It's been a few years, looking for small form factor guidance

Water623

At the end of the summer, roughly, Ill be heading off to a new state for school. I currently have a build that is a little out of date and showing it's age, but more importantly it is in one of the older Corsair obsidian 950D cases. The big ones thats like fifty pounds before you put a PC in it. 
      So I'm looking to make a smaller machine with a bit of updated hardware (for reference I have a GTX1080 and a 6800K)  I am figuring that I would be best off waiting for availibility to widen a bit and I accept that the machine I currently have is doing what I need it to.
      I also know I should probably look into air cooling so I can just take out a few screws, tuck the heavy outlying bits in a safe place, and be able to go without making a mess.
      I plan on doing mostly gaming with general webtasks and HTPC tasks sprinkled in, so we know what kind of load I am planning to put everything under. my days of overclocking are behind me so that shouldnt be a concernt.

Ian

Water623 said:

At the end of the summer, roughly, Ill be heading off to a new state for school. I currently have a build that is a little out of date and showing it's age, but more importantly it is in one of the older Corsair obsidian 950D cases. The big ones thats like fifty pounds before you put a PC in it. 
      So I'm looking to make a smaller machine with a bit of updated hardware (for reference I have a GTX1080 and a 6800K)  I am figuring that I would be best off waiting for availibility to widen a bit and I accept that the machine I currently have is doing what I need it to.
      I also know I should probably look into air cooling so I can just take out a few screws, tuck the heavy outlying bits in a safe place, and be able to go without making a mess.
      I plan on doing mostly gaming with general webtasks and HTPC tasks sprinkled in, so we know what kind of load I am planning to put everything under. my days of overclocking are behind me so that shouldnt be a concernt.

Greetings. Right now parts are very hit or miss to find.
Are you looking for just a case at this time? Here are the mini-tower and micro-ATX cases that we have, these can give you a good idea at what size you'd be looking at: https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntt=case&Ntk=all&sortby=match&N=4294964318+4294820858&myStore=true

Water623

I figured they were hit and miss right now, but I have a form factor I was looking for roughly. What are a few of the concerns or common design flaws I should be looking for, or keep in mind.

Ian

Water623 said:

I figured they were hit and miss right now, but I have a form factor I was looking for roughly. What are a few of the concerns or common design flaws I should be looking for, or keep in mind.

For a small build, an mATX motherboard, typically the case you pick out will list the maximum video card length it'll support, so you'll need to look out for that when picking a video card. Most other parts will work just fine with a smaller case.

Water623

Is it a safe assumption that most cases at this point have the ability to manage most thermals short of the high end desktop CPU(I9 or R9s) and the high end GPUs (thinking like TI cards) even with full air cooling? 

Ian

Water623 said:

Is it a safe assumption that most cases at this point have the ability to manage most thermals short of the high end desktop CPU(I9 or R9s) and the high end GPUs (thinking like TI cards) even with full air cooling? 

You'd still want a cooler for the CPU at least, but typically air coolers are fine for most processors, but besides that, yes you can go with just case fans.