Close Encounters of the Small Kind

Time Changes Everything

Things have slowed down now in terms of computer progress - at least from my perspective. It's also good to see that many of the truly bad examples of computer hardware have begun to fade away. Gone are the days (mostly) of spending hours trying to get a resource conflict resolved; or to get two machines to talk to each other over the network; or tweaking and hacking your config.sys and autoexec.bat files in the hope of optimizing memory usage so that some new program would run properly. Computers have now matured to the point where any person with a moderate level of computer knowledge and a willingness to learn would have little difficulty building a computer.

The requirements for most computer applications are also slowing down. There used to be a good reason to upgrade your computer from a 286 to a 386, and then from a 386 to 486 to Pentium, Pentium to Pentium II, etc. While it was released at a time when the 486 occupied the sockets of the majority of systems, Windows 95 really needed a Pentium or faster to run well. Windows 98 pushed the requirement up to a Pentium II, and Windows XP pushed it to the Pentium III/Athlon. Today, however, there are few applications that really need a lot of processing power; anything over 1 GHz is sufficient for surfing the Internet, writing email, working in Office applications, etc. To a lesser extent, even the high-end requirements are starting to slow down. A state-of-the-art PC is not absolutely required for the latest games; even a 2 GHz machine can handle Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Far Cry. True, it's not the best experience out there, but for many people, "good enough" is all they need.

So what does this all have to do with Small Form Factor computers? This is up for debate, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot on the horizon that will really outdate a modern system - short of a few high-end applications and games - and the amount of integration has made large cases unnecessary for all but the most die hard enthusiasts. Few people will actually fill an 80 GB hard drive, let alone a 160 GB drive, and if 1 GHz is all that's really needed for typical computing, a 3 GHz machine could easily last for many years. Other areas have "maxed out" as well: DVD-ROMs all top out at 16X, and with DVD+RW drives now supporting 16X burn speeds, we aren't likely to go beyond that for a while; only the introduction of a new optical media format is likely to cause any difficulties. Even the floppy is finally disappearing, thanks to the abundance of Flash memory devices. In short, this is a great time to buy a system and keep it until it physically breaks down, and a SFF fits in very well with that plan of action.

A growing concern for a lot of people is the noise output of their computer(s) - "I want my computer to be quiet, not rattle the windows!" A home-grown system will often have several fans to keep it cool, and the noise levels can be very annoying to say the least. More than a few people have ended up with Dell systems simply because they are engineered to reduce the noise output - performance be damned! SFF cases offer the benefits of OEM systems - systems where the designers know the exact constraints of the system and can better plan the placement of components - to the DIY community. It's not all that unusual to see a motherboard with fan speed adjustment settings in the BIOS, but you don't always know that everything will work properly if you use them. Since a SFF includes the case, CPU heatsink and fan - which can also act as the case fan - power supply, and motherboard, they have a great idea of what will actually be used in the system. Depending on the model, you might have one or two optical drives, a hard drive, the CPU and graphics card, and that's it. As computer noise has become a pet peeve of mine - odd, given that I work in a data center as a side job - taking a look at the SFF market seems like a good idea.