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Production Lazer3D LZ7 - Quiet Gaming Cube PC Case
- Thread starter K888D
- Start date
Acrylic will still be the main version, Black Matte is the overall most popular choice so that will be what is available first.
The wooden panels in the photo at the moment is just an experiment, I ordered them at the same time as the Acrylic panels to save cost. They are actually a laser cut veneer sheet that is placed over the acrylic panels.
Unfortunately they wont be any cheaper as they will be an 'add on' or an extra on top of the Acrylic, hopefully they should be available separately so you can customize the case at a later date in a range of wood grain finishes.
Here is a photo of the bottom panel with some HiFi screwed on, I'm pretty excited by the new prototype, the wooden veneer in combination with metal HiFi feet looks awesome. The only problem is that these feet cost me £12, so I'm thinking that the customer will need to buy them separately if they wanted to add them on. By default the case will come with 4x rubber feet.
The wooden panels in the photo at the moment is just an experiment, I ordered them at the same time as the Acrylic panels to save cost. They are actually a laser cut veneer sheet that is placed over the acrylic panels.
Unfortunately they wont be any cheaper as they will be an 'add on' or an extra on top of the Acrylic, hopefully they should be available separately so you can customize the case at a later date in a range of wood grain finishes.
Here is a photo of the bottom panel with some HiFi screwed on, I'm pretty excited by the new prototype, the wooden veneer in combination with metal HiFi feet looks awesome. The only problem is that these feet cost me £12, so I'm thinking that the customer will need to buy them separately if they wanted to add them on. By default the case will come with 4x rubber feet.
I say 2 stuffs :Here is a photo of the bottom panel with some HiFi screwed on, I'm pretty excited by the new prototype, the wooden veneer in combination with metal HiFi feet looks awesome. The only problem is that these feet cost me £12, so I'm thinking that the customer will need to buy them separately if they wanted to add them on. By default the case will come with 4x rubber feet.
- These feet are marvellous! I want them, definitely!
- NOOOOOO, propose them as basis...they are just stunning! Put Rubber feet to trash (for now..
)
Good, no, excellent work @K888D!
They definitely finish it off, I will try and post some full case photos tonight.
Sorry I'm taking so long to post them, I want them to be decent photos to really show the case off, I have limited ability as a photographer!
NOOOOOO, propose them as basis...they are just stunning! Put Rubber feet to trash (for now..
I'm not sure how feasible that is, one of the main points that came back from the survey was how sensitive the price is, 39% of people who voted thought that £120 is too expensive and a further 20% of people wouldn't mind losing some features to bring the price down.
So adding another £12 to the base price I feel would not go down too well, maybe I can make a more expensive version with extra features such as metal feet and a wooden veneer finish. That would make 3 versions in total to satisfy different price points.
Sorry for the disappointment!
Here is a shot of the front with the wood veneer added:
Ignore the logo, it will likely be changing, I was just experimenting with laser etching. A full gallery should be online tonight including Acrylic only shots.
I've had the LZ7 v0.2 built up for a few days now and have been carrying out various tests, and what better way to test the case than having a great time playing the Battlefield 1 Beta.
Battlefield 1 should give a good indication of real world usage in a modern game, the minimum requirements released for this Beta were quite high asking for an Intel quad core (I believe).
So here is the setup, you can see the LZ7 case next to the speaker on the right of the photo. I've been using an Xbox pad to play the game purely for convenience across my living room, the TV is 1080p.
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Even though I've only been playing BF1 on a 1080p screen, the settings were all turned up to max/ultra and the frame rate is uncapped. This put a high load on both the CPU and GPU, task manager was reporting the CPU usage at 100% during gaming and the GPU was in the region of 95% - 98% usage. The game ran with a frame rate in the region of 110 - 130 fps with no slow downs witnessed, these components were used in the LZ7 chassis:
The priority for this case is low noise, so all fan profiles have been tuned to provide adequate cooling at the lowest possible noise output. The following cooling setup was used:
After a couple of hours of gaming I checked the system temperatures, these are currently just observations and I will do some more detailed testing in the next couple of weeks:
These aren't bad considering how quiet the system was running, I completely forgot the PC was even running, whether this was due to how quiet it was or how engrossed I was in the game I don't know! But to give you an idea here is roughly what the fans were spinning at:
This shows that there is plenty of cooling head room left in this particular setup even with fan profiles set to silent/quiet.
