Pizza box form factor

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The Macintosh LC's typical "pizza box" case

In computing, a pizza box is a style of case for computers. It tends to be very thin, normally one or two rack units (1U or 2U) in height, making them wide and flat. The result is a case that looks like the boxes used to deliver pizza, thus the name.

The first computers generally referred to as pizza box machines were early Sun Microsystems desktop workstations. Other famous examples include the SGI Indy, NeXT Computer NeXTstation, Apple Computer's Macintosh LC and--most recently--the Apple iMac.

The pizza box style has since fallen from use in desktop computers, as standards have forced the tower and minitower designs into the fore (although Apple's latest revision of the iMac uses such a form factor). However, the fact that pizza boxes can be neatly stacked on a rack has made them the most popular casing for the powerful computers typically deployed in data centers.

Finally, the pizza box rack-mounted servers are slowly being replaced with often vertically-mounted blade servers that can fit more hardware in less space.