Why all the hate on standard ATX?

[eton975]

Hear it a LOT in the PC community. Some of the complaints (space-inefficient) I can get behind, but I don't get the complaints about the cable management of ATX.

Decent modern ATX cases have grommets and bottom mounted PSUs; cable management is perfectly fine. Airflow is good on a well-designed post-2008 ATX case; Mini-ITX does terribly on airflow.

I just don't get it.

 

[Charlie98]

Hear it a LOT in the PC community. Some of the complaints (space-inefficient) I can get behind, but I don't get the complaints about the cable management of ATX.

Decent modern ATX cases have grommets and bottom mounted PSUs; cable management is perfectly fine. Airflow is good on a well-designed post-2008 ATX case; Mini-ITX does terribly on airflow.

I just don't get it.

The same could be said of mATX, and, in fact, newer production mITX cases and cubes. IMHO, the only reason to go full ATX with an ATX case is multiple GPUs and/or multiple HDDs, or some other big space requirement (water cooling, for example, ) otherwise mATX makes more sense.

It's not that there is ATX hate, it's just newer designs don't require all that space. I started with a mid-tower ATX case (HAF922) but quickly realized it was absurd for my needs and retired it for a mini mATX case (which, in reality, isn't that much smaller, but it is smaller.) Not to bore you with the details... but I got better thermals with my closed up mATX mini case than I ever did with the giant, open HAF case, even after taping up all the holes trying to get better airflow.