ALTERNATIVE CPU COOLER AND SYSTEM FAN
I recently ordered a Thermaltake Luna 14 Slim to test its performance, I also had an Akasa AK-CC7108EP01 lying around which is 58.5mm tall cooler, so I thought I'd give these 2 components a shot in the LZ7 v0.2.
I'll start with the Thermaltake Luna 14, this is a very very quiet fan. I would say flat out at 1200 rpm it is quieter than the Prolimatech Vortex 14 fan even when running at lower speeds such as 1000 rpm. But, it doesn't push as much air through as the Prolimatech, this was noticed with the system temps running about 5C higher than with the Prolimatech Vortex fan. But a much quieter system, so it depends on your setup priority as to which is the better choice. The Luna also has LEDs which I don't think you can switch off, but they are available in 3 colours.
Now onto the Akasa CPU Cooler, it fit fine into the system with about 10mm clearance up to the SFX PSU. It runs silent under idle conditions spinning around 700 rpm, but it does get noisy pretty quickly once it goes above around 1200 rpm. I was expecting temperatures to be lower than the Noctua, but in fact it ran slightly hotter when playing BF1 sitting in the low 60's Celsius, it was also noticeably louder as the fan was running at around 1500 rpm and it was the loudest part of the overall system. It can actually go up to 3000 rpm, but it sounds louder than a hair dryer at those speeds!
FUTURE TESTING
I'm going to get hold of either a Silverstone AR-06 (58mm tall), or a Cryorig C7 (48mm tall), or both, as well as the Cryorig XT 140 system fan and do some more testing. If anyone has any particular testing requests let me know.
Battlefield 1 should give a good indication of real world usage in a modern game, the minimum requirements released for this Beta were quite high asking for an Intel quad core (I believe).
So here is the setup, you can see the LZ7 case next to the speaker on the right of the photo. I've been using an Xbox pad to play the game purely for convenience across my living room, the TV is 1080p.
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Even though I've only been playing BF1 on a 1080p screen, the settings were all turned up to max/ultra and the frame rate is uncapped. This put a high load on both the CPU and GPU, task manager was reporting the CPU usage at 100% during gaming and the GPU was in the region of 95% - 98% usage. The game ran with a frame rate in the region of 110 - 130 fps with no slow downs witnessed, these components were used in the LZ7 chassis:
- Intel i5-6500 3.2 GHz Quad Core
- Gigabyte GTX 1070 8Gb OC ITX
- 8Gb DDR4 2133Mhz RAM
- Gigabyte B150N - Pheonix Motherboard
- Samsung PM951 256Gb NVMe M.2 SSD
The priority for this case is low noise, so all fan profiles have been tuned to provide adequate cooling at the lowest possible noise output. The following cooling setup was used:
- Noctua NH-L9i CPU Cooler
- Prolimatech Vortex 14 Intake Fan
- Dust filter over 140mm intake fan
- Standard slotted vent configuration for GPU intake
After a couple of hours of gaming I checked the system temperatures, these are currently just observations and I will do some more detailed testing in the next couple of weeks:
- CPU temperature was sat in the mid 50's Celsius during gaming
- GPU temperature was sitting in the high 70's Celsius during gaming
- System temperature was around mid 40 Celcius during gaming
These aren't bad considering how quiet the system was running, I completely forgot the PC was even running, whether this was due to how quiet it was or how engrossed I was in the game I don't know! But to give you an idea here is roughly what the fans were spinning at:
- CPU fan was spinning in the region of 1100 rpm
- GPU fan was spinning in the region 1550 rpm
- System fan was spinning in the region of 950 rpm
This shows that there is plenty of cooling head room left in this particular setup even with fan profiles set to silent/quiet.
