Are there any computer companies out there offering builds using these types of motherboards?
Those standards are not very well defined. I came across this guy venting about it. I guess there is nothing worse than getting caught out by a motherboard and a case with mounting holes in the wrong places.
I guess if you pay someone a premium you can get anything you want.
What are you looking for in a build with a large motherboard? “Beyond ATX” boards aren’t inherently faster than ATX boards. They’re largely used when a manufacturer wants to add many expansion slots, but in most builds the added utility is questionable. SLI/Crossfire is practically useless or even unavailable in current GPUs. Most people won’t use 8 DIMM slots to their full advantage, and for gaming especially fewer sticks running at higher speed is incrementally better than a full 8 limited to near-JEDEC specs. When looking at prebuilts you’ll find those features in a true workstation form factor.
Yes, this. I recently finished a build that was supposed to take advantage of a spare EATX motherboard I had that, after finding that motherboard was dead, turned into a two-motherboard three-case nightmare build that was only possible because of living near a Micro Center and its liberal return policy. Issues with mounting hole location, RAM slot location and RAM height, power supply connector location, and the like.
The main issue is that when manufacturers say they are “EATX” or “XL-ATX” compatible they’re only looking at motherboard outline. You can have things like being able to physically mount the board, but then when you try to run cables through the cable management holes in the case you will have an impossibly tight fit or turn that would have worked if the board was ATX, with things like a connector being parallel or perpendicular to the board suddenly making a big difference.
What this boils down to is PC builders can’t take chances on components not working together, so they stick with a small number of guaranteed compatible combinations. Going past that is where you get into custom builds and their associated cost.