ITX silent encoding/home server box

[orels1]

Hey there, LTT community!

With pretty favorable dram pricing and generally nice prices overall i was looking into building a separate tiny home server / encoding pc for some personal projects and streaming.

My initial plan was:
- Ryzen 2600
- 8gb of ram (not sure if i need 16 for those tasks)
- 256gb nvme ssd
- Linux as an OS, since i plan on using OBS with AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable and that capture card has Linux support

My current desktop is liquid cooled and is very quiet and i'm kinda hesitant to go with purely aircooled system for the server, but most of the "shoebox" cases do not have enough clearance to install the liquid cooler alongside a gpu, and since 2600 doesnt have an internal gpu - i need to use at least some kind of gpu in there (i got an RX550 "plug", so i planned to use that just to output stuff to my second monitor)

Generally speaking i'm looking for any suggestions on the initial config, willing to swap/expand on any of the points and asking for some input on these particular topics:
- Which case should work well? I have an NZXT H700 already on the desk and i don't want another tower, so i'm looking for something smaller that i can put on the desk behind my monitors (they're on the boom arms, so there should be enough space for slim, "console-like" cases. Looking for an AiO mounting support
- How hard is it to cool the 2600? I do not plan on overclocking, but i do plan on encoding with the "faster" x264 preset, which will have a significant load on the CPU, so i'm concerned about noise if going with aircooling.
- Does it make sense to go with Ryzen for this particular use-case? The amount of cores is very appealing for a home server / encoding machine, especially with the price. But the need to also put a gpu into the same case limiting the aio installation options is a bit concerning

- Recommendations for the PSU, as i've never used a small form-factor PSU and not really sure what to look at, and if there are any differences from the regular PSUs (i do have a full blown BeQuiet Straight Power 11 550W that i can reuse, but it won't fit any slim case, but sharing just so you're aware that it's an option i have)

In terms of budgets and locations:
- I'm in Russia, but i can import up to $500 of non-bulky parts from US, so you can safely look for pricing on Amazon / Newegg.
- There is no real budget limit for this particular use-case: i'm willing to spend up to $1k which should be like way more than enough for a box like this.

I looked at HP microservers and all that, but they're pretty loud from what i've read online and feel pretty underpowered for their price. But if you think that's a better solution based on your own experience - i'm pretty open to those as well.

[Fasauceome]

Silverstone Sugo SG13B, 120mm aio, and a passively cooled GT 1030, minimal noise.

[orels1]

21 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Silverstone Sugo SG13B, 120mm aio, and a passively cooled GT 1030, minimal noise.

That looks like a nice option. It fits a regular psu as I understand?

[Fasauceome]

Just now, orels1 said:

That looks like a nice option. It fits a regular psu as I understand?

It does, and the stock Ryzen cooler would still fit if you wanted to test the noise level before buying an AIO

[orels1]

5 hours ago, fasauceome said:

It does, and the stock Ryzen cooler would still fit if you wanted to test the noise level before buying an AIO

Ok, cool. I think i'll go with that then. Thanks for the help