MacPro (Late 2013) mini-ITX case mod

[dunecase]

Hi guys.. I thought I should share what I worked on for a year. I went through 4 different versions and after nearly a year I got it right. Thermals, cable management, custom front panel with custom PCB for power on/off button, custom connectors to the motherboard and GPU. I also worked very hard with my buddy who is a CAD designer to get the size down to 7 inches. This was very difficult.

Here is how the final version looks like...

I started this build in January 2015 and wanted full size GPU. I used for the original version a MSI 780 GTX and MSI ITX motherboard. This is what it looks like back in January.

I was then having some problems with temps and cable management. So I revised it a few months later with this.

After I looked at this version, things were improving. We did 3D prints of the front panel and had everything else milled out of a high grade aluminium. But i was not satisfied with the looks... so I decided to give it another shot and use a mini itx gpu to make it shorter and came up with an idea to create a door that the GPU mounts on to. The door also opens and gives the user access to HDD and cables to mobo, psu and gpu.

I was really happy with this and decided to call my buddy the CAD guru to clean the design and make it easy for accessibility when installing parts.

Now we had a workable version we all liked, the next step was to recreate it with precision. The result was amazing. After a year on working on this case it has finally become a reality. I love the design and the fact I can put my own parts in it. I like the fact that I can keep upgrading it and most of all we used very high quality materials to build it using high grade aluminum and electronically painted it titanium grey and gold.

I put a lot of hard work into this and thank everyone that helped me. I think this is what everyone is wanting to do. It just takes hard work to get there to do a decent job.

 

[jtd871]

OK, my mind is officially blown. I don't suppose you'd be interested in parlaying your year of effort into selling (copies of) your case commercially? Since you have the manufacturing sorted and everything...

 

[CC Ricers]

I'd want to be the first one to say I would buy this case, but jtd871 already beat me to it The layout is smart, supports off the shelf parts and doesn't look "L33t Gam3r" like the MSI vortex does. Also, what are the dimensions of the case?

 

[Tek Everything]

The case goes on Kickstarter tomorrow

 

[dunecase]

I'd want to be the first one to say I would buy this case, but jtd871 already beat me to it The layout is smart, supports off the shelf parts and doesn't look "L33t Gam3r" like the MSI vortex does. Also, what are the dimensions of the case?

Hi there CC Ricers .. Thank you for your kind comments .. I am very humbled with your response... here are the measurements for the case.

It has been tested for months and we have optimized it for optimal airflow using standard parts

 

[dunecase]

OK, my mind is officially blown. I don't suppose you'd be interested in parlaying your year of effort into selling (copies of) your case commercially? Since you have the manufacturing sorted and everything...

Hi there jtd871, the final version has been designed with the intention for production. We spent months to get it right but most important was the easy of use of assembly, thermals, cable management and quality build / materials for the case. Its not sheet metal and plastic. This is high grade aluminum that is painted electronically. I hope this is helpful

 

[Josh | NFC]

Glorious work! Excellent craftsmanship, and it is super nice to see the MacPro design become mini-itx-a-fied.

The bar has been raised!

 

[Ricky]

Air cooling only, or is there some allowance for liquid cooling?

 

[Phuncz]

Damn, that's a nice case. I wanted to do this as a one-off with two GPUs when I saw the Mac Pro revealed but the amount of customization needed is higher than I'm capable of. Nice to see someone actually make this commercially possible with a single GPU !

 

[iFreilicht]

This is pretty darn cool, but if you plan on selling it commercially, do you think Apple is going to let you get away with it? I'm pretty sure they've got design patents on the Mac Pro, and your case is pretty much a exact copy of theirs, at least on the outside, so I'd expect a lawsuit coming in quickly if you're launching a Crowdfunding campaign.

I'm a bit concerned about installation of the parts. I do believe you when you say you've done your best to make it as easy as possible, but it looks like there's a lot of fiddling required. Not to say that's not going to prevent anybody who likes the looks from buying the case anyway.
Something I wonder about is whether the top case fan is going to be visible from the outside or whether it's going to be hidden like the fan on the Mac Pro is.

 

[EdZ]

While I am not a patent lawyer, the Design Patent covers a system (not just a case) that is both rotationally symmetric (a cylinder) AND has the 'core flow' structural shared heatsink thermal design of the Mac Pro. As this case does not fulfil all the claims the patent makes, then it shouldn't be infringing.

