Mid tower vs. Mini-ITX

What's the difference between the two cases and why I should I go for either of them?

If the portability of a mini-ITX really that great that I should overlook the cooling advantage that the mid tower has over it? I'm comparing cases like the NZXT Phantom, S340, H440 etc. to cases like the Corsair 380T, 250D etc.

Or are there any other (types of) cases that I should be looking into? What's the proper case for me?

Personally I will never go with a mini-ITX. Some are too much of a pain in the ass to work with and you're likely to end up in a situation where you have difficulty getting the hardware you want to fit in it. Why not go Mid tower (or larger if you're so inclined) so you have plenty of air space, plenty of room for all your gear and fans, and plenty of cabling space? I just find it much better to build when you have plenty of clearance and room for future proofing (never know when you might want to try SLI or Crossfire).

It's possible newer mini-ITX cases are better designed than they used to be but I wouldn't even take that gamble.

Never ever go with anything less than a full tower if you're into PC gaming.

Full towers/Mid towers are a thing from the 90s. Everything uses less power and everything's smaller now. Heck you could even get a GTX 970 ITX. The only point in getting a full sized tower is if you plan on SLI/Crossfiring, however it's just easier getting one higher end GPU...

If your into fridges on your desk by all means get a full tower. If I can fit a Titian X, plus 16gb of ram and an I7-4790k with a water cooled heat sink in a Mini ITX case I don't see the point...

An example, keep in mind you can go smaller..

If you care about wiring just get a PSU that lets you remove the extra ones you don't need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II5RvlDGh9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fux_ePBwg

Sorry didn't notice you listed the Corsair 380T, I would go with that one if I were you, It isn't 2 small or 2 big.

Another crazy looking one I liked.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156324

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NOX_XTREME/lanbx/5.html

Using a standard ATX midtower allows much more options and features then itx or micro atx

Other than fewer PCI-E slots there's no real difference...

Personally I'd say start with a mid-tower and after a few years if you decide you don't need the bulk/want the portability then down-size to Mini-ITX. You may find that Mini-ITX will be too limiting with only 1 PCI-E expansion slot, little or no room for 3.5in drives, and very little room for long graphics cards or CPU coolers.

I think you're forgetting that most higher end boards have military grade hardware and better heat conductors for overclocking. Go with a full ATX board and a mid/full ATX case.

I have a Mini-ITX build. Pain in the backside to assemble, pain in the backside to manage cabling, and pain in the backside to get coolers for. Everything is cramped as hell and I think cooling isn't entirely optimal.

And you know what? I will never go back to ATX midtowers ever again. I might step it up to Micro-ATX and experiment with liquid cooling, but I am done breaking my back lugging around ATX midtowers for house cleaning, updates and downloads.

i have a mini-itx build that i use as a server but i specifically built to double as a gaming pc if need be. it has a "gaming" msi mobo (bios overclocking tools) and it can fit in a gtx titan. it was a little tricky to work with, but i did my homework and research so it was actually easier than some micro ATX builds i've done.

very few people need full tower cases because to fully utilize them, you'd need the highest end cpu with major overclocking and a similar GPU. otherwise it's just overkill (unless you have giant hands/poor tools).

Overkill/marketing junk, I've got an older 755 board and it runs MUCH hotter than the newer boards/hardware and it's still running fine 5 years OC no issues 1.60v on the northbridge, burn your hand on it. Everything else now runs much cooler so what's the point in getting military grade (CPU/RAM/SSD/GPU/PSU)? If you asked me this years ago I would have jump aboard the bandwagon. Overclocking is also not worth it especially if your card is already high-end plus DX12 will make it useless...

If anything the overclocking limit would be very small or not there at all...

Mini ITX hitting 4.6ghz

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656-25.html

Mid tower with external radiator for your liquid cooling? I got plenty of free space left in my Obisidian 550D atleast with this set up.

.. ATX to me is a waste of space now.. In less you plan on going tri SLI or have a abundance of PCIE items (which pretty much excludes 95% of the population)..

Your next task is to decide between ITX and MATX.. Currently the biggest deciders imo is two things.. How large of a tower do you need? If you need larger you could get a itx and use it for a mid tower, but you might as well get a matx board than to go with it.. And if you plan on going SLI/crossfire with two cards down the road..

Honestly I am seriously consider Itx next build with this tower...

You can actually put a full sized GPU in a lot of Mini-ITX cases, even the Titan, most Mini-ITX cases can house more than one 3.5in driver. Give it two or more years and your going to have a hard time wanting a 3.5in drive. SSD prices have dropped a lot and fast, can get a 1tb drive for $350, last year it was over 1k.

The bigger the better if you plan on doing any kind of overclocking/plan to spend a lot of time tinkering around inside the case.

