$3-500 USD Bang for your Buck Systems. New vs Old for the workbench or home

[beanflying]

Roughy without any Cooling holes over a coffee for a look as I already had the ITX board modeled from the first one.

Acrylic this time, no final idea how all the bits will get held together (glue, screws or a combination). Overall dimensions 200x200x70 and still should have room for a 2 1/2" drive if needed.

edit - just about finalised the design so a render with some more detail added.

[beanflying]

Just finished this little one. Effectively the same spec as the MITX above apart from it is an MATX 570 board (same sort of price) and has a minimalist tiny Jonsbo Case (circa $50USD on special) and a used RX560 I picked up some time ago. So just a touch over $500.

This one is going on my Laser Cutters and will also might get linked to the 3D printer fleet via some Raspberry magic. Took a little creative Laser cutting a mount for the 1U PSU rather than using an SFX one which are frankly way overpriced.

Absolutely EATS the old I3/Quadro it is replacing. Runs Fusion 360 even complex models easily and way more poke than I need to Inkscape and any 2 or 3D rendering or graphics manipulation I need now or likely for the next 4 or 5 years at least.

Not shown here as I am still waiting on is is a dual PCI LAN card to talk to the Lasers so another $30 odd.

[beanflying]

Put the system just above to work that is strapped to the Laser and actually chopped this one out today. Shot below is just to test fit the bits together but it all clicked straight off the Laser without any tweaks needed.

Still need to do a little work on the metal fixings (modified 5/32" Motorbike spokes and Nipples) and apply some glue to the back and four sides to make an open box with the front being removable. About $10-15 worth of bits for the case and some hours of CAD work.

Only real mod to the MITX system to shrink it was to remove the top shroud from the Ryzen cooler which drops 8-10mm in height. The front panel dual USB3 header is an evilbay addon for under $10. The PicoATX supply and similar ones has a thread over here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/pico-psu-(power-supplies)-the-junk-end/msg4879106/#msg4879106