Stalled Hutzy XS — Ultra Compact Gaming Case (<4L)

[Ketchup]

Hi Hahutzy. I'm new to this forum. I plan on making a ssf built during black friday. I started to look at pre-made cases from Lian-li. They certainly have nice cases, but the one I wanted (PC-Q21) is not very heat friendly. So I continued looking and saw the DAN A4, but at that price, I think not. I was starting to lose faith when I found a pic on google image of your built. (Thank you google)

Your case is perfect for me. Actually, it's even smaller then I had hoped for. Read the hole thread to see the progression and I'm loving what I see. Should the price be reasonable and the time frame is acceptable, you have a customer. Too bad people didn't like the colored strips. I liked it. I though it gave the case more life.

I do have a suggestion that I didn't see from anyone else. Maybe you could make it VESA compatible?
1) I realize that this would put one side to have its airflow obstructed, but you could also put spacers to compensate. http://gordogato.com/oscommerce/catalog/images/VESA_4x_monitorscrews_1.JPG
2) I don't know the weight of your case with a full built. Maybe it's too heavy for some or all monitor?
3) You could easily incorporate the holes with the ones already there. (I would think)
4) I'm sure they are some technical challenges to take care of depending on how your cases external panels are all linked together to even make this possible.

Maybe it's not a good idea? Maybe it's no feasible? Maybe it would need to much work at this point of the project. It's just that it's so small. It would just hide perfectly behind a monitor.

In any case (no pun intended), TAKE MY MONEY!!!!

 

[Ketchup]

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[Hahutzy]

Hi Hahutzy. I'm new to this forum. I plan on making a ssf built during black friday. I started to look at pre-made cases from Lian-li. They certainly have nice cases, but the one I wanted (PC-Q21) is not very heat friendly. So I continued looking and saw the DAN A4, but at that price, I think not. I was starting to lose faith when I found a pic on google image of your built. (Thank you google)

Your case is perfect for me. Actually, it's even smaller then I had hoped for. Read the hole thread to see the progression and I'm loving what I see. Should the price be reasonable and the time frame is acceptable, you have a customer. Too bad people didn't like the colored strips. I liked it. I though it gave the case more life.

I do have a suggestion that I didn't see from anyone else. Maybe you could make it VESA compatible?
1) I realize that this would put one side to have its airflow obstructed, but you could also put spacers to compensate. http://gordogato.com/oscommerce/catalog/images/VESA_4x_monitorscrews_1.JPG
2) I don't know the weight of your case with a full built. Maybe it's too heavy for some or all monitor?
3) You could easily incorporate the holes with the ones already there. (I would think)
4) I'm sure they are some technical challenges to take care of depending on how your cases external panels are all linked together to even make this possible.

Maybe it's not a good idea? Maybe it's no feasible? Maybe it would need to much work at this point of the project. It's just that it's so small. It would just hide perfectly behind a monitor.

In any case (no pun intended), TAKE MY MONEY!!!!

Hey Ketchup! I actually ordered a VESA mount and tried to mount the whole thing on my monitor back when I was doing plastic prototypes.
The weight of the system is a bit heavy for how the side panel is mounted, so it caused uncomfortable bending in the piece.

I did not pursue the idea after seeing it fail like that. That was a plastic panel though. It could very well be that a metal side panel can hold up easily, but it will have to be something that I revisit later, after I have the core chassis sorted out and released.

I got some shots of the concept I tried during the testing phase:

Anyways, I may be doing a small scale run soon, so I will keep you posted if that happens.

 

[Hahutzy]

Update:

I got the smoothed parts back today, so I will assemble it and do some testing this weekend. Will have to take it apart again next week to bring it to different anodizers to price the finishing/dyeing on the pieces.

While that's happening, I want to know what the thoughts are between the 2 vent designs. Theoretically, if I go with another manufacturer, it is possible to change the vent design back to the rounded squares.

Poll: Which Vent Hole design do you prefer?



Higher resolution pics in this album: imgur.com/a/v00CL

 

[flacman]

This is my new favourite case. Looking forward for additional updates and could see building my mate's new PC with this.

 

[Ketchup]

A is interesting, but I prefer B.

It's almost to bad that you want to keep it at <4L. I would have suggested to put some holes in the front and put 2 X 80mm fans one on top of the other. By my estimate, that would add about 0.4L with 20mm depth fans, but at that point, no more ventilation problems. One could maybe put just one fan and use the other space for another hard drive?

Or, if you want to keep the front solid as I think it's what you want, you could add 20mm or so(Whatever you think is needed) between the PSU and the beginning of the board to add 2 X 80mmX10mm fans sending air up. Put some holes on the sides at that height so that the fans can get some air and not only are you helping cool the PSU, but you're cooling the GPU and CPU. That would add 0.36L or a bit more if you want to add more then 20mm. Plus, those vents at the bottom could be filtered for dust so it could help with keeping the system clean.

I figure, you were ready to add 0.3L to the case to put a fan on the PSU. With those 2 suggestions, you don't need to make any modifications on the PSU, people can choose whatever 80mm fan with the depth you decide and you barely make the case bigger with the added bonus of active cooling everywhere.

Keep it up.

