Is there any way to avoid the big box?

[Deleted member 68110]

I want a decent PC but I'm under a bit of pressure to avoid a big tower, or desktop box.

Is there any way to build a decent machine without one?

I'm wondering if it is possible to split out the SSD, HDD and Optical drive into a separate box. This might mean they could both sit on a book shelf, which might placate SWMBO.

Thanks for any pointers.

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Thanks for the replies so far - very helpful. Disappeared down a rabbit-hole of custom case modding for an hour or so!

What will you use it for?

Photo editing and ideally a bit of sly gaming (although I'm not after insane performance.

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Maybe it's in his living room and looks silly? I know my wife wouldn't want the desktop in there.

This is exactly the case.

She works in interior design.

Although, to be honest, I know what she means - I don't find the big towers aesthetically satisfactory.

A intra-desk build is beyond my ken, and wouldn't pass mustard in the looks department either really.

What I'm hoping to do is to have the PC in one or two boxes on a bookshelf, with the Mac Mini she wants and then have a big monitor on a bracket.

I'm looking at the Mini ITX cases and I'm sure I can find one that'll work.

Stupid noob question - are there any motherboards where the graphics card can be mounted parrallel to the board, and so take up less room?

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Interesting idea! Not sure I can get my head around performance though - I would still expect an mini-ITX PC to be better bang-for-buck than the tablet. (That, and I think we'd want a fairly big ol' monitor)

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Hahaha. You're trying to rationalise my wife's thinking. Good luck with that!

No - she doesn't like the big box, but accepts that, so that she can edit our photos she has to tolerate a big monitor.