Production Lazer3D LZ7 - Quiet Gaming Cube PC Case

[K888D]

I picked up a Gigabyte GTX 960 4Gb OC Windforce card today, it measures 181mm x 136mm. One of the reasons I went for this card was due to its 136mm height. The GTX 1070 ITX card that Gigabyte announced today is 131mm in height, so I wanted to see whether this 960 would fit:

I measured the card with a tape measure and the 136mm is referring to the total height of the card including the entire bracket length and shroud.

Here is what the card looks like lined up against the LZ7. Incase you were wondering about the 2.5" drives, you can see one mounted onto the bracket at the front of the case:

The card fit into the case no problem length wise with a good 10+ mm to spare. But the card is just a little too tall for the case once you add the PCIe power connector on:

The top does fit on with a bit of force, but you can see that its bending and forcing the card downwards, I think an extra 5mm of case height would be enough to comfortably fit this card:

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I've put the card through the Unigine Valley benchmark testing and it is remarkably quiet, I can literally barely hear the computer running whilst its running the test, very pleased with how it's all come together, the GPU ventilation is working very well.

The card settles around 68C on what looks like full boost with the fans running at around 1500rpm, very quiet indeed. More testing to come.

 

[daedos]

Depends if 131mm is going to be a typical height of itx 1070s. Might be worth waiting a bit to see who else brings them out and their sizes. Perhaps a compromise could be an adapter cable like this.

Really looking forward to see the other colours, finishes and materials (?). Got a Dan A4 on KS, would be tempted to swap to this if the finish is there. What's the plan for the screws... will they eventually be countersunk?

The photos are great. Makes you appreciate the problems of cable management in a UCFF. Both the PSU and USB hub cables are massively long for this kind of set up.

 

[Thehack]

For the pascal series I feel like that is going to be the typical height. All of the AIB for pascal are ridiculously tall. The AMD designs should be better suited. Hopefully they use a NANO like design.

 

[Ricky]

Question, could pictures of the other two models be shown?

 

[Phuncz]

I picked up a Gigabyte GTX 960 4Gb OC Windforce card today, it measures 181mm x 136mm. One of the reasons I went for this card was due to its 136mm height. The GTX 1070 ITX card that Gigabyte announced today is 131mm in height, so I wanted to see whether this 960 would fit:

The GTX 1070 ITX card has a recessed 8-pin connector, and considering it's 5mm shorter, it should easily fit ? That would make it an excellent high-end card for your case ! Unless the Radeon Nano drops in price.

 

[iFreilicht]

About massdrop: While you could still do colour customisation, the model they're using for shipping will make this case very expensive for everyone outside the US. You will act as the manufacturer and ship all the parts to them, and once they have everything they need, they'll put the packages together and send them out.

Problem is, they're located in the US, so shipping has to be payed from UK to US and back to the country of the customer, and Massdrops shipping charges are stupidly high. It's a much better option to carry out the Groupbuy yourself as you already planned. Maybe if there's a lot of potential customers in the US, you could use Massdrop to make shipping less expensive for them.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

That is something I hadn't thought about, good point

 

[K888D]

Really looking forward to see the other colours, finishes and materials (?). Got a Dan A4 on KS, would be tempted to swap to this if the finish is there.

I wouldn't really put this case in the same league as the Dan A4 case! The Dan A4 case is a premium case and is deservedly expensive, it can also take a much longer GPU than the LZ7.

What's the plan for the screws... will they eventually be countersunk?

The original plan was to countersink the screws yes, I am going to try it out with the bottom panel and will post pics of the results.

Problem is though, there are 32 screw holes in total, to countersink all these holes would add a reasonable chunk of time to the assembly labour. Maybe it can be offered as an upgrade, I will see what it looks like and how difficult it is to control.

The photos are great. Makes you appreciate the problems of cable management in a UCFF. Both the PSU and USB hub cables are massively long for this kind of set up.

Yes, the USB cables are quite long, but luckily there is an area of free space in front of the PSU that these cables can be bound together in. The cables don't seem to be affecting the thermal performance from my initial testing of the prototype.

Question, could pictures of the other two models be shown?

The plan is to release the LZ7 first, the LZ5 and LZ9 will follow later if the LZ7 has any success!

In terms of pictures, the LZ5 and LZ9 are quite a way of being at prototype stage, here is a quick image of all 3 cases side by side with a RVZ01 for reference:

From left to right - LZ9, LZ5, LZ7, RVZ01.

The LZ9 is holding a reference GTX 980, the CAD needs allot of work! The LZ5 is not much more than a box at the moment as well.

The GTX 1070 ITX card has a recessed 8-pin connector, and considering it's 5mm shorter, it should easily fit ? That would make it an excellent high-end card for your case ! Unless the Radeon Nano drops in price.

