mono
10064
I’ve got a mini for my HTPC. A Dans-A4 case that’s on the mantle under our living room TV. If I wasn’t squeezing it into a small space, I wouldn’t bother.
My desktop PC is in a comparatively giant NZXT H710i.
rei
10065
I have it plugged into a 4 bay 56TB NAS and have 4 2.5" hard drives currently plugged into it so it doesn’t do away with my desire to be a packrat.
Plus QT3 knows me as someone who has ALL MY STEAM / GOG / ORIGIN / GAMEPASS / WIN10 games downloaded and installed despite only playing 1 or 2 tops.
ShivaX
10069
Relevant since people are using NewEgg Shuffle, even if this isn’t a GPU in this case.
I think the lesson here is: don’t buy “open box” items from Newegg, you’ll likely get scammed.
Most likely someone bought it new from Newegg, swapped out the expensive and valuable components for crap ones, returned it to Newegg on some BS excuse, and Newegg turned around and re-sold it.
fdsaion
10073
So basically RNG on what Newegg checks on returns. If you RNG well, you can scam Newegg, if not, Newegg scams you
stusser
10074
Well, not exactly. What actually happened here is this.
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Some dude bought the motherboard new, installed his CPU wrong, got thermal paste on the pins, and bent some pins to boot. He then returned it to Newegg.
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Newegg took the RMA and failed to validate it worked. This is where they failed. They just put it in the refurb bin.
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GN bought the broken motherboard and you know the rest. Of course Newegg won’t accept his RMA because they “know it worked”. This is just some user who messed up the hardware trying to get his money back, right?
Steve’s point about having spent tens of thousands at Newegg and deserving the benefit of the doubt is really key here. I would not expect Newegg to refund any dork off the street for something like this, but something like GN that spends a ton of money over the past 15 years, they should have escalated that.
Also Newegg needs to fix their RMA/refurb department because they missed a completely dead motherboard.
Yeah, in Steve’s case I completely believe the motherboard had bent pins and thermal paste residue on it. However, it obviously was shipped to Steve like that, which means whomever handles refurbished/“refreshed” items is the one who fell down on the job. The big issue is Newegg then simply disbelieving the customer and refusing to refund them.
I’d think a better process would be storing images of refurbished products as they’re sent out to then use for situations like this, but of course that involves added data storage and handling time so I could see why a big company wouldn’t want that.
stusser
10076
Data storage is cheap, photos are small in size, and a photo only takes a moment.
There’s a lot that can go wrong on a motherboard, though. They could take photos and not prove much. The real problem is their RMA department is supposed to actually test a product before putting it in the bin to resell to customers and they either completely didn’t do their job or they messed it up themselves.