 

[dunecase]

Hi there iFreilicht .. you make some good point and lets go through some of them. There are existing patents on a computer but this is not a computer but rather a case. the design is nothing new as we see many accessories in a similar shape and size, rice cookers, rubbish bins, etc. Also other manufactures have created computers in a round shape in the past. you can google them and see they existed well before 2013. the inside of the case was built from the ground up and i have invested many hours designing this.

the installation is probably the easiest in comparison to anything in its size. the GPU is clearly visible and can be easily mounted and removed. Same with the motherboard. the psu does requires some screwing to access it. But overall the cables are managed nice and easily in between the motherboard and GPU door. The door design is like no other and is unique. You simply open the door and the HDD and cables are all managed there. also keep in mind that cables with this case are custom made so that you dont have excess or too little. when this is compared to other builds on the market, the ram, gpu, ssd are easy to be mounted and remove. This is no different. When trying to remove the psu just like in other builds it get more difficul because you are limited to space. its the same here.

regarding the fan, this design has a mesh on top with holes for ventilation. inside that vent is a 140mm fan that mounts perfectly on the chassis. the mesh sits on top of the fan and the fan is not visable from top.. well not fully visable.

you make some good observations and I appreciate your comments. it really gets people to think about it. overall with a small form factor build and using standard parts I can say that this is not that difficult to put together. it has been organised in a way to look good when you take the lid off and easily access parts to mount on and off. many parts like cables have been custom made to optimism space. considering with what the market offer in standards and for us not to alter and change the standard but work with whats out there, i think we did the best job we could in design.

 

[dunecase]

While I am not a patent lawyer, the Design Patent covers a system (not just a case) that is both rotationally symmetric (a cylinder) AND has the 'core flow' structural shared heatsink thermal design of the Mac Pro. As this case does not fulfil all the claims the patent makes, then it shouldn't be infringing.

Thanks EdZ .. yes thank you for your comments..

 

[jØrd]

I'm curious, if this case does provoke Apple to respond in some way, what's your action plan. Their pockets are deep and their lawyers well paid after all. At the end of the day it looks enough like a Mac Pro that I doubt Apple would have much trouble shutting it down if they really were motivated as such to do so. Is there a plan to deal w/ such a scenario, is their a contingency for if a cease & desist arrives, etc? Dont get me wrong, I really like the design, especially the internals but i like it partially because it looks like a Mac Pro which set me wondering

 

[Josh | NFC]

You shouldn't have to worry about patents as long as you don't tread on utility or a particular claim in the design. What you need to worry about is if Apple has trademarked the Mac Pro...for two reasons. One, they can actually trademark its look and feel, and two, they are obligated to defend it or they can lose their trademark.

At the end of the day you are small fries, and Apple has a list 10 miles long of people they are suing, so the worst thing I see happening is Kickstarter pulling it because they got a letterhead from Apple's legal team.

 

[iFreilicht]

the installation is probably the easiest in comparison to anything in its size. the GPU is clearly visible and can be easily mounted and removed. Same with the motherboard. the psu does requires some screwing to access it. But overall the cables are managed nice and easily in between the motherboard and GPU door. The door design is like no other and is unique. You simply open the door and the HDD and cables are all managed there. also keep in mind that cables with this case are custom made so that you dont have excess or too little. when this is compared to other builds on the market, the ram, gpu, ssd are easy to be mounted and remove. This is no different. When trying to remove the psu just like in other builds it get more difficul because you are limited to space. its the same here.

regarding the fan, this design has a mesh on top with holes for ventilation. inside that vent is a 140mm fan that mounts perfectly on the chassis. the mesh sits on top of the fan and the fan is not visable from top.. well not fully visable.

you make some good observations and I appreciate your comments. it really gets people to think about it. overall with a small form factor build and using standard parts I can say that this is not that difficult to put together. it has been organised in a way to look good when you take the lid off and easily access parts to mount on and off. many parts like cables have been custom made to optimism space. considering with what the market offer in standards and for us not to alter and change the standard but work with whats out there, i think we did the best job we could in design.

Ah, didn't know the door was hiding the HDDs, that's pretty cool idea. I think I'll reserve judgement over how easy installation actually is until I see a video of the installation process. With most SFF cases, I feel like building in them is rather complicated and cumbersome, most often components have to be mounted in a specific order.

