So to restart the digital DEC PC conversion quest.. I now run into a little dilemma. If I put the motherboard as close to the rear as possible, that means not everything fits -- what a shame, since I also bought a USB 3 header to go under the video card. additionally I'd also have to dremel that entire i/o section and thensome -- I'd rather preserve that especially when I get my AMD Ryzen 3950X and the appropriate ITX motherboard.. see if I can't dremel it out and make it nice and neat.
On the other hand... if I move the motherboard closer to the speaker... I can dremel out some of the i/o holes a wee bit bigger especially to accommodate a ethernet cord. Additionally I can stick an entire xbox one (PS4 and 8bitdo are fine too) controller dongle inside and have it concealed -- sneaky.
Either way, I dunno if the RAM sticks and especially the CPU fan will clear an entire video card, and I hope the cooling of the CPU and GPU don't interfere with one another. I also plan on getting a m.2 stick for this thing soon, so for the most part no need to worry about hard drives