"Upgrading" to a Mini PC

Lago

I currently have a regular build that I put together a few years ago. A standard Gigabyte motherboard with a CPU cooler (even though I rarely overclock) and a Radeon GPU and all this is in a Cooler Master Tower.

I moved my PC in to my room about a year ago and I'm a bit cramped for space. I literally have a 3 foot by 2 foot "chamber" between two closets for my desktop, monitor and some files. I had originally put the desktop on the floor but my legs got uncomfortable from the lack of space so now I have it a few inches from my head.

I'm finding it very uncomfortable to sit at my PC lately and I'm thinking that the PC so close to me is giving me headaches and such.

So I'm wondering is that anyway of reducing the size of my PC without getting a whole load of new hardware?

Also, on a side note, how bad is it to have the PC running right beside your head? Because I'm thinking I might return it to the floor

Digital Solitude

Can drop to a Matx machine with just a motherboard change, depending on the size of your card.

Can drop to MItx either but you'd probably have to sacrifice the GPU

Lu Tze

Lago wrote: »

I currently have a regular build that I put together a few years ago. A standard Gigabyte motherboard with a CPU cooler (even though I rarely overclock) and a Radeon GPU and all this is in a Cooler Master Tower.

I moved my PC in to my room about a year ago and I'm a bit cramped for space. I literally have a 3 foot by 2 foot "chamber" between two closets for my desktop, monitor and some files. I had originally put the desktop on the floor but my legs got uncomfortable from the lack of space so now I have it a few inches from my head.

I'm finding it very uncomfortable to sit at my PC lately and I'm thinking that the PC so close to me is giving me headaches and such.

So I'm wondering is that anyway of reducing the size of my PC without getting a whole load of new hardware?

Also, on a side note, how bad is it to have the PC running right beside your head? Because I'm thinking I might return it to the floor

It should just be motherboard and case you need to replace, although select your case wisely as some of them required Smaller power supplies. After that it depends on whether all your components fit, so if you have a foot long gpu that will limit your choice of case and how small you can go.

I had a similar idea recently, but wanted to do it on the cheap and cheap itx socket 1155 motherboards are in short supply now as its an older socket, so this may have a impact as well.

You should be able to reuse ram, hard drives/SSDs (Depending on the number and space in the case), some 3rd party cpu coolers, the cpu, and the power supply. Most mini cases use a slim dvd drive so any current one may be incompatible.