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If you've seen the specs on the machines in our roundup, you know that you can indeed stuff a lot of hardware into a smaller-size machine. But is it enough to sway you from building a full-size desktop for your next build? 

We'd say probably not. We have much respect for the vendors' ability to cram all manner of performance parts into these machines, but there are still compromises inherent to SFFs. 

The most obvious are thermals. The two smaller SFF rigs here don't have the thermal chops to run dual-GPU cards. And two of the three machines here had to run their fans at such excessive speeds that it's not worth it. 

But what about performance? We decided to compare the SFF rigs against the Maingear Shift Super stock-a state-of-the-art desktop that's reviewed on page 70. With its CPU running at 5GHz, the Shift SS is faster than the fastest of the SFF machines, from 5 percent to 10 percent. 

Even better, the Shift SS is very well behaved. The machine can run two dualGPU cards without having to crank the fans to maximum speed. 

Noise and performance aren't the only things to consider when looking at a desktop though. There's also serviceability-how easy a machine is to work in. The Origin PC Chronos is actually very serviceable, but the rest of the SFFs here have so much hardware crammed into such a small space that wrenching on them is a major undertaking. 

The final category is obvious: expandability. All of the SFF machines are pretty much maxed out on hardware. There's no option to add a soundcard, additional hard drive, or secondary optical drive. 

A full-size desktop machine has space to grow into. Let's not even mention that finding Mini-ITX or microATX motherboards with enthusiast features is very difficult. Yes, SFFs certainly have power and capability previously unimagined, but they still aren't as versatile, powerful, or serviceable as that dinosaur, the desktop PC