Uji Ninja

I built once in it, it's not hard at all if you follow the manual, you can also find some good build videos on it. I used mine for gaming while travelling, it does the job very nicely but is a bit loud because of the PSU fan while gaming.
 
Yes it's very small, but it's well optimised imo, cable management isn't as easy as in a big case, but it's also one of the easiest that I came across in this form factor (I've built 5 SFF PCs in the past 2 years) especially with the built-in PSU.
 
What you need to note is that
of course no graphics card can be installed unless you mod the case, and you're limited to 2x 2.5" HDD/SSD in addition to any M.2 slots available on your motherboard, the worst thing about this case is how loud the PSU is when you're running high load, it's comparable to a laptop when you game on it, pretty loud.
You could replace the PSU fan but this as well requires modding - google replacing flex PSU fan (Optimum Tech did a nice video on it) I highly recommend this case if you're specifically going for an APU build on the go in this very sff, but if you plan to have a fixed place for the PC and wouldn't wanna carry it around, I recommend something bigger for less noise, better cooling and upgradeability like:
Fractal Design Node 202 Silverstone RVZ01-E, RVZ02 (can attach a carrying handle to it), ML08, RVZ03 Cooler Master NR200(P)

3400G handles GameCube emulation just fine in my DeskMini A300 system, and that's even with relatively slow RAM.

it supports the 5700G according to the Asrock info.
 
it just requires bios 1.70.  It may be on the warm side for the box?  But it should run fine.
 

I'd put Ventoy on a good USB stick and after installing it try antiX.  With 8GB RAM, it should scream off of a USB3 flash drive and give the functionality desired.
Then, you could put other distro ISOs on it and compare.
There's another thread in here about how to do that.
 
Only a touchscreen or do you have a USB kewyboard, too. ?  Choose distro accordingly, but give Ventoy a try -- you should like it

A tad slow but perfectly usable
That's on a fast UHS-I U3, 90MB/s writes microSD and good USB 3.0 reader.

There's no distribution that is specifically better for booting from a pendrive. Try keeping startup services at a minimum to get better performance as pendrives tend to slow down significantly under heavy use (i.e. loading a bunch of services at the same time).

Anything basically.
 
I regularly use Ubuntu from SD/USB.

This is a clear example of why a lot of people still prefer physical media, buy consoles with disc-drives or CDs instead of paying for streaming. Stuff like this.
Sure what Apple did was (currently) within their rights... But it sure does leave a sour taste in your mouth, doesn't it?
 
Music I liked disappeared from Spotify. I know Apple themselves removed movies people bought from their account in the past. There's a reason I stopped paying subscriptions and moved to hosting my own Plex server.
 
I think there needs to a refactoring of ownership laws concerning digital content. Currently basically all of it is a "license to use", not an actual ownership. And while some licenses might be non-revocable, access to the content certainly is, and keeps being dependent on the service that provides them. And current Copyright laws and DRM can certainly get part of the blame.

I think Apple is actually currently being sued about their wording about "purchasing" movies on iTunes, when it was actually an "extended renter's agreement".

A P1000 actually looks to be buyable for ~110 bucks currently, and falls between the RX 550 and a GTX 1050 TI for power.  Solid choice.

In quadro space there's the Quadro P1000 at 47w (even a bit less than the RX 550X), I dont think it's faster but it can definitely use workstation drivers for CAD software

that is thoroughly irrelevant and weird info.
 
the most powerful cards you can get in Low Profile, and low draw:  GTX 1050 TI, or GTX 1650

Both draw about 75W, which is about 25W higher than your RX 550x, but *should* be okay.  (But that 210W PSU is a hard limit.)

Nice baby, but slightly too expensive right now.
Wouldn't mind buying one someday though.

If you just want to work with RISC but don't want to do a Rasberry Pi there is the RISC V Platform. 
 
https://abopen.com/news/a-look-at-the-risc-v-pc-from-sifive/
 

 
RISC V has that X86 feature of being an open source platform that really allows building a true PC. 
 
ARM is not sold as an open platform to consumers.  It is always sold in a locked down form or a from that is so bespoke and / or expensive that they'd make no sense for consumers even if more open. 

In fact this makes me kinda want to buy this just to play with. 

Pinebook Pro
https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
i mean it's not super fast, but it's to my knowledge the best you can get for playing around
 

The Nvidia Jetson is considered the most powerful you can get as a consumer. You'd already have a Qualcomm Dev kit if you're one of the people who could have gotten on.

The best thing to get is the raspberry pi compute module 4, since it has the most documentation and is the easiest to get started with. It's crazy powerful for what it is and it's best not to invest a lot now seeing as the next few years will have a ton of new options coming out.

You can swap the side acrylic panel to the top and mesh panel to the side if the card blows air out.  Another thing you could do is keep the clear panel on the side.  And put an exhaust fan or two on the top panel. You can put two exhaust fans pretty much directly over the card and up to 4 fans on top total. Just make sure the case is elevated off the ground.  The power supply will suck air from the bottom if you keep a horizontal layout. And try to make the case a positive air pressure setup. There is an uncovered grill on the bottom panel that doesn't have a mesh filter.  Negative air pressure will lead to it possibly sucking dust and lint in through that grill opening. 

Isn't the DA2 a bit "tight" for powerful components? I think there's a video on YouTube of a guy fitting a 3900X inside, and temperature gets slightly above 90c. I'd probably end up frying something sooner or later when doing video rendering/compression.
 
I may limit myself to a Ryzen 5 2600 or a Ryzen 7 2700 if I go with that case, with maybe a shorter graphic card, such as the MSI GeForce RTX 2060 AERO ITX 6G OC or ASUS PH-RTX2060-6G (though I'm not sure it would improve the airflow).
 
Too bad I can't find a suitable egpu solution so far. It would be so much easier (for me) to simply have the gpu out of the DA2.
 
As for tempered glass, I'll probably put the computer on some stand cart to move it between two rooms (and let it rest in a closet when not in use). I'm a bit worried a side glass panel might be trouble waiting to happen when moving the tower around.