TL;DR: What are your educated opinions on mini-towers/box towers? Also, how hard are they to build?
I'd really appreciate some advice after reading all of this thread though.

About three years ago, I got a nice (overpriced) gaming laptop that is still in great condition just for the sake of keeping myself entertained while I went through a lot of transitions in my life. I really didn't expect it to make it this far, but it's a tough little thing.

I'm thinking about selling this thing for like $500-700 (if possible) and investing in a mini-tower that is stronger than this laptop, not as loud, and still mobile. I'm also going to be buying a macbook soon for all my multimedia projects, so this is a big purchase altogether that I plan on making.

I always come to this side of the forums because there are some really computer-savvy people who can steer me in the right direction as I begin to budget this.

So I guess my main questions right now are:
What are the bad sides of having a mini tower? How much should I be looking to spend on something like this?

Here are my relevant laptop specs:
  • Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M
  • Motherboard It's shits and I honestly dont even know. I'm surprised it made it this far
  • RAM 16303 MB
  • Hard Drive 1TB

I play games like ESO just fine, but even wildstar I have to turn down a bit. It's really odd.


Here is a list of things that I want from this mini-tower desktop:
  • Play upcoming big titles like Fallout 4 without a problem.
  • Play games like Black Desert (and other things designed for monster PCs) at a pretty high, but not perfect, level.
  • Silence. My laptop is so damn loud. I dont mind a slight buzz, but a full throttle fan is too much.
  • Endurance. I want this to be a long-ended invested.
  • Nice video streaming, but that will come with any PC purchase over $700 imo




Example of what I'm talking about:
https://www.originpc.com/gaming/desktops/chronos/

Edit: I'm not sure if I want to build one if it's too hard, but I'm open to the idea.