It’s a typical economic cycle, there’s less demand for M-ATX
cases, so fewer are made and it becomes more expensive to
produce, and so fewer are bought, and so on. With most of those
looking for compact cases aiming for ITX instead of the Micro form
factor, this could be the year that those cases built with Micro-
ATX support finally bite the bullet, and it turns into a footnote on
the specs of most ATX tower motherboard support instead.
Another beloved spec lined up for the chop is the humble 5 .25-
inch drive bay. As manufacturers are following the trends of PC
gamers, the humble disk drive bay may not be long for this world.
We looked at the market last issue, to find out how many premium
5.25-inch drive bay supporting cases are still available. Our list
came to just six, most of which were from be quiet! or Fractal
Design, and the vast majority were more than two years old.
There’s a chance the Swedish and German companies might
be the last bastions of the standard, but with many mainstream
manufacturers already ditching the 5 .25-inch slot in favor of a
more compact design, and better cooling capacity, if you’re set on
keeping hold of these plucky drive bays, we recommend you grab
a case that supports one sooner rather than later.
STORAGE
SOLID STATE OF THE NATION
GET READY FOR PCI EXPRESS 5. 0
2021 WAS THE YEAR Intel belatedly spluttered onto the scene
with support for PCI Express Generation 4 via its Rocket Lake
CPUs. That came nearly two years after AMD debuted PCIe 4. 0
support with its Ryzen 3000 chips. So, could Intel be left behind
yet again in 2021 with the arrival of PCIe Gen 5?
First, let’s cover off what the impact of PCIe Gen 5
will be on the broader solid-state storage landscape
next year given that the PCI Express interface dictates
the maximum theoretical speeds of solid-state drives
aimed at consumers. Japanese memory specialist Kioxia
has been among the early movers in Gen 5 drives. It has
shown off a prototype drive that’s claimed to be good for
an epic 14GB/s sequential read performance.
That’s not far off the circa 1 6GB/s theoretical limit
for a quad-channel PCIe 5 .0 drive. Write speeds for the
Kioxia drive are admittedly a little less stellar at 7 GB/s.
Corsair brought the first
420mm AIO to market,
but it won’t be the last
Hydra’s open-air design
may become more
common in future
FAN...TASTIC NEWS? NOT REALLY
Fan development has come to a bit of a standstill recently,
with little development from some of the world’s best fan
makers. The 12 0mm and 14 0mm fan sizes are still likely
to be the most prominent going forward, but aside from
that, there’s nothing major to report here.
Noctua recently debuted chromax black variants of its
latest NF fan designs (the company seems to have finally
cottoned on that black fans might be more popular than
that traditional beige and brown combo), but as far as
development goes, the main aim for most seems to be
designing better and more potent RGB fans.
RGB’s need for suitable opaque plastics has often led to
the plucky blowers producing less than adequate airflow
and static pressure, as the plastic is typically flimsier in
contrast to the solid fan designs produced by the likes
of Noctua or Corsair’s ML series. This year, we expect to
see a new generation of RGB fans, exploring newer, more
durable, yet reflective materials. So there will be some
change, albeit minor.
Noctua’s passive cooler was a big part of our coverage
last year, and it was great to see this come to market. But
it has taken the company some time to bring it to fruition
and mass production. It’s not entirely perfect either, not
being rated for some of the more potent AMD processors.
We don’t expect other companies to suddenly jump on
the passive cooling bandwagon, but we’ll likely get a
1.2 revision of the P1 capable of chilling whatever AMD
decides to launch this year, all the way up to the top.
JAN 2022 MAXIMUMPC 21
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