Gadgetory

so let's kick things off with ATX it stands for advanced technology extended and a components compliance with the standard tells us that it will be physically and electrically compatible with other ATX components like computer cases and power supplies now because most desktop computers use ATX that's what we're gonna focus on but there is other stuff out there anyway ATX family motherboards are available in several different flavors the most common of which are standard ATX micro ATX extended ATX and XL ATX now I'm also going to include mini ITX but don't worry about the different name it's basically interoperable and gets treated these days like an even smaller ATX although unlike the ATX standards which were developed by Intel Mini ITX was developed by via technologies now I'll give you more details on each in a moment but if you're trying to figure out compatibility and that's all you care about for power supplies it comes down to the connectors on your particular power supply and the motherboard that you want to plug them into just make sure that the power supply has at least as many 24 pin 8 pin and 4 pin connectors as you need for cases on the other hand any case that accepts a motherboard equal to or larger than the motherboard that you're looking at will work so for example a mini ITX board will work in a case designed for any of the standards here because they'll all be bigger than that whereas an ATX board will not fit in a case design for em ATX or mini ITX boards but will work for the larger cases the exception here is XL ATX check specifically for XL ATX compatibility before buying a case for your XL ATX motherboard so ATX ATX motherboards have a wide range of costs but tend to be more expensive than em ATX and less than e ATX they are 305 millimeters tall and 244 millimeters wide they have seven expansion slots allowing for up to seven single slot expansion cards or up to four dual slot expansion cards if installed in a case that has at least eight rear expansion card openings and that makes ATX the minimum motherboard size to accommodate a 3-way or four-way graphics card configuration with modern cards ATX motherboards typically feature a 24 pin and an 8 pin power connector combination but performance oriented boards may have an extra CPU power connector or an auxiliary connector for configurations with lots of graphics cards because they are physically larger they can have up to eight RAM slots and tend to have more SATA ports and front panel header ports like USB compared to micro ATX boards micro ATX ports are less expensive and our 244 millimeters squared they are available with nearly equivalent performance and features to their bigger brothers with a couple of exceptions due to their size micro ATX boards usually only have 2 to 4 memory slots and can have a maximum of 4 single slot expansion cards or too little slot expansion cards with a single slot card in between that means that while a multi-core Extreme Edition processor can be installed in a compatible an ATX board the maximum memory and graphics card capacity will be about half of an ATX equivalent they typically feature a 24-pin connector and either a 4 pin or an 8 pin CPU connector mini ITX motherboards are less expensive yet and are a mere 170 millimeters squared in recent years they've gone from lower power quiet computing oriented products to high performance small form-factor gaming capable devices they are limited to desktop rather than workstation CPU platforms though and to a maximum of 2 memory slots and a maximum of one expansion card but that still allows them at the time of filming this to have up to a quad-core CPU 16 gigs of inexpensive ram and a high performance dual slot graphics card all at the same time they have fewer SATA slots and front panel connectors than even em ATX boards due to their small size but they often have integrated extras such as Wireless and Bluetooth connectivity to compensate for their lack of expansion options they usually have a 24-pin connector and a 4 pin connector for the CPU power on the bigger and better things extended or EA TX motherboards are more expensive and larger than ATX and add up to 305 millimeters tall by 330 mm years why they are big they still have only a maximum of seven rear expansion slots but their width allows them to accommodate dual workstation or server class CPUs and up to twice as much RAM as their ATX equivalents now because they are geared towards professional or server use they tend to have fewer bells and whistles like better rear i/o and wireless connectivity but more robust connectivity internally with things like SAS ports replacing SATA ports that are more common on the desktop they need a 24-pin connector and will usually have two eight pins as well sometimes more ex-lax motherboards are a bit of an oddity they don't even have a standard size but they're usually 240 more 4 millimeters wide and the size increase actually comes in the form of additional height it's right in the name but it's more like an extra large ATX motherboard than anything else pricing wise they are similar to premium ATX boards and when it comes to performance they have the same CPU and RAM and rear slot configurations as ATX boards which is weird they're extra height should allow them to have eight or nine expansion slots but board manufacturers typically have used the extra space to give more room for large beefy power delivery systems and cooling around the CPU socket rather than to add more expansion card slots what a weird standard the one good thing that did come out of it I think was that cases are now being delivered to market with more than seven slots at the back for better ventilation with multi wave graphics card configurations on even standard ATX boards I mean honestly it's amazing to me that excel ATX even still exists you know it's not amazing to me though the fact that Squarespace exists they've been in business for 10 years now and are going strong because the product is just easy to use head on over to squarespace.com slash tech quickie and try it out for yourself it's the easy way to build a personal or business website just the way you want it and then have that website be beautiful and functional across pretty much any platform you can imagine pick up a free trial decide what kind of site you want to build whether it's a blog a store or a portfolio then use their simple interface or dive into the code if you want to to get your site up and running in no time Squarespace handles the hosting for you and even scales according to demand to make sure that if your business takes off you'll be free to focus on that rather than trying to figure out how to keep your website up and running so head on over to squarespace.com slash tech quickie and try it for free today if you decide you'd like it use offer code Tecton your first purchase happy website building guys and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of fast as possible guys like this if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know if there was something that's just too complicated to be expressed by liking or disliking it and as all these guys don't forget to subscribe to tech quickie for more fast as possible videos just like this one