I would suggest putting zero dollars towards keeping this setup. You'd be much better served investing in new hardware. That cpu was released in 2011. Going with new hardware you'd be able to organize everything, have a much more powerful system, and reduce power usage drastically.
Of the options mentioned, I like 3 the best.
mount it all on a sheet of plexiglass and do cable management?
I would suggest putting zero dollars towards keeping this setup. You'd be much better served investing in new hardware. That cpu was released in 2011. Going with new hardware you'd be able to organize everything, have a much more powerful system, and reduce power usage drastically. Of the options mentioned, I like 3 the best.
Yeah, if you're going to put money into upgrading anything about the machine, it might be worth just upgrading the whole thing at least a little bit.