[vhodges]

I don't game (but would like to be able too). I ran intel integrated graphics for 5 years and never missed a thing ;).

I put 16G in my machine in '15 and rarely exceed 3-4G daily use even today (and for a long time 1-2G daily - I recently switched to Budgie desktop so it's jumped a bit). At this point I'd just buy new ram and the two sticks I have go into the surplus pile but my motherboard (depend on source) only supports 16 (it's oldish also from 2015)

There are water cooling for SFF cases (mine can take a 120MM radiator for instance - the ghost mentioned upthread can take up to a full 360 with the tophat) but I put a Noctua CPU cooler in and changed out the fan on it. Stays nice and cool. My Caselabs itx case could do up to 3 360MM Radiators but was not SFF (by a large amount!).

On the upgrade path, it's so long between that I usually just build a new machine, 6+ years so far on my current desktop and good enough until I find it not. By then, DDR5. PCIE 4.x, etc, etc

I am not trying to convince you to get one, just show that there's a market for SFF... just like there's one for latops, rackmounts, NUCS, stickpcs, Pis and yes even EATX Threadripper monsters in cases on casters ;)

[SergeAx]

With your circumstances (internal graphics, 4GB RAM tops) I would consider using Raspberry PI 4 as a desktop computer (seriously, no sarcasm). If you are interested in reduced footprint, take a look at Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny series: they have a VESA mount to hang behind the monitor and the price starts around $400 (your ITX case + PSU)

[vhodges]

No quite enough CPU ;). It's getting a bit dated of course, but my machine is running a Devils Canyon 4790k (at stock speeds), 16G ram, 1.5TB of storage (NVME M2 and a 2.5" drive) and a rx5700.