Why no love for Low Profile?

Nightfire

2[H]4U
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I've built a nice sff pc with a 2400g, but after selling my One X, I want a bit more graphical power for casual games. You can find about 40 different versions from 10 manufactures of the same card, but there are only a few crappy low profile cards. I have my eye on a GTX 1050 on ebay, but I will probably end up paying over $100.

Why are more manufactures not taking advantage of this huge hole in the market?! Do you guys think I should wait for the RTX 5500 and see if they have an LP option?
 
I think it's the fact that ITX market has grown a ton and many cases figured out setups that can use full height and full length cards in a small package. Node 202 example below.

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Why are more manufactures not taking advantage of this huge hole in the market?!

Because it doesn't exist. It's kinda obvious when you see how many SKUs they all put out that they would surely have thrown in several LP options if the market for them was actually there. The vast majority of consumers don't have the need for an LP card, so AiB companies don't bother putting many out, outside of the low-end, low-power cards that are easy upgrade options for prebuilt systems.
 
Because it doesn't exist. It's kinda obvious when you see how many SKUs they all put out that they would surely have thrown in several LP options if the market for them was actually there. The vast majority of consumers don't have the need for an LP card, so AiB companies don't bother putting many out, outside of the low-end, low-power cards that are easy upgrade options for prebuilt systems.

Exactly. For example, motherboard manufacturers sell far more ATX motherboards than anything else. According to ASUS, they barely break even on mini-ITX motherboards when you include R&D costs.
 
Because it doesn't exist. It's kinda obvious when you see how many SKUs they all put out that they would surely have thrown in several LP options if the market for them was actually there. The vast majority of consumers don't have the need for an LP card, so AiB companies don't bother putting many out, outside of the low-end, low-power cards that are easy upgrade options for prebuilt systems.

I think you guys are full of 'it'. When people are fighting on ebay for $150 used GTX 1050ti, the demand is clearly there.
 
Exactly. For example, motherboard manufacturers sell far more ATX motherboards than anything else. According to ASUS, they barely break even on mini-ITX motherboards when you include R&D costs.

ITX motherboards have never been the issue, even for AM4.
 
I think you guys are full of 'it'. When people are fighting on ebay for $150 used GTX 1050ti, the demand is clearly there.

No, that doesn't prove anything. Just because people are fighting over what little there is doesn't equate to there being a huge demand for graphics card makers to fill. Could there be more demand than is currently being supplied? Yes. Absolutely. However, that doesn't mean there is enough demand for companies to invest any serious money into fulfilling that demand. If I have a product that 10 people want to pay $150 for, then there is demand. If that same product costs me $50,000 in R&D to produce and my cost per unit is $120, then that demand is insufficient motivation to produce said product.

ITX motherboards have never been the issue, even for AM4.

My point is that SFF systems are a niche market at best. There isn't going to be the same breadth of options for the SFF crowd as there is the full sized ATX market because the demand simply isn't there.
 
I think there is an in between. ITX as Dan has said is still very niche. That being said you can build very capable MicroATX systems. I did that for years and produced some that were quite compact.
 
I think you guys are full of 'it'. When people are fighting on ebay for $150 used GTX 1050ti, the demand is clearly there.

Since anecdotes are irrefutable proof, what about my own? I don't remember getting a deluge of people fighting over the one I posted in FS/FT a few months back, so what happened there? Therefore, I conclude that the demand isn't really there.

rofl
 
I think you guys are full of 'it'. When people are fighting on ebay for $150 used GTX 1050ti, the demand is clearly there.
Niche crowd, niche prices. Those people looking for those cards simply do not have a choice.

but that doesn’t mean the demon is there enough for manufacturers to make money on them.

you think you see a good mine the industry hasn’t tapped into? The industry isn’t that dumb.
 
One of my favorite cases is LP. I wish I could find another TBH. It was a Vidabox vCaseV3 and could hold 3 full size HDD's and fit into my home theater rack like it belonged. I originally jammed a 1050ti LP into it but have since moved to a Ryzen 3400G.
 
