From a function standpoint: I'm happy that multiple PCIe slots is still the standard. If I didn't have functional wants such as "more accelerators and more I/O" then I'd go with a cute ITX build.
I did get a compact case recently because 5.25", 3.5", and 2.5" bays are no longer an interesting use case for my daily driver, but now I find that even if I did want to shell out for a new high-end GPU the only model that would fit in my case is a perpetually sold out AIO model.
One is my new Ryzen APU in a small (sub-7-liter) case, which sits half empty because I haven't even dropped a GPU into it. All my games and CAD run just fine on the APU. All the included peripherals are more than I've ever needed.
The other is my old Athlon64x2 4850e in a bigass M3N78 Pro board, with drives and I/O out the wazoo. It's old enough to have floppy and PATA ports, but new enough to have SATA and USB too (and even a PCIe slot), so it's my media mule. I power it up whenever I need to do CD ripping, floppy archiving, that sort of stuff. I actually picked up the fastest chip that would fit the board (a Phenom II X4 945), just for giggles because they're $30 on eBay now, but promptly swapped back to the 4850e because 125 watts in a CPU is unconscionable when 45 does the job just fine.
The latter, of course, is chock-full of cables like they're goin' out of style. I made a few long floppy and PATA ribbons for working with external disks so they sit crammed up in the bottom when not in use, etc. And the non-modular PSU has like a dozen cables all splattered everywhere. It's the opposite of vanity, and I love it.
The cost of actually making a 10gbase-t network card is really not much anymore. All of the cost is licensing.