Is ATX needed on z170/z270??

[lettuce head]

This is coming from a slightly biased standpoint but with the amount of pcie lanes available, and the trend towards modularity in the case market is the ATX form factor needed for the average consumer nowadays?
I built in a fractal design arc mini r2, and other than a few gripes (and this isn't a case review so i'll give the tl;dr) like no psu shroud and a 4+1 layout for the gpu as opposed to the standard 5 slots, it was really a very pleasant build experience. It left a ton of room for cable management and can hold any gpu you throw at it with 3 3.5" bays and 2 2.5" bays, or an additional 3 3.5" if you have a smaller gpu. Plus if you move the bottom rack of 3.5" bays closer to the psu and you have good cable management around the psu, you can pull the 5.25" bays out and have a ton of room for custom water cooling loops with capability of a 240 front and 280/360 top rad with room for push/pull on the top.

From what I have seen from CES, a trend in MATX motherboards has been having wifi built into the rear I/o which is nice to see personally. and my maximus viii gene has a nice amount of rear I/o and performs well at overclocking.

what do you think?

[DailyProcrastinator]

I have recently built a system with the Asus Z170 Pro Gaming ITX motherboard and am very happy with that board. You have to think it out pretty good because of the lack of expandability, but for my use it's perfect. It has an m.2 slot on the back even, which I filled with a 1.1TB Crucial Mx300. The board also has an audio chip and onboard wifi. In this build I have an i5-6600k that at base was 3.5GHz, and I have it overclocked to 4.6GHz with the Cooler Master Hyper 212. So as far as overlcoking capabilities and such it is the same as any other Z170 board, just a lot smaller. I love it for the build I put it in.

[lettuce head]

I actually really really love that look. I love those mxcrucial drives. they can take some serious abuse.

what was your voltage on the 6600k overclock if you know? mines at 4.2ghz but I wasn't sure if my hyper 212x would take any higher.

[DailyProcrastinator]

Thanks I just built it like 3 weeks ago, I’m really happy with it! I was able to get the i5 on a crazy boxing day sale, as well as the motherboard; now that KabyLake and the Z270 boards are coming out. Also the mx300 was the best price/gb out of all SSD’s and M.2’s. And in the M.2 form it still just has regular speeds, not over 1,000mbs in read and write, but I wanted it to keep my system clean of as many cables as possible.

Keep in mind that it isn't the same from one processor to another, but I got my i5-6600k to 4.6GHz at 1.325V. My max thermals on Aida64 only hit 61 degrees C after 2 hours of running the test. And that is all done on a Cooler Master Hyper 212; with a good fan setup. So 61 degrees is really good, anything below 70 is good. But that is also without the graphics card running hot. But even so when I was gaming I have had no stability issues or thermal throttling. And GTX 980 Ti's are like the hottest running cards on the market. A good case fan setup can really help. So play around a bit and run some stress tests like Aida64 to validate the overclock, as well as cinebench. I run cinebench first to see if I crash, then run Aida64 immediately after. Don't worry though if you crash it won't wreck your CPU or system. Just go back into your bios and change either your frequency or voltage, and try again. When I tried 4.7GHz at 1.350V (which isn't even that high for voltage) I crashed like right away in cinebench, getting the blue screen of death. I probably could've gone to 1.375V (Below 1.400V is usually pretty safe) but then it makes the CPU run hotter. So I decided a 4.6GHz overclock is just fine, especially with such good thermals. For reference my i7-6700k is overclocked at 4.7GHz at 1.380V and runs hotter that this i5 even though it's on a AIO 240mm liquid cooler.

@lettuce head

[lettuce head]

the reason I ask, being ive overclocked my 1070 pretty hard. up to 2150mhz and since its a hybrid, I haven't seen 50C even after a 2 benchmark, but ive never tinkered with the cpu. I figure if I get my 6600k to 4.5 I would be happy. Im running a push/pull on a hyper 212x so unless I got the shortest stick in the silicone lottery, I should hit it fine. but I didn't know voltages and whatnot. thanks a bunch!

[DailyProcrastinator]

The red LED Cooler master Hyper 212 matches really good. I splurged and got the red Corsair Vengeance LED 3200MHz 2x8GB RAM as well. I couldn't resist, it looks so good. And those are two Corsair SP140 fans, those aren't too expensive at all. I plan on getting two more SP140's and putting them as my front intake fans, and replace the one 200m fan that was included with the case.

[DailyProcrastinator]

3 minutes ago, lettuce head said:

the reason I ask, being ive overclocked my 1070 pretty hard. up to 2150mhz and since its a hybrid, I haven't seen 50C even after a 2 benchmark, but ive never tinkered with the cpu. I figure if I get my 6600k to 4.5 I would be happy. Im running a push/pull on a hyper 212x so unless I got the shortest stick in the silicone lottery, I should hit it fine. but I didn't know voltages and whatnot. thanks a bunch!

