Crowd-designed case - Challenge-

[Singular]

We are new on the forum, so a big hello to everyone.

So this is the story...
Im a Industrial & graphic designer and my brother-in-law is an computer engineer.

And tired of looking for a Itx case that could work for us, we are designing and building one, the challenge?, getting the close that we can to the size of a PS4
(275mm (W) x 305mm (L) X 53mm (H).)

The deal is this, design the case with the community of SFF Forum, when the design is ready we will built it and test it, once the results are good and go, we can share the design and blueprints to all. (an open source in a design world)

The hardware inside the hood:

CPU: INTEL 6700K (with a shy O.C) TDP 95W STOCK
CPU COOLER: working on this, air cooling - Scythe SCBSK-2100 BIG Shuriken 2 Rev. B / ID-COOLING IS-VC45 / CRYORIG C7 and so on..
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-Z170N-WIFI
GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 970 MINI with a rise pcie card or cable
PSU: SILVERSTONE SX500-LG 500W Power Supply or Athena Power AP-MFATX50P8 500W FlexATX
SSD: Samsung SSD (maybe 2 of them)

THE INNER DESIGN SO FAR:
the psu most have a ac cable (c13 to c14) for the frontal position
the gpu fan its looking down taking air from the bottom of the case
the top of the case has no vents looking sleek and clean

so, we want the case look something like the ps4 with a angle front, the big challenge here is the slim size of it.


SORRY FOR THE BAD ENGLISH


Who's in?

 

[QinX]

To kick it off right away:
1) GTX970 mini, current mock-up the PCIe PEG connectors won't fit it seems.
2) Flex ATX tends to be noisy and availablity can be poor, but some people prefer it so might be feasible.
3) No top vents, but the CPU cooler is there, no way in hell that is going to work, unless hell freezes over of course
4) There seems to be a lot of wasted space.

Ok so that was the quick overview. Welcome to the Forum and be ready for a LOT of feedback, right now we are kind of consist of some of the most enthusiastic SFF people, both designers and consumers.

You might want to take a look at the Sentry, Inverse, Brevis and S4 Mini to get you started on similar design concepts.

 

[Josh | NFC]

Welcome and I must say your logo is nice.

 

[iFreilicht]

Welcome to the forum! It's great to have another design feature FlexATX, we need more of that!

I worked on a design very similar to this, but it was scrapped. A few things I notice right off the bat:

1. As QinX said, the 970 mini you show in the rendering doesn't leave enough space for the PEG connectors. Standard-height GPUs would work.
2. The C13-C14 cable could be placed a lot better, right now it wastes an awful lot of space. An example for placement can be seen in the picture below.
3. With FlexATX, you have the option to go very, very slim. As you want to keep the top free of vents, why not use a longer ribbon cable to turn the board upside down as well, so all components can intake from the bottom? That way you could make the case a little thicker than the I/O shield of the motherboard.
4. I like the idea of having an open-source case design, the question is whether you want people to be able to build it themselves or still sell it yourself anyway. This greatly impacts how complex the case can get.
5. Either the GPU or the motherboard model you're using has the PCIe slot misplaced, the alignment is a bit off.

Here is a picture of how the Sentry does C14 socket placement:

 

[CC Ricers]

Flipping the components upside down is a good idea as iFreilicht suggested. Otherwise, the only way you can keep the motherboard area vent-free on the top is to have exhaust vents on the sides and use a server blower-style cooler to push the air out in that direction, and you'll have to put up with a lot of noise depending on what CPU is used.

Having laid out parts in a similar fashion for a case concept, keeping the PSU cables under control is one of the challenges I had to face. Given the close quarters of all the components, some cables ran much longer than they needed to you have to wrap the cables around very tightly so they don't take up a lot of space.