Chimera Industries Cerberus: The 18L, mATX, USA-made enclosure

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
Dammit, if only I could bake it. Just not the good time for me :'(

Just spreading the word does a lot, not just for the Kickstarter but for advocating for SFF more generally. That's half the reason we're doing this anyway :) Folks shouldn't feel 'bad' for not pledging, by any stretch!

I hope for KI's sake Linus, since he has the bigger audience. But they seem swamped atm, so my money is on Dimitry.

Personally I prefer Dimitry's work. DAT b-roll. I think he really will make the product pop, + when he reviews a case, he shows the actual case for the most part, not just himself talking about it and 20% b-roll.

If the case is returning from the west coast, then it's not been to Dimitry, since he is based in Toronto.

Bearing in mind that we're based in the southern US and the east coast, "west" to us includes practically the entire US, and "north" of us includes... well, practically the entire US, too :p And Canada, obviously.

So it might be Linus or JayzTwoCents. Barnecles doesn't seem to do pcparts much does he?

I know exactly one of those names.


Yes, but that's very misleading. Without crunching numbers, it seems that Kicktraq's "projections" extrapolate the average amount raised per day so far, and assume that the same rate continues until the end. As we had a big peak at the beginning, this metric is pretty distorted.

They also have a "trend" that more accurately (in my view) captures our trajectory, and that does not reach the goal. Basically, unless we see a significant change in the rate of people backing cases, we won't make it.

(Granted, there are some forthcoming things that might bring about that change, but it will take a lot to get us to $150,000.)
 
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Isomer

Trash Compacter
Feb 10, 2016
39
8
If the case is returning from the west coast, then it's not been to Dimitry, since he is based in Toronto.

I know but I also quoted how it's due to ship North of Boston too, which is where Toronto would be.
 

Jeffinslaw

Average Stuffer
Mar 3, 2015
75
66

Except it's not...?



I hope it does though! Even if it does impact sales of my case ;) I'm debating on making a pledge... but I need another case like I need another hole in my head lol.

-Jeffinslaw
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,780
So whats the process if we don't get to 150k?

My thought was there are 100 people for sure who want Cerberus, so we could talk it over with everyone and figure out what features to cut to keep the price from going up too much at a lower quantity and then running a new campaign at the lower goal.

I meant trending :(

The trending number is fun to look at but it's not very meaningful since the spike on the first day skews it so bad.
 

shawnbeonkey

Minimal Tinkerer
Feb 13, 2016
4
0
My thought was there are 100 people for sure who want Cerberus, so we could talk it over with everyone and figure out what features to cut to keep the price from going up too much at a lower quantity and then running a new campaign at the lower goal.
For what it's worth, I'd absolutely be interested in something like this. Forgoing the infinite vents or an ATX option, etc., are definitely things I would be sad to see go, but ultimately it's the form factor I'm interested in, so getting the case with a few sacrifices is far better than no Cerb at all.
 

PNP

Airflow Optimizer
Oct 10, 2015
285
257
My thought was there are 100 people for sure who want Cerberus, so we could talk it over with everyone and figure out what features to cut to keep the price from going up too much at a lower quantity and then running a new campaign at the lower goal.

That's a tricky proposition. 100 opinions and preferences to sate, seems like herding cats.

Except it's not...?

As someone who regularly pulls his hair out over projections and trend analysis (though for factory automation, not investments), every prediction tool on that site hurts my brain. Neat mathematical trendlines whyyyy.
 
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Terse

Cable Smoosher
Mar 12, 2016
10
4
Design wise, I love this case and have pledged, but I have some gripes.

Get this case out to multiple reviewers ASAP. You should have had some barebones NDA and had your 5 production prototypes in multiple hands for reviewing prior to any reveal announcement, but that's hindsight now.

The above kind of goes into another thing, which why the reveal was almost a month before the kickstarter was live. The reveal seems to have generated a significant amount more press than the actual kickstarter, but I and many others couldn't throw our money at the screen yet when you had the most people interested. Its hindsight, but you guys should have coordinated a lot better so that the reviews, kickstarter, and reveal all hit at once.

I was contemplating ordering two cases, but yet I have no easy way to do that. That's another $300 closer you could have been, and I bet quite a few others would have considered that too. I don't know if its your end or kickstarter, but it should have been done.

It sounds like this case had a healthy amount of international interest, and the astronomical shipping charges to non-US backers seemed to have put a big dent in the backings. The crazy thing to me is that the other hobby case makers say they have smaller costs in shipping/handling.

The smallest gripe would have to be yet another website/forum to register on, and to further split the community, but I like the part that this does seem to offer more resources to others trying to do the same thing and grow the community.