Why are more manufactures not taking advantage of this huge hole in the market?! Do you guys think I should wait for the RTX 5500 and see if they have an LP option?

The short version is, as everyone said, it's not a priority to most buyers. To expand on that a bit, it's relatively easy to fit all the components of a 1050 Ti on a normally sized PCB. It's much more difficult to fit them all on a half height PCB, and you then still have to dissipate the same amount of heat, but the heatsink you can fit on it would also have to be much smaller. That means a smaller fan, too, which would have to spin faster to compensate for its size, and noise is one of the things SFF builders frequently want to avoid.

So, it's basically just that everything about making a graphics card becomes harder when you make the board itself half the size, and the majority of customers are unwilling to pay for that tradeoff.
 
I think it's the fact that ITX market has grown a ton and many cases figured out setups that can use full height and full length cards in a small package. Node 202 example below.

View attachment 204787

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This. Plenty of case options out there that can fit a full length video card that there really isn't a very large demand for low-profile video cards even in the mini-ITX form factor. The case pictured here can even fit a longer aftermarket card up to 12" (standard being 10.5").
 
Dang I didn't expect to get ganged up on so much. I guess I will buy my GTX 1050 and keep my trap shut.
 
Dang I didn't expect to get ganged up on so much. I guess I will buy my GTX 1050 and keep my trap shut.
I still dig low profile card solutions. The biggest issue you face with finding these solutions is due to power delivery and the size of the die (with Nvidia). Gone are the days when you could buy an under clocked GTX 9800 or GTX 240/250 256 Bit with 512 Meg to 1 GB of RAM (unless it's a 128 Bit Memory Card) and run all of it in the power footprint off of a 73-80 Watt PCI-E lane. Start Cramming a shitload of RAM onto a card, that's anything other HBM's small footprint, you are looking at a necessity for a larger footprint on the PCB.

Then there is the marketing aspect, who's gonna buy it? The need to do so has diminished due to chassis design enhancements.

I would love to have an ultra small footprint (1/2 the size of what people are showing here), bitched out PC but it's a real tough sell today.
 
Dang I didn't expect to get ganged up on so much. I guess I will buy my GTX 1050 and keep my trap shut.

Presenting facts and making cases for why there is "no love for low profile graphics cards" isn't ganging up on you. Facts have nothing to do with feelings. Despite how you obviously feel, you are not being punished for asking the question. You simply don't like the answers. There are several reasons given as to why the market for such low profile graphics cards is relatively small and why manufacturers don't bother with it.

Let's summarize.

Despite your anecdote to the contrary, there isn't much demand for them. It isn't that there is no demand, just not enough to entice the graphics card makers to pursue this avenue. If video card manufacturers felt that there was a demand and money to be made, they would have done more in that market. There are a ton of compromises needed to make low profile graphics cards work on a technical level. The smaller foot print, is prohibitive for anything that can perform adequately for modern gaming. Primarily, cooling is the issue, but the small foot print creates design challenges for actual component placement and selection. R&D to do the above requires a financial investment. One big investment is personnel.

Custom designs also require testing since we aren't talking about reference designs by NVIDIA or AMD. As it is, high end AIB designs are often delayed due to the time needed to design, test and build these cards. Due to the lack of demand, there isn't any profit in video card manufacturers building smaller, low profile designs. It's more challenging from a design perspective than designing and building ultra-high end cards for overclockers. Lastly, small form factor cases are a niche market at best, and many of those cases have been designed to accept full sized graphics cards eliminating the need for low profile options.
 
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Presenting facts and making cases for why there is "no love for low profile graphics cards" isn't ganging up on you. Facts have nothing to do with feelings. Despite how you obviously feel, you are not being punished for asking the question. You simply don't like the answers. There are several reasons given as to why the market for such low profile graphics cards is relatively small and why manufacturers don't bother with it.

Let's summarize.

Despite your anecdote to the contrary, there isn't much demand for them. It isn't that there is no demand, just not enough to entice the graphics card makers to pursue this avenue. If video card manufacturers felt that there was a demand and money to be made, they would have done more in that market. There are a ton of compromises needed to make low profile graphics cards work on a technical level. The smaller foot print, is prohibitive for anything that can perform adequately for modern gaming. Primarily, cooling is the issue, but the small foot print creates design challenges for actual component placement and selection. R&D to do the above requires a financial investment. One big investment is personnel.