I'm hoping this is the case with the recessed connector, but from the pictures the 1070 looks much taller, lets hope someone can get their hands on one and measure it up.

About massdrop: While you could still do colour customisation, the model they're using for shipping will make this case very expensive for everyone outside the US. You will act as the manufacturer and ship all the parts to them, and once they have everything they need, they'll put the packages together and send them out.

Problem is, they're located in the US, so shipping has to be payed from UK to US and back to the country of the customer, and Massdrops shipping charges are stupidly high. It's a much better option to carry out the Groupbuy yourself as you already planned. Maybe if there's a lot of potential customers in the US, you could use Massdrop to make shipping less expensive for them.

I don't think I would consider massdrop for distributing to Europe as it doesn't seem right shipping it back and forth.

But it may be a good way for distributing to US only.

 

[Lutfij]

Well count me in on the sub train! Oh how far off have you moved with the intention to make this project available to the masses? If US alone, I can hook up with your project and back you up

 

[Soul_Est]

Beautiful design and work there, K888D. Wonderfully inspiring and motivating to see it all come together.

 

[K888D]

I've updated the CAD ready to order a v0.2 prototype, the main change was to increase the height of the case by 5mm to allow for taller graphics cards such as the recently announced Gigabyte GTX 1070 ITX card, although its still unclear exactly how tall this card will be.

I'm not sure what measurement you use to quote how much GPU height clearance you have, but the this extra 5mm gives 137mm clearance from the top surface of the motherboard to the underside of the top panel.

A bonus of this height increase is that the case now has around 65mm of CPU cooler clearance based on socket 1151, I will need to confirm this.

Other changes include:

- Added 1mm to the width, this is because the Prolimatech side fan housing was slightly touching the 24Pin power connector clip, the clip hangs over the side of the motherboard by about 3mm or 4mm. This wasn't affecting the fan though.

- Reduced the case depth by 6mm to keep the overall volume under 7 Litres. This still allows for a GPU length of 190mm which should fit even the longest of ITX cards. The only downside to this reduction is that the side intake fan is now limited to a maximum fan size of 140mm x 140mm x 15mm (previous design allowed for 150mm x 140mm x 15mm fan).

- Widened the PCI opening on the rear by 1mm, this was because the 3mm panel thickness can interfere with video output cables if there isn't enough clearance. The HDMI cable I was using fit ok, but if you used a cable with a bulky head it probably wouldn't have.

- Added some strengthening features to better secure the rear panel and improve rigidity, this was due to the weight of the PSU causing a small amount of flex in the rear panel resulting in a slight droop of the PSU.

- Improved alignment of USB ports into their housing

- Improved aesthetics of top panel vents so they line up better across the rear edge


Earlier in the thread a few people mentioned that a handle would be, ahem, handy. I've been working on some ideas, I ahve about 3 concepts which I will hopefully be showing later this week. The handle will be 3D printed, it will be available as an optional extra, the current price is sitting around £25, I'm trying to bring this price down.

Well count me in on the sub train! Oh how far off have you moved with the intention to make this project available to the masses? If US alone, I can hook up with your project and back you up

I would appreciate any support I can get to back this project! What are your thoughts?

I am hoping to make this available worldwide, I am based in the UK, Europe. Customers located within Europe will benefit the most price wise as shipping will only be around £16, or £7 within the UK. Non European countries will cost more for shipping, the shipping price will likely be under £25 for most countries + any import taxes relevant to your country (responsibility of customer). There is also the possibility of massdrop for US based customers.

With regards to availability and timescales, I would say it will take me a few months to get everything prepared for a full launch, I am only 1 person! The design itself is pretty much complete, any further changes would just be minor tweaks at this point. The main bulk of time from this point forward will be logistical and administrative stuff, packaging, instructions, component sourcing, branding, website, etc.

But, I am preparing to order a version 0.2 prototype soon, if anybody wanted to order a prototype then I would be happy to do a small run which would help bring the price down, I would do it at cost price. Packaging will just be a basic box with bubble wrap and I doubt I will have any instructions ready!

Would anybody be interested if I was to put some kind of order sheet together? Also, any pointers on the best way to do this would be appreciated!

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Did you think about making the LZ9 mATX compatible ? This shouldn't add much to its size.

 

[K888D]

Did you think about making the LZ9 mATX compatible ? This shouldn't add much to its size.

Its certainly a possibility, do you mean so that the width will just fit an mATX board, or would you want the extra 30mm - 40mm beyond the board so you can put a GPU in the last slot?

If the case width was extended to fit an mATX board, the dimensions would roughly become 260mm x 270mm x 155mm for a volume of 10.9 Litres, the name would change to the LZ11.

Edit:
Unless, you limited the card length to the depth of the mATX board, the size could probably be dropped down to around 10 Litres for mATX support.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Its certainly a possibility, do you mean so that the width will just fit an mATX board, or would you want the extra 30mm - 40mm beyond the board so you can put a GPU in the last slot?

