Features
Small form factor computers are generally designed to support the same features as modern desktop computers, but in a smaller space. Most accept standard x86 microprocessors, standard DIMM memory modules, standard 3.5 inch hard disks, and standard 5.25 inch optical drives.
However, the small size of SFF cases may limit expansion options; many commercial offerings provide only one 3.5" drive bay and one or two 5.25" external bays. Standard CPU heatsinks do not always fit inside an SFF computer, so some manufacturers provide custom cooling systems. Though limited to one or two expansion cards, a few have the space for 3/4-length cards such as the GeForce GTX-295 Most SFF computers use highly integrated motherboards containing many on-board peripherals, reducing the need for expansion cards.
Even if labeled "SFF," cube-style cases that support full-sized (PS2 form factor) power supplies actually have a microATX form factor. True SFF systems use TFX or smaller power supplies, and some require a notebook-PC style external "power brick."
Some SFF computers even include compact components designed for mobile computers, such as notebook optical drives, notebook memory modules, notebook processors, and external AC adapters, rather than the internal power supply units found in full-size desktop computers.
Read more about this topic: Small Form Factor
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)