It's hard for me to justify the expense of an HTPC—literally a PC I only use with my TV. This is why I have a super old one now. So if I were to replace it, getting into 4060-perfprmance territory sounds really great, and it's a lot cheaper than the Velkase option. And I really don't want a riser cable; aside from the expense and the difficult assembly, I don't want the extra point of failure. Sometimes games crash, and it can be difficult to figure out why. No riser means one less thing to troubleshoot.The smallest ITX case is probably the Velka 3 or something similar.
I mean, how much smaller you want your case to be, so that you are willing to sacrifice a potentially 4070 in ITX format?
About the cost, ok. Most of them are on the expensive side for the size and quality you get.
So the low-profile world seems pretty great compared to ITX. Although it'd be a lot better if there were more case and power supply options.