Recommendation: smaller PC case

Looking inside my case, there is a lot of wasted space. We'll be moving to Puerto Rico (small/efficient living) in a few months and I'd like to move my PC to a smaller/hopefully as efficient case.

Case: Corsair 600T
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Power Supply: Seasonic M12II 620w

Any case recommendations? Will the power supply need to be changed to a smaller one? The PC is only used to edit photographs (no video editing) in Lightroom 6. I'm content with Lightroom 6 with no plans to go into the subscription service.

I care about quality, function/efficiency and keeping my Lightroom subscription free system. I won't change the case if it will jeopardize my LR software.

Thank you for any help.

Your Sabertooth Z77 is a full-size ATX motherboard, so you will be limited by that. Changing cases will not affect your Lightroom subscription.

JJD.Photography wrote in post #18997083
Looking inside my case, there is a lot of wasted space. We'll be moving to Puerto Rico (small/efficient living) in a few months and I'd like to move my PC to a smaller/hopefully as efficient case.

Case: Corsair 600T
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Power Supply: Seasonic M12II 620w

Any case recommendations? Will the power supply need to be changed to a smaller one? The PC is only used to edit photographs (no video editing) in Lightroom 6. I'm content with Lightroom 6 with no plans to go into the subscription service.

I care about quality, function/efficiency and keeping my Lightroom subscription free system. I won't change the case if it will jeopardize my LR software.

Thank you for any help.

Have you looked at the rest of the Corsair line? See https://www.corsair.co​m …h60MjIceUwykaAm​HNEALw_wcB.

I don’t see much of a need to worry about a case specific to LR6, unless of course you currently have multiple drives. If so, then let us know how many drives you have.

3Rotor wrote in post #18997085
Your Sabertooth Z77 is a full-size ATX motherboard, so you will be limited by that. Changing cases will not affect your Lightroom subscription.

This.

If your hardware needs are simple, consider building onto a Mini- or Mid-ATX motherboard
in order to fit into a smaller form-factor case. Your only option with a full-size motherboard,
realistically, is a slender sort of tower or desktop case, and those typically require a power supply
which is also of a smaller form-factor.

Smallest ATX Cases

Here's options for small cases that work with ATX. There may be some circulation issues using a really compact case (and using a smaller form factor motherboard would create more space). If you want really small, I've been enjoying an Intel NUC kit as 4K HTPC. It can come with i3/i5/i7, expandable RAM, one M2 SSD, and one 2.5mm HD. May not be adequate for the latest games or video workstation, but is more than adequate for PS and Lightroom.

JJD.Photography wrote in post #18997083
Looking inside my case, there is a lot of wasted space. We'll be moving to Puerto Rico (small/efficient living) in a few months and I'd like to move my PC to a smaller/hopefully as efficient case.

Case: Corsair 600T
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Power Supply: Seasonic M12II 620w

Any case recommendations? Will the power supply need to be changed to a smaller one? The PC is only used to edit photographs (no video editing) in Lightroom 6. I'm content with Lightroom 6 with no plans to go into the subscription service.

I care about quality, function/efficiency and keeping my Lightroom subscription free system. I won't change the case if it will jeopardize my LR software.

Thank you for any help.

You may be able to move to a smaller case and if that 8 year old motherboard is still working for you, go for it. But, the space you see in your case isn't necessarily wasted (what is the case?) as smaller cases with less space can be more difficult to cool. I have a rather large case for one of my PC's with 7 140mm fans and it is whisper quiet; you cannot tell it is on without looking at the power light. Having a larger case allows you to use larger fans and larger fans can spin at a lower RPM than smaller fans to provide the same or better cooling and fan speed is what causes noise. So keep that in mind.

If your PSU is also 8 years old (I believe that it was released that long ago) that is getting towards its end of life (it would have been out of warranty years ago). If you are moving to a new case consider a more recent PSU which would also support more recent mobo's if you decide to upgrade that too. I just recently built a new computer and my 6 year old PSU didn't have the necessary connections to power my mobo.

Your mobo is a full size ATX board so if you want to keep it you won't be able to move to a Small Form Factor type of case. Without knowing what your current case is and how big it is, I would take a shot in the dark and suggest you look at a Define R6. It is, for a full size ATX mobo, a reasonable size and has a bunch of great features including it's primary goal of being QUIET.

I really appreciate all the feedback and links to the different cases I should consider.

With your responses and knowing the motherboard could be near it's end, I have a question regarding building a new system.

I have 2 hard drives in my current system with all the software being on an SSD 128GB which still functions fine and has a good bit of space. My photographs are stored on the 2nd (HDD) also in the tower and an external drive is used as backup.