ALTERNATIVE CPU COOLER AND SYSTEM FAN
I recently ordered a Thermaltake Luna 14 Slim to test its performance, I also had an Akasa AK-CC7108EP01 lying around which is 58.5mm tall cooler, so I thought I'd give these 2 components a shot in the LZ7 v0.2.
I'll start with the Thermaltake Luna 14, this is a very very quiet fan. I would say flat out at 1200 rpm it is quieter than the Prolimatech Vortex 14 fan even when running at lower speeds such as 1000 rpm. But, it doesn't push as much air through as the Prolimatech, this was noticed with the system temps running about 5C higher than with the Prolimatech Vortex fan. But a much quieter system, so it depends on your setup priority as to which is the better choice. The Luna also has LEDs which I don't think you can switch off, but they are available in 3 colours.
Now onto the Akasa CPU Cooler, it fit fine into the system with about 10mm clearance up to the SFX PSU. It runs silent under idle conditions spinning around 700 rpm, but it does get noisy pretty quickly once it goes above around 1200 rpm. I was expecting temperatures to be lower than the Noctua, but in fact it ran slightly hotter when playing BF1 sitting in the low 60's Celsius, it was also noticeably louder as the fan was running at around 1500 rpm and it was the loudest part of the overall system. It can actually go up to 3000 rpm, but it sounds louder than a hair dryer at those speeds!
FUTURE TESTING
I'm going to get hold of either a Silverstone AR-06 (58mm tall), or a Cryorig C7 (48mm tall), or both, as well as the Cryorig XT 140 system fan and do some more testing. If anyone has any particular testing requests let me know.
Here it is, the next prototype has been built up, I hope you like!
This particular case has been assembled using polished black Acrylic for the front and top panels, the side and rear panel are made from smoked transparent, and the GPU side panel is a fully transparent panel.
The prototype manufacturer did not have matte black material available, but matte black will be the main material for production runs.
Side power button, 2x USB 3.0, 2x Audio connectors and a 140mm slim intake fan with dust filter option:
360 degree GPU exhaust ventilation prevents heat recirculation allowing the system to run cooler and quieter during heavy gaming session:
The LZ7 has enough headroom to comfortably fit the extra tall Gigabyte GTX 1070 8Gb OC ITX using a standard sized PEG connector, as shown below:
By default the case will be supplied with 4x rubber feet. It is also possible to fit HiFi style metal feet screwed on through pre-cut holes:
In the following photo you can see see how the components are spaced, there is now enough room to fit a CPU cooler up to 60mm with 10mm clearance to the power supply.
And finally a shot of the case with the lights turned on next to a bookshelf speaker, I know the orange LED's of the Gigabyte Pheonix motherboard isn't to everyone's taste!
If you have any comments, let me know, good or bad!
This particular case has been assembled using polished black Acrylic for the front and top panels, the side and rear panel are made from smoked transparent, and the GPU side panel is a fully transparent panel.
The prototype manufacturer did not have matte black material available, but matte black will be the main material for production runs.
Side power button, 2x USB 3.0, 2x Audio connectors and a 140mm slim intake fan with dust filter option:
360 degree GPU exhaust ventilation prevents heat recirculation allowing the system to run cooler and quieter during heavy gaming session:
The LZ7 has enough headroom to comfortably fit the extra tall Gigabyte GTX 1070 8Gb OC ITX using a standard sized PEG connector, as shown below:
By default the case will be supplied with 4x rubber feet. It is also possible to fit HiFi style metal feet screwed on through pre-cut holes:
In the following photo you can see see how the components are spaced, there is now enough room to fit a CPU cooler up to 60mm with 10mm clearance to the power supply.
And finally a shot of the case with the lights turned on next to a bookshelf speaker, I know the orange LED's of the Gigabyte Pheonix motherboard isn't to everyone's taste!
If you have any comments, let me know, good or bad!
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