TBH: I am only posting this here because most of the build is EVGA.   However, it is not love for EVGA as much as it was the best option for a real build (the best reason IMO).  In fact some EVGA parts came from newegg because EVGA has a really dumb policy against shipping to UPS stores which I use to make sure I don't have to take time off from work to sign for nor risk packages being stolen.
  
Review of Current System (Beast2):
 
The current computer is pretty decked out with a custom water-cooled loop, i7-6700 and a GTX 1080 founders edition.  It has two large radiators and 7 fans, weights about 50 pounds.  But it is noisy as hell, so I have to wear headphones to get any sense of immersion.  And I have to turn it off just to sleep.
 
My plan is to keep the existing system in perfect working order so I can sell it to compensate for some of the cost.  There are a few parts I want to scavenge from it, like a Samsung pro M.2 drive and similar SSD and the 1000W Titanium EVGA PSU.  I was able to get a brand new 750W EVGA PSU to replace it for about $50 (1/6th the cost of the 100w).  And I have some older SSD drives sitting in boxes to replace the premium ones.
 
BTW: I did a bios upgrade while doing this on the older computer and now the computer can sleep just like a laptop.   That is awesome, saves noise and power.  Wish I knew that from the start.
 
Goals for new system:
 
1.    Supports my use case of gaming, software development, video capture and editing, blender.
2.    Quiet
3.    Better video
4.    Smaller, the current one takes up too much leg room.
5.    No LED’s.  I don’t need the light show distraction nor the night light.
6.    No water, for space, noise and cost reduction.
7.    Some room to grow.
8.   Value conscious,  not cheap, but certainly not over the top.
 
 
The build:
 
First, the case chosen was a Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Mini Tower because it was small, has no windows and most importantly has good noise reduction design.  It is reasonably priced as well.
 
Next choice was the i9-7900x CPU and it was a hard one to make.   The main contenders were the Ryzen 7, Threadripper and the Intel i9 series.  The most impressive for my software development tasks is hands down the threadripper, plus for it has a great power/price ratio.   Sadly, it falls way short for games as most games are single threaded.  I hope that game engines start getting smarter about using more cores.   The Intel I9’s are pretty expensive and have a poor power/price ratio.  I waited until all the specs were in before I made a decision.  The 7980xe certainly tops the charts with at best a 30% gain (only in massive threading workloads) over the 7900x, at twice the price and double the power usage.  It just does not make sense.  On top of that, I would have to create another water loop to cool it, which is off the table.
 
Next was the motherboard, for which there is only one option that fits the CPU and the case.   The EVGA x299 micro ATX board.
 
Next was the heat sink, the part that could make or break the "small" build.  The CPU is going to require a significant cooler, more than 120mm closed loop can do.  To my surprise, the Noctua NH-D15 out preforms many 240mm closed loop systems.  Sadly, it was about 5mm too large to fit in the case.  The good news is the Noctua NH-D15S comes in at exactly 5mm shorter and only loses 20W of thermal capacity  in the compromise (~220W).  It is also well designed to make room for the RAM.  Fits like a glove.  Also, Noctua is well known for its quiet fans.    Hat tip to Nanoxia (case designers) support for preventing from having to try and fail.
 
Next I chose a 64GB Corsair Dominator kit for the RAM.  Mostly because I had lots of trouble between the ASUS motherboard and a G.Skill kit in my previous x99 build.
 
Finally, in a stroke of luck, ordering the GPU last.. EVGA just released, on the same day, a new 1080 ti elite that supposedly can rival its own Kingpin.  We shall see.
 
I compared this build with others from the popular online PC builders and I am definitely coming in at very significant savings even when compared against lesser hardware options.
 
The Result:
 
It's been a long night!  But, as luck would have it the job is done and it meets all the goals I stated for it including being very quiet.  In order to hear it at all everything else has to be turned off including the central air.  Even under full load it is just a whisper. 
Here are a couple boring photos.  My goal was to have a plain looking system with the LED's off.    I even went into the video card setting and turned off the lighting.


 
I benchmarked for while and it was smoking fast and I have not even overclocked it.   I did finally start overclocking and what I found was a pretty unnoticeable change in the single threaded benchmarks as the turbo mode automatically over-clocks two cores on demand.  I doubt there will be many cases that overclocking would actually make a difference for normal use and instead just drives up the power and the heat.   At least for now, I am not going to over-clock it.
 
It is much lighter than the previous one, guessing 25-30 lbs.
 
It's a nice quiet beast.
 
Edit:
Without anything overclocked, the Firestrike benchmark is 23,317 
.
FYI: I am pretty sure the windows update download was happening at the same time.

Thanks, was not sure where to post.

i forgot how much space those air cooler can take up. looks good.
on the UPS thing, setup a basic account with the UPS app and you can have them send your package to a local ups store, i do it all the time, you can do the same with fedex also ( well to to a fedex office store )

rjohnson11
Very nice air cooled build

+1, man that air cooler takes up a lot of visibility, but kind of mute anyways with a solid side panel.

 
That cooler dwarfs everything else. LOL.

 
If my cooler was any bigger, my Ram stick wouldn't fit in the slot next to the CPU.

Thanks everyone.  I really never considered the build worth a lot of discussion.  It is just heat in a small box.  I could not help but share it here nevertheless, just because it actually worked.  I really appreciate all the support.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving this space to share my moment of small triumph.

That's a really nice build.
That air cooler, as others already said, is massive.
I'm more into AIO water cooling, but that air cooling should work just as best as other 120mm AIO.