ATX Form Factor?

[nihil]

As we all know, the ATX form factor for motherboards has been around quite a few years.

Then we got the "mATX" or micro ATX, I suppose that's what it means?

Well, I am sitting here on a wet Sunday afternoon, assembling a full ATX form factor tower machine.

The MoBo is a Gigabyte Z77D3H and looks to be the usual decent design that I am used to from Gigabyte for their inexpensive products.

It is intended for Core-i processors, and this one has an i-5 3570K, which is the third generation "Ivy Bridge".

Intel supplied a stock cooling solution with the processor, but unbeknown to me, Gigabyte had a promotion going with this board and I received a cooling solution about half the size of a house-brick!

So, I am looking at the board and figure that with the 92mm fan in place the Arctic Cooling Professional 7 (Rev.2) will just about clear the G-Skill Ripjaws memory sticks.

But what is this weird mounting between the processor and the first PCI-E 3.0 slot?

"mSATA Intel Smart Response Technology" wtf?

Some sort of new SSD tech it would seem ($300 for 256GB)?

Now..........to the point of this post (at last)

The cooler will certainly eclipse this mSATA mounting, just as a decent video card will eclipse two of the three PCI x1 slots, and a second card would eclipse one of the two PCI slots............

Perhaps it is time to look at a "megaATX" format? as there just doesn't seem to be enough room on the current form factor?