Custom designs also require testing since we aren't talking about reference designs by NVIDIA or AMD. As it is, high end AIB designs are often delayed due to the time needed to design, test and build these cards. Due to the lack of demand, there isn't any profit in video card manufacturers building smaller, low profile designs. It's more challenging from a design perspective than designing and building ultra-high end cards for overclockers. Lastly, small form factor cases are a niche market at best, and many of those cases have been designed to accept full sized graphics cards eliminating the need for low profile options.

I bet if they did decide to release a higher-end LP gpu it would be marked up like the AIOs except in this case you would get even LESS for your money.
 
There's a reason there's very little product available:

1. You're fighting physics to get a 75w card power into a half-height cooler, so it's going to be more expensive to develop than other full-height cooling options, and it's guaranteed to be noisy. This is why EVERY SINGLE GT 1030 is half-height!

2. People who actually care about upgrading gaming performance will compromise and get a slightly larger case, or one with a horizontal riser card (whether you're building your own, or buying OEM). My Node 304 for 2012 can handle dual-slot full-height graphics cards, up to 12 inches in length. I fit a GTX 960 into the case easily.

These half-height style cases are mostly popular for SFF OEM builds, but unfortunately the less-demanding userbase means most people only use onboard. See here for an example:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Optiplex-7010-SFF-Desktop/dp/B01HSDJFFM
 
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Well I ended up pulling the trigger on a used GTX 1050ti. $125 after shipping and tax, which isn't terrible for a niche desire.
Though I don't have any proof, as many have pointed out, I do think there is money to be made in this niche market. At one point, Gigabyte, MSI, and Galax all thought it was worthy of developing this product.

PCB shown here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1109...tx-10501050-ti-oc-lp-graphics-cards-to-lineup

128 bit will probably be the max that anyone will be able to fit on something that small. GTX 1050ti is about as good as you can get for LP for now, but maybe we will see GDDR6 cards soon.
 
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I mean they still make mini cards and I can't for the life of me figure out who's buying all of those.

I'm sure there's some use case.
 
If there was a demand AIB's would do something about it.
 
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I'm in the same boat with a 7 liter ML09 silverstone case. Its a 2200G HTPC build where the best GPU upgrade is currently a 1650. Hopefully 7nm and beyond brings some better options with some die shrinks
 
Well I ended up pulling the trigger on a used GTX 1050ti. $125 after shipping and tax, which is terrible for a niche desire.
Though I don't have any proof, as many have pointed out, I do think there is money to be made in this niche market. At one point, Gigabyte, MSI, and Galax all thought it was worthy of developing this product.

PCB shown here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1109...tx-10501050-ti-oc-lp-graphics-cards-to-lineup

128 bit will probably be the max that anyone will be able to fit on something that small. GTX 1050ti is about as good as you can get for LP for now, but maybe we will see GDDR6 cards soon.

I would've got the new GTX 1650 LP....
 
Well I ended up pulling the trigger on a used GTX 1050ti. $125 after shipping and tax, which is terrible for a niche desire.
Though I don't have any proof, as many have pointed out, I do think there is money to be made in this niche market. At one point, Gigabyte, MSI, and Galax all thought it was worthy of developing this product.

PCB shown here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1109...tx-10501050-ti-oc-lp-graphics-cards-to-lineup

128 bit will probably be the max that anyone will be able to fit on something that small. GTX 1050ti is about as good as you can get for LP for now, but maybe we will see GDDR6 cards soon.

There's a difference between there being "money in the market" and "enough money in the market to warrant the cost investment". Despite your attempts to make it appear so, no one has said that there is no money in the market simply that there isn't enough money sitting around to be worth while for AIBs to give it more support. The sheer fact that the support is so minimal is proof that most AIBs simply do not see value in doing so. When even the AIBs that make a habit out of supporting niche GPU markets aren't putting a lot of LP cards out it's a pretty clear sign that the market for those cards is not currently big enough to warrant it. These are for-profit companies, they can't just go around throwing away millions of dollars if they don't think it will produce a good ROI for them.
 
