Love the design with the ventilated wooden (walnut?) front panel!
A furniture-like walnut horizontal case with front-to-back airflow accommodating large air coolers is my dream.
For me it would be better with 3-slot GPU support, and probably switching the white panels to black or wood.
I love the approach!
Thank you! Adding 3-slot GPU support is high up on my priority list for the revised, production-ready design. The front panel attaches magnetically, which would make it very straightforward to order custom panels through a site like Ponoko for a reasonable price. I think offering one or two official front panel options would be best for inventory management.
I like it! On the wood panel, could you do the plank design with slats so that there is intake through the front. Maybe the pictured one does that but it looks to me to just be grooved for decoration.
Thanks! Yes, you're correct; the cherry front panel has decorative grooves, not slats. I think adding slats is a great idea to increase airflow while maintaining a very sleek appearance. Diffusing LEDs through the slats would also look amazing!
Reminds of the SGPC K77 v2 but I think I like this vented over glass style. Looks like it could fit 2.5 slots but I don't know what the feet situation looks like right now for the gpu to be at the bottom. 3 slots could give options for 2 slot graphic and some fans.
This is more of an idea for the next project but something like the SGPC K88 that has full matx and atx psu support at 14.6L would be nice. And bring back the mechanical keyboard power button. That would be my ideal tinker box with a mix of spare parts.
Haha, the mechanical keyboard power button was super fun! It's a bit of a pain to design/produce PCBs (even though the power button PCB is quite simple) but feels great. The current case prototype has support for 2.5 slot GPUs, but nothing above that. I'm revising the design to support 3-slot GPUs or 2-2.5-slot GPUs with intake fans. My current idea is to have a fan bracket that can slide, allowing you to position intake fans directly against the GPU and account for card-to-card thickness variations. Hopefully, this bracket will maximize cooling efficiency, particularly for deshrouded cards.
I'm also guilty of uttering another 'beautiful' after seeing the embebed pictures. Congrats on your achievement. With that frontal wooden panel the case really resembles a piece of furniture.
Of the two orientations I like the vertical one better (I have a horrible bias towards elongated horizontal cases such as the Dan A4, Ghost S1, T1, etc), but I can see the horizontal one contributing a bit more towards keeping the temperatures as low as possible.
I'm not an industrial designer myself so this may be an extremely stupid question on my behalf but taking picture #4 as a reference and assuming a non-blower graphics card usually generates more heat inside the case than the CPU, would rotating the case 180º on the vertical axis (as seen in picture #5) and using the case fan as exhaust, help to dissipate more heat from the components? So graphics card on top, motherboard on the bottom, and also power cable routed through the bottom of the case. Please forgive my ignorance if my assumptions are absolutely erroneous.
On another note, and regarding the possible support for AIOs and 3-slot graphics cards, I am of the opinion (and this is more philosophical (if you will) than practical) that not all SFF cases should be made to accommodate AIOs and 3-slot GPUs. Mostly because air cooling is more convenient and cheaper, but also because I find that the best trait of SFF designs is compromising and coming up with creative solutions for a limiting factor such as volume or heat. I think the functional essence of design and the specific beauty of SFF design are somehow lost when you require an AIO or two to cool a 12 or 16 core CPU and a RTX 3900 which would be better suited to bigger enclosures. Small cases and humble components are often a better mach, but that's only my take and hopefully it serves better as a conversational piece and doesn't prevent you from trying to reach as many people as possible with your design.
Best of lucks!
Quick edit: I'd definitely consider buying the case!
Thank you! I appreciate your detailed reply. My original design idea was a purely horizontal case, but after rotating an early CAD mockup 90 degrees for a render, I instantly knew I wanted to support both orientations. I have a hunch that the horizontal orientation will yield better thermals, but I still need to do more testing.
Regarding the layout of the vertical case - that's not a stupid question at all! I've designed several cases with an inverted layout like the one you mentioned and never ran into a thermal problem. With the GPU at the top, you probably have less airflow restriction for low static-pressure open-air coolers. This is an area that I am very excited to learn about in college (fingers crossed in the next few quarters!). Seeing projects like Winter One that fully utilize the engineering process is very inspiring.
I think you nailed it on the head. There is always a compromise between component support and space efficiency while maintaining a unique, elegant design. It isn't easy to decide where to draw the line. For a small production run of cases, enlarging the case for more component support would likely generate more interest and drive purchases but also runs the risk of diluting the core idea of the case and losing some uniqueness. I still have a lot of thinking to do!