A tight fit would be perfect, no need for a dual slot support in the 4th slot.

Unless, you limited the card length to the depth of the mATX board, the size could probably be dropped down to around 10 Litres for mATX support.

Being able to fit cards like Quadro K4000/K4200/M4000 of Firepro W7000/W7100 would be top notch:

 

[XeaLouS]

A bonus of this height increase is that the case now has around 65mm of CPU cooler clearance based on socket 1151, I will need to confirm this.

Other changes include:

- Added 1mm to the width, this is because the Prolimatech side fan housing was slightly touching the 24Pin power connector clip, the clip hangs over the side of the motherboard by about 3mm or 4mm. This wasn't affecting the fan though.

- Reduced the case depth by 6mm to keep the overall volume under 7 Litres. This still allows for a GPU length of 190mm which should fit even the longest of ITX cards. The only downside to this reduction is that the side intake fan is now limited to a maximum fan size of 140mm x 140mm x 15mm (previous design allowed for 150mm x 140mm x 15mm fan).

- Widened the PCI opening on the rear by 1mm, this was because the 3mm panel thickness can interfere with video output cables if there isn't enough clearance. The HDMI cable I was using fit ok, but if you used a cable with a bulky head it probably wouldn't have.

- Added some strengthening features to better secure the rear panel and improve rigidity, this was due to the weight of the PSU causing a small amount of flex in the rear panel resulting in a slight droop of the PSU.

- Improved alignment of USB ports into their housing

- Improved aesthetics of top panel vents so they line up better across the rear edge

Nice changes! You've improved parts compatability without any real changes to size. removing support for 150x140x15 wasn't really that big of an issue imo.

Would anybody be interested if I was to put some kind of order sheet together? Also, any pointers on the best way to do this would be appreciated!

How much does this approximately cost? (I'm personally not getting one at this stage, but if you had a rough estimate some other people might get one)

Also you could consider selling your current prototype to help fund the next one. I'm sure there are people who can't wait and would be totally fine with the prototype model.

 

[K888D]

A tight fit would be perfect, no need for a dual slot support in the 4th slot.

Ok, that would mean the case width would come it at around 255mm - 260mm.

I don't have any experience with SLI or Crossfire, but does the bridge tend to add any height to the GPU beyond the additional PEG connector height?

Being able to fit cards like Quadro K4000/K4200/M4000 of Firepro W7000/W7100 would be top notch:

I've not had any time to put these changes into CAD, but I've been having a think about the layout of the LZ9 over the last few days. The majority of the aftermarket cooler GTX 1070s and 1080s have a length of at least 267mm. If this case only supported GPU's up to 250mm then it would be too large for the ITX cards, but not long enough for the latest standard cards. Its kind of in a no mans land. What are your thoughts on this?

There is also another thing to think about which is the hard drive positioning, in order for this layout to work there will need to be some space in front of the motherboard for Hard Drives. An additional 30mm could be added, this would allow for a 3.5" drive or multiple 2.5" drives, the extra length would also open up support for GPUs up to 275mm in length.

The 30mm would push the volume up to just under 11 litres (named LZ11), this is helped by keeping the case height at 150mm which does limit GPU height to around 130mm. There seems to be allot more choice of <275mm length <130mm height cards than there is of <250mm length <140mm height cards. For example the EVGA GTX 1070 SC should fit comfortably within these limits.

Proposed dimensions of the LZ11 would be W255mm x D285mm x H150mm for a volume of 10.9 Litres. I don't think this is too bad for a case that is M-ATX compatible, can house an SFX PSU, 120mm watercooling and SLI or Crossfire GPU setups. What do you reckon, worth pursuing?

 

[K888D]

How much does this approximately cost? (I'm personally not getting one at this stage, but if you had a rough estimate some other people might get one)

I've sent the panel drawings out to a bunch of UK based laser cutting companies, I'm waiting for the prices to come back in before I can say for sure how much these will cost, I've asked for price breaks based on different quantities to see if its worth trying to get a few people interested at this stage to bring the price down.

I am hoping that the total price for the prototype will be under £120 each (+ shipping) if I get 5 made (including all the accessories, screws, IO PCB, rubber feet, dust filter, etc). I've put an order sheet together with prices and configuration options, just waiting for prices to come in then I can post the link on here for people to put their names down for an LZ7 v0.2 prototype.

Also you could consider selling your current prototype to help fund the next one. I'm sure there are people who can't wait and would be totally fine with the prototype model.

I have considered this, but the front 2 motherboard standoffs are broken as I snapped their threads off in the hole! I mean it works fine, you just have to put a 6mm spacer under the front of the motherboard to support it. If anyone is interested please get in touch.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Ok, that would mean the case width would come it at around 255mm - 260mm.

