Thin-Mini-ITX or Mini-ITX motherboard in HTPC

[PHT]

Recently I compared Thin-Mini-ITX and Mini-ITX motherboards from Gigabyte.
I am surprised why Thin-Mini-ITX motherboards are not more popular.  If you don’t need PCI-e 16x and 65W TDP CPU is fine for your application – there is no reason to go with Mini-ITX instead of Thin-Mini-ITX.
If you want to build a Music Server, HTPC or just PC (no heavy gaming – of course) Thin-Mini-ITX is a perfect solution because is flat so it’s perfect for fanless chassis because there is no obstruction to cooling pipes.  PCIe 4x is enough for SOtM card or TV tuner.
I compared prices for practically identical motherboards and found that Thin-Mini-ITX is less expensive than Mini-ITX, because you save on Pico-PSU.
 
Look at comparison:
In the first table I compared practically the same SSDs from the same company – Plextor.  Mini SATA is much cheaper than SATA, price advantage is $115.00
In the second, I compared best rated and similar in performance SSDs from Samsung and Mushkin.  Prices are close to each other.  Still Thin-Mini-ITX has $25.00 price advantage, so why not Thin-Mini-ITX?
 
I am very interested in your opinion.

[babgvant]

I think a large part of the problem is that there aren’t many HTPC cases that really showcase the potential of the platform – I only know of 2 off-hand, and they aren’t drool-worthy. Secondarily, there aren’t as many boards to choose from and the boards that are available can be hard to find.

 

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