A mesh is certainly good enough to hide the fan somewhat. I was a bit worried that the red fan blades would be directly visible, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Hi there iFreilicht .. you make some good point and lets go through some of them. There are existing patents on a computer but this is not a computer but rather a case. the design is nothing new as we see many accessories in a similar shape and size, rice cookers, rubbish bins, etc. Also other manufactures have created computers in a round shape in the past. you can google them and see they existed well before 2013. the inside of the case was built from the ground up and i have invested many hours designing this.

With design patents, devices of different kinds are never relevant. IIRC, the main point of them is to prevent potential customers from being misled. For example, there is a smartphone called S4 Mini (which contains NFC technology) which is a trademark of Samusng, but the NFC S4 Mini doesn't violate that trademark as no potential customer could possibly think it was the same thing. The two products exist in different sectors. The question now is whether the two sectors of PCs and PC cases are actually closely related enough to allow a lawsuit to even be considered sensible, something lawyers have to fight about.

While I am not a patent lawyer, the Design Patent covers a system (not just a case) that is both rotationally symmetric (a cylinder) AND has the 'core flow' structural shared heatsink thermal design of the Mac Pro. As this case does not fulfil all the claims the patent makes, then it shouldn't be infringing.

While I'm not one either, I'm pretty sure that not copying all aspects of a patents, but some, can be problematic. Especially as Apples legal team is probably damn hard to beat if you're not a comparably large business yourself.

You shouldn't have to worry about patents as long as you don't tread on utility or a particular claim in the design. What you need to worry about is if Apple has trademarked the Mac Pro...for two reasons. One, they can actually trademark its look and feel, and two, they are obligated to defend it or they can lose their trademark.

At the end of the day you are small fries, and Apple has a list 10 miles long of people they are suing, so the worst thing I see happening is Kickstarter pulling it because they got a letterhead from Apple's legal team.

That's what I actually meant by design patent, but I think what EdZ posted fits your claims, at it also talks about surface finishing of the Mac Pro.
Good point, though. At first, this might just get pulled from crowdfunding because the platform doesn't want to deal with it. The question after that is, of course, whether and how you should pursue marketing this case.

 

[Phuncz]

In the end, Samsung, Toshiba, HP, Acer and many more have made plenty of laptops that blatantly look like copy-paste Macbook Pros in more than just a silver paint job and those are the same devices sold in the same markets.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

FWIW, Apple made $18.4 billion dollars - in profit, not even revenue - last quarter. Though they've gone after companies making and selling Hackintoshes (since they have to, in order to fulfill the protections afforded to them by their software copyright and trademarks and EULA), taking down a small-time group making a similar-looking enclosure has almost no upside for them, and a lot of downside. The funding goal for this Kickstarter is quite literally a small decimal on their balance sheet.

I'm not that worried, in other words And I hope your campaign is successful!

...I will say, though, that aping Apple's brand and design sensibilities in pretty much every way imaginable probably wasn't the greatest call. From a publicity standpoint, it's smart, I suppose - I bet a lot of people will be interested in the enclosure wholly because it's an "Apple clone" of a sort - but I'm near-certain about the fact that it's that aspect of the campaign that will rile people inside Apple the most, even if they choose to do nothing about it.

You can do understated minimalism in a way that doesn't feel distinctly Apple. And to be honest, it frustrates me that so many projects and companies and startups - many with genuinely good ideas and products - feel compelled to adopt that essence, rather than develop one that's genuine to themselves. Apple is successful because they didn't do that.

 

[iFreilicht]

In the end, Samsung, Toshiba, HP, Acer and many more have made plenty of laptops that blatantly look like copy-paste Macbook Pros in more than just a silver paint job and those are the same devices sold in the same markets.

Sorry, but I hear everyone saying that and I've yet to see one that actually looks exactly like a Mac Book, short of the branding, of course. Sure, they all look alike, but so do Smartphones, at least from one angle. If you want to do minimalist design, you're already limiting yourself to a small subset of possible design elements. If everyone tries to do minimalist design of a similar product, it's inevitable that some design elements will be seen in several of these devices.

 

[Winebaths]

Any hard numbers on the thermals?

Edit: Also any plans for displayport support?