My question now, what all can I change out while maintaining LR6 (last available non subscription)? If I only need to maintain the hard drives and can change everything else out, I think a new smaller computer build may be my best bet.

Thank you again for all the feedback.

You won't be able to build a new computer with a new mobo and plug in your current OS drive and have it boot up. Your new hardware will be dissimilar enough to cause issues.

If you want to move to a new computer make sure you have a good (and tested) backup and then on the new computer you have the option of either reinstalling all of your programs or, if the program you used to backup your old system allows for a bare-metal restore to dissimliar hardware (eg, Acronis, Veeam [free], etc), you will be able to restore to your new system.

If your current system has a clean OS drive where nothing really lives there except your programs and all data lives on your other internal drive then it may not be a bad idea to just install your OS and programs from scratch (including LR 6) onto the new system drive. You can then just plug in your old data drive where your photos live and you should be good to go. If you have the LR 6 catalog on your data drive, after installing LR on the new computer, just navigate to the LR catalog file on the data drive and double click it. That will launch LR and tell it to point to the location of the photos on the data drive.

If there are any concerns about not being able to run software, then the simplest thing is getting a smaller case for ATX mobos (I was suprised looking at the link I previously posted as to how small they can get). Though there can probably be some air circulation issues with the smallest ones (although it looks like you might not have much expansion boards and such to block circulation).

You may or may not be able to get Windows to boot and run with a new mobo....Windows 10 already has some basic drivers for internet hardware, and will download other drivers for new hardware detected on a new mobo. Before doing this, it's always good to do a full system backup....and you can revert back to the old mobo if by chance you are having issues with the previous OS on a new mobo.

To do a fresh install of OS and programs, you just need their license keys. Perhaps for Lightroom, you were e-mailed the purchase confirmation (which would have the serial)? Or if you registered Lightroom with Adobe, you should still be able to access from your account profile. Go to your profile, order history, then you'll see "downloads and serial numbers". Once you confirm that you do have the installer and serial number, you can de-activate your current program (as Adobe keeps track of how many instances of your software are on computers).

TBH, going for a big PC cabinet doesn't make any sense. I mean, you can literally build a really good streaming PC using a small ATX case as well. There are pretty good options like Thermaltake Core G3, Corsair Carbide 200R and Cooler master SL600M.

You can easily fit a 200mm fan for regulating the heat within. I am personally using the SL600M with 32GB DDR4, two 120mm and it works really good.
Big cases were used 10 years back tbh and using them today would only mean that you are going far from a minimalist PC build.

JJD.Photography wrote in post #18998724
I really appreciate all the feedback and links to the different cases I should consider.

With your responses and knowing the motherboard could be near it's end, I have a question regarding building a new system.

I have 2 hard drives in my current system with all the software being on an SSD 128GB which still functions fine and has a good bit of space. My photographs are stored on the 2nd (HDD) also in the tower and an external drive is used as backup.

My question now, what all can I change out while maintaining LR6 (last available non subscription)? If I only need to maintain the hard drives and can change everything else out, I think a new smaller computer build may be my best bet.

Thank you again for all the feedback.

Yes, your software and data are on the two drives (HD and SSD), but all of your drivers on the software disk are specific to the hardware of your existing PC. If you move the HD and SSD to a new computer, you will need to upgrade drivers on your software disk to ones which are appropriate to the hardware in the new PC. If you use Windows 10, that driver update would normally occur after the first boot up of the new computer, when Windows discovers the drivers on the drive do not match the needs of the hardware in the PC...it should not be a big deal, unless you do not have an active internet connect where it can go to the web to download the necessary driver software.

It may be better simply to leave the hardware alone in the new PC, and simply attach your old HD and SSD via USB encousure, reload applications on the new HD, and access the data from the old drives via USB connection. That gives you the most optimized distribution of data and programs (no fragmentation of either) and an opportunity to start with a fresh load of every software package.

I bought a Corsair Carbide Series 100R - Silent Edition to move some of the guts of my old office computer into and have a smaller computer for our kitchen work area (pretty simple: Asus z87 Deluxe ATX MOBO, i7-4770K, SSD boot drive, 1 HDD for data, CD/DVD Drive, video card, 10GB ethernet card, 32GB RAM). Air flow is really good, and it's pretty quiet.

https://www.corsair.co​m …ower-Case/p/CC-9011077-WW

It's a decent case considering that it's pretty inexpensive. I recall that the legs were plastic and one of the anchor clips broke. A bit of Krazy glue to the rescue.

One point: a big roomy tower case has lots air inside to handle heat.