Sorry for not being able to answer until now. From what i can summarize a dGPU seems useless for my case. It also seems like a 11th gen i5 is the way. I wonder, does RAM speeds matter? If i can get a mini or micro ATX board and hook up an i5 with a good amount of DDR4 RAM i think i can get away cheaply. Will probably start off with a small M.2 and see if i can hook up my HDD later.