[015a]

My last two builds (going about ~7 years) have been mini ITX. The builds tend to be more frustrating (I wouldn't say harder; just more frustrating and longer), but the end result is always more pleasing.

The biggest thing that I wish were more accessible within the mini-ITX form factor is 10Gbps ethernet. Maybe with thunderbolt it could now exist as an external dongle, with the right motherboard, but internally there's few options today. Very few mini-ITX boards offer anything faster than 1Gbps, and of course have no additional PCI-E slots (despite the chipset bandwidth being more than ample).

I believe Intel's enthusiast Alder Lake chipset (x690 IIRC) specifies 2.5Gbps ethernet as minimum spec, which is nice; but it ain't 10Gbps. This is something that Mac just plain-out does better, no argument; the Mac Mini has had 10Gbps ethernet as an option for years.

[CameronNemo]

The NXP LX2K stuff has lots of networking IO.

HoneyComb is a feature-rich Mini ITX platform [...] based on NXP’s [...] 16 core LX2160A Arm Cortex A72 (2GHz) offering up to 64GB DDR4 (dual channel) and up to 40GbE.

https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h...

[philg_jr]

If you’re willing to pay, the supermicro Xeon-D mini-itx boards have 10Gbps NICs. ECC support is also nice.

[teslabox]

I've been looking for something low-cost with ECC memory for a NAS, the Xeon-D would probably work. Thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_D#Design_Goals

[raffraffraff]

Never heard of the Xeon D! Thanks!

[favorited]

> Very few mini-ITX boards offer anything faster than 1Gbps

I'm more familiar with the AMD boards, but several of the B550 ITX motherboards have 2.5gbe. At least the MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS boards have it. I think it's rarer for ITX boards with the x570 chipset, which is a bit older.