You can build an SFF (small form factor) PC no problem. It’s harder and more expensive due to the clearances and parts being more niche, but I would highly recommend it.
I have an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 5800x in mine, all under 16l in volume, without any compromises.
It’s nice to take your PC to a friend to make a mini LAN party
I stuffed a Ryzen 5700X3D and a Radeon 9070XT in an 11L Lian Li x Dan A4-H2O. It wasn’t easy to get all the cables and such routed correctly, but it fit. (Well, except that I did have to give up on having a 3.5" hard drive, but aside from that.)
Ironically, I had originally intended to keep using my old Antec ISK-600 (which was also a mini-ITX case, but larger – not sure how large, as it came out before they started measuring cases in liters). Unfortunately, as I had little time to research which particular 9070XT variant to get while standing in line on launch day, I accidentally picked the wrong one and it was >2 slots, so I had to change my case. Then because I found an open-box A4-H2O, that snowballed into swapping my ATX PSU for an SFX one, and my 120mm AIO for a 240mm AIO with slightly more flexible tubes because that’s how tightly packed it had to be.
I had a storage server (NAS) even before I went the SFF route, so there was little to sacrifice. Too bad the server wouldn’t fit in a nice SFF case.
I haven’t gotten around to putting it together yet, but that’s what my ISK-600 is going to become. Believe it or not, that thing can hold 3 3.5" drives and two 2.5" drives (or a slim optical drive, but nobody uses those anymore).
I hadn’t owned a PC for many years (laptops) and decided I wanted to get one.
I thought I’d be able to get a nice little form factor.
Then I saw the size of the video card, the huge cooler for the CPU, mobo and PS to support them, and,.well haha, here I am.
You can build an SFF (small form factor) PC no problem. It’s harder and more expensive due to the clearances and parts being more niche, but I would highly recommend it.
I have an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 5800x in mine, all under 16l in volume, without any compromises.
It’s nice to take your PC to a friend to make a mini LAN party
I stuffed a Ryzen 5700X3D and a Radeon 9070XT in an 11L Lian Li x Dan A4-H2O. It wasn’t easy to get all the cables and such routed correctly, but it fit. (Well, except that I did have to give up on having a 3.5" hard drive, but aside from that.)
Ironically, I had originally intended to keep using my old Antec ISK-600 (which was also a mini-ITX case, but larger – not sure how large, as it came out before they started measuring cases in liters). Unfortunately, as I had little time to research which particular 9070XT variant to get while standing in line on launch day, I accidentally picked the wrong one and it was >2 slots, so I had to change my case. Then because I found an open-box A4-H2O, that snowballed into swapping my ATX PSU for an SFX one, and my 120mm AIO for a 240mm AIO with slightly more flexible tubes because that’s how tightly packed it had to be.
In my experience 2.5" drives are much less prone to failure, so I’m not buying a 3.5" again, unless maybe super cheap just for torrents.
I currently have the Ncase M2, since I prefer air cooling. I don’t have a pic of the PC in the M2, but here it is in the Cooler Master NR200:
I had a storage server (NAS) even before I went the SFF route, so there was little to sacrifice. Too bad the server wouldn’t fit in a nice SFF case.
I haven’t gotten around to putting it together yet, but that’s what my ISK-600 is going to become. Believe it or not, that thing can hold 3 3.5" drives and two 2.5" drives (or a slim optical drive, but nobody uses those anymore).