 

I want to get a hybrid 1080 Ti when they come out for one of my other systems. I have never experimented with overclocking a GPU yet (well a little but not much at all really). Just because I'm so anal about thermals and I'd only do it with a hybrid card. But that’s pretty damn good.

But yeah I’ve read that people can get 4.7-4.8Ghz all day long, but that’s nearly at 1.400V and on a AIO liquid cooler. So considering 4.6GHz is a 24% overclock I’m okay with just playing it safe haha. Also the hyper 212 is the best bang for your buck cooler, I think it’s the best cooler all around.

 And no problemo!

[Ryoku]

3 hours ago, lettuce head said:

This is coming from a slightly biased standpoint but with the amount of pcie lanes available, and the trend towards modularity in the case market is the ATX form factor needed for the average consumer nowadays?
I built in a fractal design arc mini r2, and other than a few gripes (and this isn't a case review so i'll give the tl;dr) like no psu shroud and a 4+1 layout for the gpu as opposed to the standard 5 slots, it was really a very pleasant build experience. It left a ton of room for cable management and can hold any gpu you throw at it with 3 3.5" bays and 2 2.5" bays, or an additional 3 3.5" if you have a smaller gpu. Plus if you move the bottom rack of 3.5" bays closer to the psu and you have good cable management around the psu, you can pull the 5.25" bays out and have a ton of room for custom water cooling loops with capability of a 240 front and 280/360 top rad with room for push/pull on the top.

From what I have seen from CES, a trend in MATX motherboards has been having wifi built into the rear I/o which is nice to see personally. and my maximus viii gene has a nice amount of rear I/o and performs well at overclocking.

what do you think?

Yea I love my Arc Mini R2 as well, when I was building it I thought to myself I really don't need the extra PCI slots as i never use them anyways so I might as well get a smaller case.

 

[lettuce head]

2 hours ago, JM21 said:

I want to get a hybrid 1080 Ti when they come out for one of my other systems. I have never experimented with overclocking a GPU yet (well a little but not much at all really). Just because I'm so anal about thermals and I'd only do it with a hybrid card. But that’s pretty damn good.

 

But yeah I’ve read that people can get 4.7-4.8Ghz all day long, but that’s nearly at 1.400V and on a AIO liquid cooler. So considering 4.6GHz is a 24% overclock I’m okay with just playing it safe haha. Also the hyper 212 is the best bang for your buck cooler, I think it’s the best cooler all around.

 

 And no problemo!

if they release the evga hybrid 1080ti in the quick release version that would be pretty badass. 

[lettuce head]

1 hour ago, Ryoku said:

Yea I love my Arc Mini R2 as well, when I was building it I thought to myself I really don't need the extra PCI slots as i never use them anyways so I might as well get a smaller case.

-snip-

 

nice to see a loop in the same case that i have. very reassuring lol. i really like the placement of the bottom intake if you have the hybrid cards, intakes straight into the blower.

[Ryoku]

31 minutes ago, lettuce head said:

nice to see a loop in the same case that i have. very reassuring lol. i really like the placement of the bottom intake if you have the hybrid cards, intakes straight into the blower.

Yea I use it as an intake as if I didn't I'd have more exhaust fans then intake, and the rear fan slot is blocked by my top radiator/fan so I couldn't use that.

[JoostinOnline]

Personally, I wouldn't use a mini ITX or micro ATX.  I want to have expand-ability.  If you don't see that being a big deal for you though, I say go for it.

 

The two important questions you need to ask are how many RAM slots do you want, and how many PCIe slots will you possibly need.

[Quaker]

ATX form factor goes back to the days where you had separate network, sound, and other cards, so you needed the extra space for the expansion slots. You also need the extra space for PCIe slots to do 3 and 4-way SLI/Crossfire.

 

Most motherboard these days come with a network adapter and sound built in, so most people don't need ATX motherboards any more. MicroATX motherboards even have room for 2-way SLI.

 

If you are just building a common system for gaming, and don't plan to SLI, you can even use mini-ITX. (But there are restrictions on the number of RAM slots, etc.)

 

Note that an mATX (or mini-ITX) motherboard will fit into most full-size ATX cases. (The mounting holes are standardized)

Some people seem to think that they have to get an ATX motherboard for an ATX case and/or an mATX case for a mATX motherboard. You can't put a larger ATX motherboard into a smaller mATX case, but there's no problem the other way around.

 

So, my answer would be - no, there's very little need for full-size ATX motherboards any more.