I have a long history of designing and building things ever since I was 7 years old. Through the years, the projects I pursued grew in complexity and so the stakes got ever higher. My parents would give me a budget to work within, and I had to make my ideas work right the first time, every time.
In the summer of 2012, I built my first computer. This computer has been my workhorse and has followed me all the way into today, my freshman year of college. I love my computer, it has proven to be my most prized tool and a great source of entertainment and learning. I can't stand being away from it. But recently, our relationship has gotten rather rocky.
At every vacation or extended break from school, I take two things with me back home to Houston. A portion of my wardrobe and my computer. Being built in a Corsair 300R, my computer is not light nor small by any means and thus, it has shown itself to always be a pain to transport.
In addition to that, a gaming organization at my university holds biweekly LAN parties. I lust to go, but the size and weight of my computer holds me back.
So I craved something smaller.
It began with a cool 3D printed lamp I saw and Makirole's Aetos. Both made use of Voronoi patterns in their designs. I knew that by using Voronoi patterns in my case, it would be strong, lightweight, and allow for virtually unrestricted airflow — which I know is something many SFF cases struggle with.
Very quickly, I saw how stupid this looked, with how large it was and how much empty space there was on the interior. So I tried to compact it down to minimum total volume, borrowing the back-to-back layout of the DAN-A4.
For the oncoming months, I worked on the case relentlessly, tinkering with drive placement and power switch location in order to maximize the usable volume of the GPU compartment.
Moving the SSDs from the topside to the underside of the GPU made so much sense, since no graphics card would ever extend in that direction.
Sourcing a better power switch was quite tedious, but I was able to find one with a diameter of 8mm, which conveniently fits in between the feet/tabs of the PCI-E bracket, allowing me to move the graphics card further left and increase the maximum graphics card height.
This continued on, including further size & proportion optimizations and some minor reorganization, for the next few months.
You can see the condensed genesis of the final case design here.
You can see I experimented with extended feet for the case and inverting the motherboard, so all cables would come out the bottom. I got rid of that idea and settled on small feet for the bottom, allowing for exhaust airflow for the PSU and omnidirectional power cable routing.
As December began and winter vacation started to creep up, working on the case became rather stale. I was practically done, but something about it felt off to me. I started to become unsatisfied with the open air Voronoi pattern of the case, but I had no good ideas on hand. I just wanted it to look cleaner; something to match the slimness and verticality of the case.
At this time, I left the design alone for two months.
Winter break ended and the spring semester began. My sister and my friends noticed how much time I was putting into playing Overwatch (heh), and so I was motivated to offset that. I got into the productive mood again and resumed work on the case two weeks ago. I started with translating the design from Sketchup into Inventor.
Those two months away from the case allowed my tastes to mature, and so I had a great idea for the new design of the venting of the case.
Taking cues from Braun's classic design language, I gave the exterior of the case an orthogonal hole grid pattern, giving the case, in my opinion, a much more modern and understated aesthetic while still keeping the standard of ample ventilation.
I knew that this appearance would be carried into the final version. I was in love with the way it looked.
**AUGUST 2017 UPDATE: No longer in love with the hole grid pattern. This is how the case will look now. I love it even more. Thanks guys.
So yeah, that's pretty much it up until now. Now onto the specs.
