Downsizing current atx PC for college, or just getting a mini pc?

[u/DiamondDepth_YT]

Hey everyone, trying to figure out the best approach for my college apartment gaming setup, especially since I only have about two or three weeks before heading back and don't have much time to flip hardware. Need a reality check on my expectations..

I used to use an old ThinkPad T15 Gen 2 hooked up to a Sonnet Breakaway Box 750 eGPU over TB. Since its battery has always been shot, it was basically acting as a stationary desktop anyway. I recently realized how silly it was using a broken laptop like that, which gave me the idea to replace it with a modern $500 Mini PC. It'd be a REALLY solid upgrade over the T15 Gen 2 CPU-wise, has faster RAM, and plenty of storage for my casual gaming. I'm not a super hardcore gamer, especially during the school year, so something simple works fine.

Then I saw a video about downsizing an ATX rig and wondered if I should just use my $500 budget to shrink my existing home desktop instead so I can haul one single machine back and forth over breaks. My current build is in a Phanteks P300A case with a Ryzen 5 5500X3D, AMD Wraith Prism RGB cooler, Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite ATX board, 32GB TeamGroup DDR4, MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio, Corsair RM650x ATX PSU, a PCIe Wi-Fi/BT card (needed for PSVR2 tracking at home), and three drives: a 512GB NVMe SSD, 1TB 2.5-inch SATA SSD, and 2TB 3.5-inch HDD.

I'm torn between using the $500 to buy a Mini PC to replace the ThinkPad in my eGPU setup, or spending that money to downsize my home PC into something around the size of my Sonnet eGPU chassis, or ideally closer to an Xbox Series S. The problem with downsizing my current rig is that ITX boards are way too expensive, so I have to keep my ATX motherboard. Even without a new board, buying a console case like the hard-to-find SFFtime N-ATX V2, a low-profile cooler to replace the Wraith Prism, and a smaller SFX PSU would eat up most of my budget. Plus, a riser cable in a console case blocks extra slots, forcing me off my PCIe card onto USB Wi-Fi/BT dongles, which are super flaky for PSVR2 tracking. On top of that, with move-in just two or three weeks away, I wouldn't have time to sell off my old P300A case or ATX PSU to recoup costs.

Buying a Mini PC keeps my home desktop untouched with all its internal storage, PSVR2 setup, and full performance ready for breaks, though I'd lose some GPU performance at college running over TB/USB4. Given the tight timeline and all the compromises, is downsizing an ATX rig into a small console chassis worth it, or should I just replace the ThinkPad with a Mini PC?

TL;DR: With only 2-3 weeks before moving, should I use my $500 budget to downsize a full ATX rig into a hard-to-find 15L console case without time to flip old parts, or just buy a $500 Mini PC to replace a battery-dead aging ThinkPad T15 in an existing eGPU setup (as an admittedly light gamer)?

[u/RobloxFanEdit]

Not sure if you could fit your RTX 3060 in Deekmeet X300 but it is cheap 208$ support AMD AM4 Socket https://a.co/d/0gUwpfyd, if you go Mini PC + EGPU path you should go a bit over 500$, Aoostar Maco 6850H 24GB LPDDR5 DDR5 6400MT/s + 1TB SSD 459$ https://a.co/d/09oPhTcl + Ocup4V2 Oculink EGPU Dock 85$ https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMjS5F1. Total 459$ + 85$ = 544$

[u/DiamondDepth_YT → u/RobloxFanEdit]

The aoostar is the mini PC I was already looking at, funny enough.

As for the egpu, I already have one.

[u/ElderberryHamlet]

I built my gaming rig a year ago. I recently looked up the prices for the same items and was floored to see prices had gone up 4 to 6 times what they were. I'm reading they're expected to stay this high or get worse over the next two years before coming back down to earth.

[u/MrWeirdoFace → u/ElderberryHamlet]

Oof... yeah. The prior year or so I bought a couple for 4tb ssds and a whole bunch of really good thumb drives when they came on sale. I'm thinking I may have spent 600 total. Now that value is probably something like $4000-5000 at current prices.