I don't have any experience with SLI or Crossfire, but does the bridge tend to add any height to the GPU beyond the additional PEG connector height?

Sounds good to me. I do not have experience with SLI or Crossfire, but it does add extra height .... less than the PEG connectors though.

I've not had any time to put these changes into CAD, but I've been having a think about the layout of the LZ9 over the last few days. The majority of the aftermarket cooler GTX 1070s and 1080s have a length of at least 267mm. If this case only supported GPU's up to 250mm then it would be too large for the ITX cards, but not long enough for the latest standard cards. Its kind of in a no mans land. What are your thoughts on this?

I agree with you. I've been reading an article about the upcoming Quadro and Tesla based on Pascal, and nVidia is apparentely going back to 300mm long cards. I think this is either support up to 200mm cards (longest "ITX" board ... see John's mini rant on that topic https://smallformfactor.net/articles/editorial/its-time-for-a-gpu-standard-for-sff) or support the maximum from the PCIe spec (which is around 300mm).

My main concern with modern cards is not the length, but their height. I have a Lian-Li PC-V353 that has a motherboard tray ... any GPU going past the PCI bracket in height will simply not fit !

There is also another thing to think about which is the hard drive positioning, in order for this layout to work there will need to be some space in front of the motherboard for Hard Drives. An additional 30mm could be added, this would allow for a 3.5" drive or multiple 2.5" drives, the extra length would also open up support for GPUs up to 275mm in length.

Sounds good. To be honnest I do not see the point to support more than 2 or 3 drives. I moved all my data to my NAS ans use a single SSD for system + softwares (no games except Minecraft, I do CAD or programming). 3.5" is a dead formfactor to me, I'd go for 2.5" only.

The 30mm would push the volume up to just under 11 litres (named LZ11), this is helped by keeping the case height at 150mm which does limit GPU height to around 130mm. There seems to be allot more choice of <275mm length <130mm height cards than there is of <250mm length <140mm height cards. For example the EVGA GTX 1070 SC should fit comfortably within these limits.

Proposed dimensions of the LZ11 would be W255mm x D285mm x H150mm for a volume of 10.9 Litres. I don't think this is too bad for a case that is M-ATX compatible, can house an SFX PSU, 120mm watercooling and SLI or Crossfire GPU setups. What do you reckon, worth pursuing?

I'm currently using a Lian-Li PC-V353 which is (W) 288mm x (H) 286mm x (D) 397mm. Does support mATX, no Crossfire / SLI support due to lack of space for the bridge, no WC support with mATX, ATX PSU but less than 150mm ... your design would do 100% better .

As I mentioned on another topic, I'll have to spend a few weeks at the hospital, starting the 18th of july. I have an idea about your design for my Simplicity project (scratch build limited to my personal use). My idea would be a vertical version, using the same design than your 3D printed part ... but made of wood, HD-Plex 250W and 2 front fans (case would be just as wide as the fans, very narrow chassis).

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you for the permission to base my design on those lovely angular hedges. Will help me to make time there a little more pleasant as I won't be allowed to have internet, nor computer, nor smartphone. This again would be a single unit, hand made workstation.

 

[K888D]

As I mentioned on another topic, I'll have to spend a few weeks at the hospital, starting the 18th of july. I have an idea about your design for my Simplicity project (scratch build limited to my personal use). My idea would be a vertical version, using the same design than your 3D printed part ... but made of wood, HD-Plex 250W and 2 front fans (case would be just as wide as the fans, very narrow chassis).

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you for the permission to base my design on those lovely angular hedges. Will help me to make time there a little more pleasant as I won't be allowed to have internet, nor computer, nor smartphone. This again would be a single unit, hand made workstation.

Of course, I'd be happy to help, I'd love to see how the wood turns out!

Do you mean the corner pieces would be machined or hand carved from wood? Or are you referring to the actual panels being made from sheet wood?

I am planning on making the corner pieces available on Shapeways, so you would literally just need to place an order on their website and they would be delivered to you. But in the meantime I can email you the CAD if you wanted to work directly on it.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Of course, I'd be happy to help, I'd love to see how the wood turns out!

Awesome, thank you a lot !

Do you mean the corner pieces would be machined or hand carved from wood? Or are you referring to the actual panels being made from sheet wood?

I meant corner pieces hand carved from wood, with threaded inserts to attach the panels. No idea on the panels materials yet, maybe gunmetal steal for top and motherbard back, tained perpex or glass for hardware eye-candy, concrete casted for the bottom to add some weight (with cork sole to prevent scratches).

I am planning on making the corner pieces available on Shapeways, so you would literally just need to place an order on their website and they would be delivered to you. But in the meantime I can email you the CAD if you wanted to work directly on it.

Great idea about shapeways and nice from you to propose me the CAD files.