a 500W psu seems excessive for this unless the igpu is really hungry.

Am I missing something ?

I think its to allow people to add a discrete GPU. The power supply will have to have the capacity to cope with that if the user decides to add one.

I was hoping an example machine would help me see the point in The Element. It hasn't so far :)

500w psu is because many gpu's say they need a 450-500w psu

Nice. I hope it features the same wall mount (points) as the standard nuc machines.

rabidmunkee
a 500W psu seems excessive for this unless the igpu is really hungry.

Am I missing something ?

perhaps it can run in a low/no fan mode at lower power draw?

NUCS are expensive for reasons I don't understand, I would simply get an equally powerful laptop for the same cost!

Take this out of its small box, mount a desktop CPU (remove the packaging) on the board, put on a top-spec GPU like a 2080 ti, and use the additional space for an AIO cooler.

The NUc's are generally quite nice but overpriced. But then thats INtel all over . The zotac,gigabyte NUCS are okay But I suppose Intel forces them to sell at similar price points.
If they could get some ryzen juice in this formfactor / power enevelop we might really see some nice priced, well performing machines. 25w > 15W >10w >6w ..configurable TDP in OS , not BIOS ?? wodaboutit ?

I can see the CPU card struggling to breathe with a GPU card installed next to it.

If you want something upgradable, I'm struggling to see why M-ITX doesn't suit. Putting the motherboard on a card doesn't make it as easy to swap in and out as a normal add in card (bet windows will treat it as a new machine, and you'll have to transfer over the on-card storage and possibly ram). PCIe 4.0 is also the elephant in the room - the element 2 with a PCIe 4.0 backplane will be a lot more future proof, given the GPU is limited to a 8x connection if you have anything else on the backplane

ETA: one thing I do like, is the lack of ATX power connectors. The ATX standard was outdated with pentium 4, and we've been left with awkward power cables (harder to bend than they could be) and giant connectors taking up space on compact motherboards ever since. The ~3/4s of the 24 pin connector is useless (who needs 4 3.3v pins?), and it'd simplify a lot of things for small form factor machines if PSUs just turned mains into 12v and any further changes were made locally

and the GPU“S have to be 8” max

looks very good, i'm interested.

STx mobo may be the True way forward for really small machines … have to use dc in tho