I want this to succeed and there is still time to I believe.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
The smallest gripe would have to be yet another website/forum to register on, and to further split the community, but I like the part that this does seem to offer more resources to others trying to do the same thing and grow the community.

SFFn isn't a community just for the Cerberus, It's a standalone SFF orientated community to bring together all the SFF enthusiasts from around the web, instead of being shunned to a back corner of some subforum. We also only review SFF hardware on our main site, looking at some products that are ignored by the mass media due to their 'limited' appeal.
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,780
Welcome to the forum Terse!

Get this case out to multiple reviewers ASAP. You should have had some barebones NDA and had your 5 production prototypes in multiple hands for reviewing prior to any reveal announcement, but that's hindsight now.

There's only one available prototype right now. We can't justify spending the money on another set of prototypes when the campaign isn't guaranteed. The one prototype returned from one reviewer yesterday though and will be going out to another Monday after I do some testing.

The above kind of goes into another thing, which why the reveal was almost a month before the kickstarter was live.

The gap was necessary to process feedback on the design before getting the campaign ready. You're right though, in hindsight it was definitely a mistake to send out press releases for the reveal instead of the campaign launch, at least with only a few week gap. Maybe if the two events were further apart then we could have gotten coverage for both but as it is the sites who did post articles about the reveal don't seem willing to post anything about the campaign.

I was contemplating ordering two cases, but yet I have no easy way to do that. That's another $300 closer you could have been, and I bet quite a few others would have considered that too. I don't know if its your end or kickstarter, but it should have been done.

It's Kickstarter, they don't allow multiple pledges under the same account. The plan is to take orders after the campaign (if it's successful) for stragglers and those who want more than one case. From the survey we ran less than 5% were planning to order more than one case.

It sounds like this case had a healthy amount of international interest, and the astronomical shipping charges to non-US backers seemed to have put a big dent in the backings. The crazy thing to me is that the other hobby case makers say they have smaller costs in shipping/handling.

It's partly the weight, Cerberus is steel so between that and the size the international shipping isn't great. I've thought about aluminum exterior panels but they're more expensive. That would help international but wouldn't make much of a difference for domestic backers. That's a big change though so it's outside the scope of the current campaign but it's something for consideration for a second campaign if this one doesn't succeed.

The smallest gripe would have to be yet another website/forum to register on, and to further split the community, but I like the part that this does seem to offer more resources to others trying to do the same thing and grow the community.

I completely understand, I hate having to sign up for yet another site if I don't have to but the existing SFF communities aren't that friendly to projects like this plus they're all small sub-forums of larger communities while SFF Forum is creator friendly and is dedicated to our interests.

BTW, look forward to a review of the Corsair SF600 either tonight or tomorrow. So far it looks good, not silent by any means at load but not too bad and the semi-fanless feature works pretty well.
 

EdZ

Virtual Realist
May 11, 2015
1,578
2,107
It's Kickstarter, they don't allow multiple pledges under the same account. The plan is to take orders after the campaign (if it's successful) for stragglers and those who want more than one case. From the survey we ran less than 5% were planning to order more than one case.
Two solutions that both fly with Kickstarter:
1 - Offer pledge tiers for multiple cases
2 - Offer 'upgrades' by adding $X to an existing pledge.

Option 1 is simpler to administer but less flexible (probably OK for Cerberus, there aren't a huge range of tiers to start with). Option 2 is more flexible, but means manually matching pledge values to requested numbers of cases & case variations after the campaign closes. This is usually done either with the Kickstarter survey system, or via a third party system like Backerkit.
 

Nayru

What's an ITX?
Mar 13, 2016
1
2
Just created an account to say that I stumbled upon this project after following the dan-A4 for a while and wishing there was a way to have a small case that still supported dual graphics cards. I backed the project on kickstarter and I hope we can make it to the goal! super excited to take my hardware out of my oversized BitFenix Colossus micro-atx and put it in this beauty!
 
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jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,780
Two solutions that both fly with Kickstarter:
1 - Offer pledge tiers for multiple cases
2 - Offer 'upgrades' by adding $X to an existing pledge.

1. There would have to be 3 extra tiers for each of the options and that still wouldn't help for those that want 2 cases with different sets of options for each.

2. I've brought that up with Joshua and we could maybe do that.

I backed the project on kickstarter and I hope we can make it to the goal! super excited to take my hardware out of my oversized BitFenix Colossus micro-atx and put it in this beauty!

Thanks!

And I posted that review of the Corsair SF600: https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/powersupplies/corsair-sf600-review-new-player-joined

I really like it other than I miss the flexible cables from the SilverStone units. Between this and the upcoming 650W and 700W from SilverStone it's looking up for SFF power supplies.