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TL;DR: mobos with DP are rare, I've been planning on SFF but don't know which case and am reconsidering after finding an ATX mobo with DP for half the price. Looking for tips on motherboard and either mITX cases or small ATX cases and reasons to go with one or the other. What advice can other gerbils give me?

Full story: The sales this past week convinced me to finally do a new build, based around a 2400G I got on a steep sale as older Ryzen inventory is being cleared out. Grabbed 16GB CL15 DDR4-3000 @$70 & HP EX950 512GB @$60 - what a world!

My present monitor has limited-range FreeSync support; it was on sale for roughly the same price as the fixed refresh alternatives when I got it. But it only does FreeSync over DisplayPort (it even apparently requires DP for fixed-rate 75Hz; stuck at 60Hz on HDMI at present). I don't do very much gaming, but I would like to have the option from time to time, and this would be a real smoothness benefit.

But most motherboards don't have DisplayPort outputs, especially mATX motherboards. A few B450/X470 mITX boards have it, and I was thinking of getting one of those. But it looks to me like the mITX case situation has kind of stagnated since the last time I was looking four years ago, especially since I'd like to scavenge my full-size 5.25" Blu-Ray writer. And the mITX boards are $120.

Newegg has a B450 ATX mobo with DP on sale for $65 after MIR. And perhaps more than mITX expansion could come in handy eventually - 5G/10G nic or USB 4 ports or something, along with a future low-midrange dGPU. But the last time I looked at ATX-size cases was circa 2004 and I'm not sure where to start.

Priorities are quiet, budget, and relatively small. Glass sides and LEDs are things I'd rather pay to avoid. Been looking at either that ASRock ATX B450 or the $120 mITX B450s from ASRock or Gigabyte, and the likeliest ITX case I've seen so far is the Fractal Design Core 500.

In principle, mITX and mATX make more sense than ATX for most users -- most of us don't use more than one PCI-e card and two sticks of RAM. However, in practice the SFF options don't work out as often as they should:

* mITX boards and cases inexplicably cost loads more than ATX, even though the components used in them are no different than ATX. (This is especially bad in cases -- an nCase M1 for example costs more than a mid-range ATX case and mid-range ATX motherboard combined, possibly with enough left over to throw in 16 GB of RAM...)
* mATX cases these days are inexplicably huge -- the only real difference between them and ATX cases is the stand off mounts (so why bother trying to go for a smaller motherboard if the case ends up having the same dimensions as an ATX equivalent would?)
* mATX motherboards seem to be on the road to extinction, and while they don't have the weird pricing issue of mITX they also aren't any cheaper than ATX either

So you end up probably spending more money and not actually saving any space under your desk or in your entertainment cabinet.

I wish the above wasn't true: there's no technical reason we shouldn't be able to build a system with a 3900X or 9900K and a triple fan GPU that takes up the volume of, say, 1.5 PS/4s without having to take out a second mortgage to pay for it all.

I personally prefer the cheaper one. Especially if you are not building your rig for gaming. Just pick a cheaper one with the most features that you want and of course the look if your case has a glass panel.
Personal preference I'll pick ASRock B450 I've tried building 2 rigs using Asrock mobos and it lasts me 4 years which is long enough.

K-L: yeah, that sounds like a pretty accurate summary of the unfortunate overall trends.

The one case I've found that seems to do everything I'd be interested in - mATX SFF, 5.25" optical, etc - is the Silverstone SG12. Unfortunately stock is low and prices are high - cheapest I see is $152, while I could get a passable not-really-compact mATX case for $25 after MIR. And I only see one mATX mobo with DP, going for $90.

If I give up on mATX, the ASRock mITX is on sale right now for $100 rather than $130, and it's easier to find decent small ITX cases (maybe go with the Fractal Core 500 at $60??)

I ended up grabbing the Corsair SF450 Platinum since there's a MIR deal. Fully modular SFX, and comes with an SFX-ATX adapter plate. From what I've heard, a lot of smaller cases, even if they can take an ATX PSU, have a very crowded tight fit with 5.25" optical + non-modular ATX, and this gives me some more case flexibility while being not really more expensive than ATX 80+Gold units right now.

If anyone has any more words of wisdom to impart I'd be glad to hear them!

If the 5.25" bay is a requirement, then I doubt you're going to find better than the Core 500. I'm not sure which one came first, but the Core 500 looks a bit like a shrunken Node 304 which I have two of here with no complaints.