 

[Ketchup]

Hell, you could even use 92mm fans as the case is 99,9mm width. The ssd might be a problem, but then again, you could make holes into it to get some air flowing. ;-)

Edit: Yaa!! Humm, maybe 2 X 92mm wouldn't be a good idea. I just realized that you need to pass the dam PSU cables and the max length is 181mm. With 2 X 92mm fans, that's 184mm. Although you could have the choice of 2 X 80mm or 1 X 92mm.

 

[Hahutzy]

There isn't really a ventilation problem. The case's volume is too small to need more intake fans than the CPU and GPU.

The whole "adding fan on top of PSU" was to have that in place of the 40mm fan inside the PSU. This would've made it quieter, but comes with a whole slew of issues.

With all that in mind, <4L was just too cool to give up

 

[alex1577]

Any thoughts on baked powdercoating as a finish? It's more scratch resistant than anodizing as its a much thicker coating and is much better looking as well.

 

[Hahutzy]

Any thoughts on baked powdercoating as a finish? It's more scratch resistant than anodizing as its a much thicker coating and is much better looking as well.

I went with powder coating on my previous project, the Hutzy HS (or Hassium).
The thickness of the coat threw off a lot of the measurements for the cutouts.
So I am not a fan of powder coating for surface finishing.

 

[iFreilicht]

The thickness of the coat threw off a lot of the measurements for the cutouts.

Yeah, you absolutely have to adjust for powdercoating and know the thickness of the coat beforehand. So offering both would be costly as you need separate variations of the metal parts for anodising and coating, but that alone doesn't seem like a good reason to disregard it.

As were nearing volumes of tupperware boxes with our cases, we have to consider that they will be moved around a lot, and anodised finish is very prone to scratching and fingerprints. Black powdercoats are also more saturated when chosen correctly, a lot of anodised blacks are a little purple, which some people dislike. You also get the option of doing a larger palette of custom colours and limited edition colours, the S4 Mini shows how much that can increase engagement of potential customers with your case.

I'd also consider environmental factors, as anodising requires nasty chemicals to be used from what I know. Not sure if powdercoating is better, but it might be worth looking into. Not sure about the cost factor, though. It could be that powdercoating requires more manual labour than anodising and it could thus be more expensive.

Finally, might there be other options? What about straight up spray painting them?

 

[alex1577]

Other options include parkerizing/black oxide, it is a bit simpler than anodizing but is no more durable. Also bead/sand blasting is an option for a silver or grey finish and is likely to be cheaper than the black alternatives. There is also cerakote, which is a baked ceramic coating and is very durable, but also very expensive. Anodizing is going to be the easiest to work with since it doesn't add any thickness and likely has the widest service availability.

 

[Samsquamptch]

As this case is going to be a go-to for the traveling gamers, I agree that a powder coat would be preferable because of the environments these little beasts may be thrown into.

 

[jeshikat]

I'd also consider environmental factors, as anodising requires nasty chemicals to be used from what I know. Not sure if powdercoating is better, but it might be worth looking into.

Powder coating is generally better in that regard. One of the coolest things to me is that the overspray can be collected and reused.

Not sure about the cost factor, though. It could be that powdercoating requires more manual labour than anodising and it could thus be more expensive.

Powder coating is usually more labor intensive, especially in small batches that don't justify use of an automated coating line. With anodizing all the parts in a batch are dunked into the tank at once so it's less manual labor per part.

 

[Hahutzy]

I just googled this topic to see what info is out there. From what I'm reading, anodized parts (even type ii) are more wear-resistant than powder coated parts.

 

[Ketchup]

Hey Hahutzy,

I don't know if I saw this in this forum or in Hard, but I know you're to test the M.2 SSD for the tempeture. I found this and figured you and or everyone else might be interested.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-sm951-512gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_161689/3

 

[Hahutzy]

Hey Hahutzy,

I don't know if I saw this in this forum or in Hard, but I know you're to test the M.2 SSD for the tempeture. I found this and figured you and or everyone else might be interested.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-sm951-512gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_161689/3

I'm waiting for the SM961 and 960 Pro series. Those are controlled (throttle) at 50C instead of the current generation that throttles at 90C, but have better performance.

 

[Hahutzy]

Ok I finally got some testing done. Over the weekend I found out that Windows 7 doesn't install on Skylake chipsets so I had to go through getting Windows 10 etc. to set up the prototype. PITA

Anyways, the testing methodology is the same as I had done with the plastic prototype:

Time
0min - Start Prime95, Large FFT 4 threads
30 min - Start Furmark, default settings
60 min - Screenshot, Turn both off



Looks more or less the same as the previous result.

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Things I need to do moving forward:

- When the filters come in, I need to install them and redo the torture test to see if the thermals get affected by them

- Waiting on my HDPLEX to arrive to test fit the holes I left for them

- Need to source a place to anodize the parts

- Need to check out other manufacturers that can make the parts without warping them

 

[Phuncz]

Windows 7 has issues installing with USB sticks and/or NVMe SSDs. So if you have any of these (you NEED to install with a USB stick for NVMe I believe), you need to slipstream the drivers into the Windows 7 installer through NTLite for example. Or indeed use a more recent OS.

 

[Hahutzy]

Windows 7 has issues installing with USB sticks and/or NVMe SSDs.

Yea something about xHCI/EHCI drivers are missing. Seemed more complicated than just to get Win 10 iso so I opted for that hesitantly. Gotta say Win 10 is still not as stable as Win 7.

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In other news, this just arrived!