In the very small cases, I would just go APU and skip the graphics card. Too bad the fastest APU's are meh for gaming performance - maybe next year that will change somewhat.
 
Same case I have.
Hate to break it to you, but the Galax 1050 Ti LP is 182mm long, while the ML09 only supports video cards up to 175mm long. If that's the one you got, then you'll have to take the bracket off to make it fit.
 
Hate to break it to you, but the Galax 1050 Ti LP is 182mm long, while the ML09 only supports video cards up to 175mm long. If that's the one you got, then you'll have to take the bracket off to make it fit.

Oh dang, I got the MSI which looks to be 180mm. oops. Looks like I will need to do some surgery.
 
Well I ended up pulling the trigger on a used GTX 1050ti. $125 after shipping and tax, which is terrible for a niche desire.
Though I don't have any proof, as many have pointed out, I do think there is money to be made in this niche market. At one point, Gigabyte, MSI, and Galax all thought it was worthy of developing this product.

PCB shown here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1109...tx-10501050-ti-oc-lp-graphics-cards-to-lineup

128 bit will probably be the max that anyone will be able to fit on something that small. GTX 1050ti is about as good as you can get for LP for now, but maybe we will see GDDR6 cards soon.

They thought so, and then they stopped making them. I already explained why. I've literally sat down at the table with representatives with MSI, ASUS, and GIGABYTE and talked about this subject. Custom PCB's are expensive. That's why allot of companies just rebrand reference cards and sell those. The most they'll do is either tweak the BIOS or change out the cooling hardware.

When they can't make any money on mini-ITX boards, they aren't chomping at the bit to piss money down the drain on low profile graphics cards that are rarely needed given that many SFF cases are engineered to accept full sized cards now.
 
The Silverstone HTPC line is still hugely popular. Those are all LP style.
I wouldn't say hugely popular these days, no one mentions them much anymore in /sffpc. They still look good and I had one with first generation piledriver APU. Silverstone themselves have cases with updated designs utilizing pci-e ribbons. I rather pay the itx mobo premium and get a real video card vs paying low profile gpu premium for a much lower performing GPU.
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I fit a Titan X Pascal in a mini-ITX cube. It was a tight fit, and I cut my hand, but I got it in there.

How much heat and noise?

I'd love a Mini ITX workstation but I cant stand loud comps.
 
How much heat and noise?

I'd love a Mini ITX workstation but I cant stand loud comps.

There's more itx cases that has bottom/side intake right next to the GPU so it's pretty easy to build a silent ITX setup if you have the right case. It's pretty satisfying too. Lian Li TU150 came out recently, only $110. Tempered glass, aluminum, airflow in all the right places, can hold big boy Noctua coolers. The Ncase m1 is a pretty killer setup too, one of the smallest cases to support 240mm aio cooling and keeps the GPU happy. Personally I'm ITX forever now.

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How much heat and noise?

I'd love a Mini ITX workstation but I cant stand loud comps.


My Node 304 has dual inlet 92mm fans plus a 140mm outlet, all tied to a fan controller. On medium, , it's enough to keep a 95w cup plus 120w video card fairly cool. Even on low, it's serviceable,

Even the replacement for my case, the Core 500 can handle the same load PLUS GTX 980 with a single 140mm fan at fairly quiet sound levels:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1479-page6.html

Pretty impressive when you consider how much bigger the Prodigy is, and the fact that the Core 500is so well designed, t can move 250w of load power outside that case quietly with the stock SINGLE 140mm fan
 
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I wouldn't say hugely popular these days, no one mentions them much anymore in /sffpc. They still look good and I had one with first generation piledriver APU. Silverstone themselves have cases with updated designs utilizing pci-e ribbons. I rather pay the itx mobo premium and get a real video card vs paying low profile gpu premium for a much lower performing GPU.
View attachment 205127

It looks like a nice case but it is aboutt twice the volume as the ml-09b. My original plan was to take the desktop on long trips or deployments.
 
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