True that's why I said personally. I have a Micro-ATX currently because I have four 3.5 in drives for 5TB of storage (three 1TBs that are a few years old and a 2TB). Also a Hyper 212 and a PCI-E wireless card along with my GPU for expansion cards. I couldn't fit that in a Mini-ITX case so if I had one I'd be SOL. It was also a huge pain in the ass to build in so that's another reason why I don't recommend smaller builds if people are novice system builders.

i had a mini case once, it was hell to fit anything in. Most of the hard drive cables didn't even work because the motherboard was so crammed in there. And the video card was only mid sized and barely fit also. I wouldn't go for a mini case ever unless your only putting one hard drive in it and using onboard video card.

Even mid sized cases have their problems, i can barely fit my old 5870 card in a mid tower i have and its not even the longest video card i have. on that card they put the power connectors at the end of the card instead of at the top so they require even more space length wise... i'll never use anything but a full tower on any future pcs i make. Full tower is so nice to work inside, you have space to put the cables and put in hard drives anywhere you want.

.. This isn't true any more.. The higher quality MATX and even the ITX boards have these features.. Especially if your looking at brands like MSI, Asus or Gigabyte.. ATX boards are really not worth it anymore in less your looking about having sli/crossfire set ups greater than two cards.. Or plan on using pci-e devices such as audio cards or ssd cards..

I don't know what cases your using.. But good midtowers like the Fractal R5, the NZXT h440 fit everything you could need.. Even smaller cube cases like the Thermaltake v21 (my current case) can fit the largest cards, and have tons of space to work with..

@zaku101 said:

@vtoshkatur said:

@zaku101 said:

@04dcarraher said:

Using a standard ATX midtower allows much more options and features then itx or micro atx

Other than fewer PCI-E slots there's no real difference...

I think you're forgetting that most higher end boards have military grade hardware and better heat conductors for overclocking. Go with a full ATX board and a mid/full ATX case.

Overkill/marketing junk, I've got an older 755 board and it runs MUCH hotter than the newer boards/hardware and it's still running fine 5 years OC no issues 1.60v on the northbridge, burn your hand on it. Everything else now runs much cooler so what's the point in getting military grade (CPU/RAM/SSD/GPU/PSU)? If you asked me this years ago I would have jump aboard the bandwagon. Overclocking is also not worth it especially if your card is already high-end plus DX12 will make it useless...

If anything the overclocking limit would be very small or not there at all...

Mini ITX hitting 4.6ghz

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656-25.html

Who tests cpu overclock with high resolutions and a single gpu with a fast cpu and then even on top of that on gta with nvidia / intel hardware which it heavily favors. Kinda useless benchmark all around other then a stock i7 4770 doesn't bottleneck a stock gtx titan x on a higher resolution "duh".

Now put a 295x2 in that machine + amd 8350 and play on a resolution 1080p on gta 5, you go now from the best solution towards the worst. The benchmark is kinda useless because of this.

It heavily depends on what you got in your machine hardware wise and what you want to get out of it. Also a second card later on for cheap isn't a bad thing to have as option and oc'ing a cpu gives it a second life down the road, so that surely is interesting to look into.

The box wouldn't work with my setup.

Without having this happen: ( first small motherboard i had, never again )

I always buy bigger towers / bigger motherboards as my experience with small form factors / and small motherboard always limited me at some point in time when i tried to buy something. I can now just see a item buy it and push it without any restrains or issue's or having to check anything. No matter if it's 5 years from now. It will fit without issue's.

Also the cooler the hardware the better it works in my experience and the longer it keeps working, no matter what temps a card / cpu should work on.

I don't see the appeal of those small boxes, maybe if you are extremely room limited, but even then having a bit more height space shouldn't be that problematic as you still have to put a box somewhere. It's also way easier to control my temps and oc as there is more room to play with.

I do like how that small case in that video has room for a larger videocard tho as they will become bigger and bigger for sure specially as heat keeps pushing forwards. I wouldn't be shocked when we see 295x2 type of cooling solutions more and more in the future which that small case can accommodate.

@Gatygun

Keep in mind everything you have in your case is now made smaller and more energy efficient.. It all really depends on if you want to invest into some extra parts to make the jump, smaller= the future.

HDD replaced with SSD <more than half the size smaller and use less power/heat

Smaller PSU which are more energy efficient/produce less heat, yours is very large.

Single unit CPU water cooling which is smaller than your heatsink and more efficient, they're also very cheap and fit in many mini itx cases.

Ram sticks come in higher units with less heat, heck you could get a single 32gb ram stick, not that you would ever need one.

GPUs are now more energy efficient and smaller, you can buy a GTX 970 in Mini ITX size which is crazy...

The reason why these cases are so popular now is because we've actually reached the point of them being worth buying and us losing nothing other than being able to SLI/Crossfire.

Single gpu size isn't an issue either since many mini ITX cases can house a full sized Titan, such as the Corsair 380T.

Also air/Temp is easier to control in a smaller case, you have less idle air space.

Keep in mind a system in this case alone would run circles around your system and would probably be more than 50% energy efficient and produce 50% less heat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II5RvlDGh9s

I wasn't aware case size was directly proportional to energy efficiency and system power.

I was actually trying to reference how far we've progressed when compared to his system in size and efficiency.