FartingBob wrote:disappointing to see that push pins are here to stay. They are fine for stock coolers, but they tend to either not provide enough pressure or are a pain to get at with alot of the larger heatsinks.
Well dont forget, take off the default push pin bracket and what are you left with? 4 mounting holes. Aftermarket coolers can always opt to use a better retention mechanism with those 4 holes instead of the push pins. At least this way you always know an intel board will have 4 mounting holes no matter what, as apposed to some AMD boards which could only utilize clip on's because they had no mounting holes whatsoever.
Intel is going to go with whatever saves them the most money. Long as it "works" they are happy. And push pins do technically work, just not as well. But its more "user friendly" then say spring loaded bolts that you could overtighten and crush a core with that they then would have to RMA and replace. Its the same reason they went with an LGA as apposed to the old pins on the CPU. It saves them money and it "works", for them anyhow.
jaganath wrote:VIA has been making a fantastic tiny CPU product for years now.
'fantastic' is not the adjective i would choose. "overpriced" and "slow" spring to mind energetically. what exactly are you using your 533Mhz Eden for? file serving?
They have their place. They've been able to do 1080p video processing with no add-on video card with digital outputs a lot longer than anyone else in the aftermarket scene has been. They've always been good for little servers or just a good web browser machine.
They may be on the expensive side, but some people are willing to pay so they dont have a huge black box sitting on their desk. Smaller IS better.
MikeC wrote:
Actually, I have a passively cooled mini-ITX case design in the pipeline.
Please, tell me it uses this case:
HFX Micro That case is AWESOME. Heatpipes, with the ability to put an aftermarket video card in it for gamming all packed into a small package with good looks. great great mini-itx case.
