I was mildly disappointed with Vavles pricing, so I told my nephew i'd make him a Bazzite system. He plays simple games.

Specs:
Ryzen 4650G
450W PSU
B550 Asrock ITX board
16GB DDR4 @3600MT/s
1TB PCI-e 3.0 Nvme
Coolermaster 240 AIO (somehow crammed in)
Silverstone SG-13 case

Those cases are a real pain to pack but look great when you're done

Yeah man, had to cut out about 10x20mm of steel to fit the AIO tank. A minor modification.
Good news: You only have to remove the PSU to upgrade NVME, CPU & Memory. I suspect when this AI bubble pops, i'll drop 64GB @4000Mhz, and a Ryzen 5600G in it. wishful thinking...

I have that exact same case for my work computer!

Nice! How'd you cram your hardware in there? I had so much trouble.

I build mini PC's for fun. This is my main rig

Just like you, I’m crammed it in :P

I built two of these, one in 2021 for a client and another in 2023 IIRC, back when SSDs and RAM weren’t outrageously priced, so it’s got an NVMe m.2 SSD and 64 GB of RAM.

It’s got an AIO cooler, and I don’t think anything other than that or a stock fan would fit in there. It had a 3060 12 GB but it has died :/ so it’s currently got a 2060 SUPER, which doesn’t fit as well (mainly because the power port points towards the front of the case instead of up.)

With the discrete GPU and AIO cooler, I wouldn’t have been able to fit a SATA SSD in there.

Both of these were far from the most painful builds I’ve done.

2060 6GB? Hey it'll play most things. I have an RX580 kickin around here, and another SG-13 case. I might do another one if I can find an ITX board which takes ddr4 sodimm memory. It's the only memory I have left from an dead laptop.

Case: Raven RVZ02, CPU Ryzen 7800X3D, GPU RTX 3080

Edit

This was about 4 years ago. This is the system I sharpened my teeth on. Had to modify the 3080 to fit with a fan mod.

Meanwhile me, with a mountrosity of E-ATX in a ship container for case

Hey I got a huge system too. Gotta run my Jellyfin off some kind of "server"

What was the total damage on all that? DDR4 would save some money, but 1TB Nvme isn't cheap.

Just curious how custom builds really are comparing to the steam machine.

It was $540. But admittedly, the ram came before the AI apocalypse. So it's probably closer to $700 now. All off ebay, except the case & PSU.

edit

Missed you comment on the performance difference to the steambox. It's bad. The 4650G isn't great. Played deep rock galactic at maybe 45 FPS.

I haven't done benchmarks, but it's about the speed of a GTX 1650, but being AMD it works much better on Bazzite (Linux)

double edit

I have about 10 nvme drives of varying sizes from before. The 1TB drive cost me $70 (about $78 after tax) before the shitstorm.

Beautiful! And you are a really cool uncle. My nephew asked me about building a PC recently, but my answer was "I'm so sorry for you...how about getting a proper external screen for your old laptop ?"

Oh, wait... 3060 died, how? Sometimes it's fixable if you have a flow station.

I love the SG-13, nice little case and cheap, doesn't require expensive PSU or low profile GPU either. I've built 2 of them, and I know my sister is still using hers with an i5 8400 and GTX 1070. IDK if the other one is still in use but I think it had a 10400 and RTX 2060.

THINBOI

Agreed it's by far the most compact ITX case I have seen, and I've looked on and off since 2019. And yet it has basically no compromises except low CPU cooler height clearance.

Tell me more about the GPU. Did you just remove the shroud and put some fans on the heatsink?

Does that not reduce cooling performance quite a bit?

I heard we're showing smol PCs in the comments.

I'm not home so I can't take any good ones but I have some pictures from when I installed custom air ducts for the graphics card and the CPU respectively.

I love this so much. You're a good uncle/aunt!

How's performance relative to the Steam Machine?

You're a great uncle!

in 2020, just before covid started, I mounted a pc with the same case. I know nothing about mounting PC so I used the guides from https://techbuyersguru.com/.
It still works perfectly and I'm not in a hurry ot change it.

Here are the specs:

• Processor (CPU): AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8 Cores / 16 Threads, 36MB Cache)
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L12S Low-Profile CPU Cooler (70mm height)
• Case Fan: Scythe Kaze Flex 120mm PWM Fan (300 – 1200 RPM)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wi-Fi (Mini-ITX)
• Memory (RAM): 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 @ 3200MHz CL16
• Graphics Card (GPU): Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Mini (8GB GDDR6)
• Storage (SSD): 2TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
• Power Supply (PSU): SilverStone SX500-G 500W (SFX Form Factor, 80 Plus Gold, Fully Modular)
• Case: SilverStone Sugo SG13 (SST-SG13B, Black)

Steam Machine is faster

Around +300% GPU and +65% CPU compared to this build

It's closer to a Steam Deck

Getting a nice monitor will save them a couple hundred bucks when they go to build a proper desktop

That and peripherals

The next step with the current market would just to be patient, buy individual parts when you can and eventually you'll have enough for a working system

Smaaaaaart

Those fans actually dropped the temperature a bit, even in a traditional case. They are noctua's thin fans.

I don't have this 3080 any longer, went to a 9070XT.

Still using a 2070 here, I am kinda curious when an iGPU will get close in performance. Probably just going to wait until the xx50 or AMD equivalent is a decent improvement and then upgrade to that for the energy efficiency gains along with enjoying any performance gains that I see from it.

Interesting, I would have thought the cooling shroud makes more of a difference.

How did you mount them on the heatsink? Might do this to some older GPUs to make them fit in smaller cases.

Why not a 5700g? I’ve never even heard of that apu before.

I've wanted to do one but don't trust myself not to make dinner out of it. Any tips?

It's what I had on hand at the time.

Honestly, wait until this rampocalypse ends. This is my last system for some time, because the memory alone was more than the cost of any other part.

That's why you see the drill in one pic, had to drill & tap a couple extra holes. Thankfully two of the original ones lined up already.

Absolutely. This system isn't a high performer, however it is extremely quiet as the fans rarely ever need to turn on.

Is that the Node202 case?

Aww thanks!

Yeah his old PC was a Haswell era quad core with a 1660ti. Being AM4 socket, he can go up to a 5700G in the future, or change the cooler and put in a discreet video card.

Yes!

Ive had this case for years, loved it before switching to a mesh case that fit in the same space as a stereo receiver.

If I were a kid, I'd be stoked to have Vega 7 for a GPU.

It may not be the most performant thing in the world, but it can run almost anything.

In case anyone stumbles by this comment in the future, I'm attaching more pictures I took today when expanding storage.