Small form factor articles

How can you make a small form factor (SFF) PC unique enough to grab consumers' attention? There are three key aspects that define a SFF PC: internal hardware, size, and thermal/acoustic performance. The Trident 3 Arctic is MSI's attempt at striking that perfect balance.

The Corsair One is the ultimate compact gaming PC. I've looked at several pre-built small form factor systems over the years, and none are as well built or as powerful as this Corsair system. If you have the money and you'd rather not build your own system, the One is genuinely the leading contender on the market.

"Pre-Built" and "Small Form Factor PC" are terms that can strike fear in the minds of hardcore PC gamers. Pre-built systems don't necessarily put quality or performance over costs, while small form factor PCs don't always get high end GPU options or efficient cooling. Origin's Chronos breaks those stereotypes with top-of-the-line, name brand components in a tiny chassis.

The Asrock DeskMini 110 mini-STX form factor PC certainly has an industrial look about it, and it looks a bit drab sitting next to the Cubi 2 Plus from MSI. What it lacks in aesthetics, however, it makes up for in ease of installation and flexibility, thanks to those very same design choices, with support for pretty much any Skylake desktop processor and high-speed NVMe SSDs.

Intel has been a real champion for small form factor computing, recently introducing three new types of mini PC designs in addition to the NUC: the Compute Stick, Mini Lake and 5" × 5", or mini-STX as it is now commonly referred to. One of the first companies to adopt the new mini-STX form factor is MSI with its new Cubi 2 Plus, a tiny 1.3L computer that not only supports a desktop Skylake Core i7 processor but also accept up to 32GBs of DDR4 memory and a high-speed NVMe SSD for good measure.

The Alienware Alpha is a compact living room gaming PC that suits the gamer wanting better graphics, frame rates, and resolutions on a more consistent basis. On top of this, you get the advantages of gaming on a PC, such as a massive game library, cheaper games and the excellent modding community.