I built a mini PC this weekend, a whole machine in a case barely bigger than a lunchbox. The kind of project that looks simple on a parts list and turns into spatial Tetris the moment you open the box.
Small-form-factor builds are all about constraints, and constraints are where design lives. Every millimetre is contested: the cooler clears the RAM by a hair, the GPU only fits if the cables route the one way that isn't obvious, the airflow only works if you commit to a layout early. There's no slack to hide a lazy decision.
It scratched the same itch as product work, plan the flow, sweat the tolerances, accept that the elegant solution is usually the one with the fewest parts fighting each other. Cable management is basically information architecture for electrons.
It booted first try, which felt like undeserved luck. Now it sits quietly under the desk doing far more than its size suggests, which, honestly, is the whole point.