Enclosure Geeek A10: ITX, LP dual slot and FlexATX

iFreilicht

FlexATX Authority
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Feb 28, 2015
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This looks like a simple but interesting case for the folks that wanted FlexATX support for the Lone Industries L3.


Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of space wasted at the front and it's currently only available for preorder, so I don't know when it's going to be released.

Store page.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
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I've been in communication with Geeekstore, hopefully we can test this case for you all :)
 

pazoo

Caliper Novice
Dec 25, 2015
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Interesting, but yeah, that's a lot of wasted space for such a small case.
And I'm not sure I'm very fond of the design...
 

janas19

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Feb 9, 2016
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Interesting, but yeah, that's a lot of wasted space for such a small case.
And I'm not sure I'm very fond of the design...

The space isn't wasted. The front 1" is for easy cable management of the harness which are standard for Flex ATX PSUs. I like the design myself. It gives people more options and flexibility when building their system.
 

iFreilicht

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I've been in communication with Geeekstore, hopefully we can test this case for you all :)

That would be very cool to see!

The space isn't wasted. The front 1" is for easy cable management of the harness which are standard for Flex ATX PSUs. I like the design myself. It gives people more options and flexibility when building their system.

Good point, but I feel like they could've optimised greatly in that regard.
 

janas19

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Feb 9, 2016
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Good point, but I feel like they could've optimised greatly in that regard.

Good point, but I feel like they could've optimised greatly in that regard.[/QUOTE]

You are probably right about that. One thing I've noticed is I tend to think these cases are smaller just from the pictures. For instance I purchased the In Win BM639 for a mock-up, and I just measured it and realized this A10 case is bigger than I thought. If I remove the plastic faceplate from my BM639, the dimensions are almost identical. The BM639 is 15mm taller however. I wonder if it could be optimized to keep the Flex ATX and dual-slot, yet be 10% smaller overall.

Still, this case is exciting because they got a lot right. Is that price even real? That's unbelievable. Under $50 for a 6L case with dual slot and Flex ATX support is one-of-a-kind currently. Nearest competition is the L3 which isn't even produced anymore. If you want the L3 you have to shell out $200 to some idiot on Ebay.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
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I imagine the case is so cheap due to country of manufacture and that it is made from acrylic, which is cheaper to work than metals.
 

CC Ricers

Shrink Ray Wielder
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Nov 1, 2015
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Very interesting case. Looks good to me, and I like that it's design for Flex ATX. I have one of those power supplies lying around at least.

That empty space can fit a boatload of small hard drives though, especially if you don't use a low profile card for the top, haha. Also they need a better view of the rear side for the I/O.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
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So is this going to be available in black?

From the company
"Currently we are not planning to do the full black color due to the limitation of hot bending technology (especially on acrylic material). We've tried full black before, but it turns out not so good.."
 
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jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
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Feb 22, 2015
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@K888D didn't seem to have any issues with bending black acrylic with his prototype (other than cutouts being too close to bends but that's an issue regardless of color). I wonder what problems they ran into?
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
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Not sure, unless the colouring changes the chemistry and heat tolerance of the material (which I would expect it would, to some degree).
 

K888D

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@K888D didn't seem to have any issues with bending black acrylic with his prototype (other than cutouts being too close to bends but that's an issue regardless of color). I wonder what problems they ran into?

I've only tried black so far and it has worked quite nicely, I'm not sure the exact brand of Acrylic which the forming company used though, there may be differences between brands on how well they bend.

As Aibohphobia mentioned we had trouble with cutouts being too close to bends, but I imagine this will apply to any type of Acrylic.

On our prototype we used a process called hot wire bending, this process involves heating a thin wire, the sheet is lay flat over the wire (few mm distance) on a bed which heats a line across the acrylic sheet, after a few minutes (depending on thickness of sheet) a lever is pulled which bends the sheet in the exact location of the heated area.

From my understanding this method is limited to small radius bends of under 1mm.

From what I can see in the picture above it looks like the white piece is the Acrylic? The bends in that piece have a quite large radius, perhaps 20mm?

There is another process you can use to bend acrylic called drape forming, I believe in this process the entire acrylic sheet is heated and then draped over a metal jig/tool, the heated sheet bends to take the shape of the tool. This process will allow you to form more organic shapes and also larger radii.

Perhaps this process of heating the sheet affects the surface finish, black may show it up more than white. Maybe a polished surface goes dull, or a matte surface goes shiny or patchy.
 
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iFreilicht

FlexATX Authority
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There is another process you can use to bend acrylic called drape forming, I believe in this process the entire acrylic sheet is heated and then draped over a metal jig/tool, the heated sheet bends to take the shape of the tool. This process will allow you to form more organic shapes and also larger radii.

Perhaps this process of heating the sheet affects the surface finish, black may show it up more than white. Maybe a polished surface goes dull, or a matte surface goes shiny or patchy.

This might be a very good clue to what is going on. I could imagine some small irregularities in the bend that will show more with a black finish than a white one.
 

janas19

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Feb 9, 2016
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From the company
"Currently we are not planning to do the full black color due to the limitation of hot bending technology (especially on acrylic material). We've tried full black before, but it turns out not so good.."

I don't know about you guys but I am very interested in this case and would love having one in black. However, seeing how it's not going to be released in black I am thinking of one possible solution:

Modder's Wrap Film

Case dimensions in inches are 10.6" x 9.2" x 3,9". Only the surface area of the front and two side panels would need wrapping, which means you need 113 sq. inches of wrap according to my calculation (minus ~4 sq. in. for fan). You could wrap 3 of these cases with one roll of film from PrimoChill. Group buy possibly?