Completed MJOLNIR: The minimalistic – but not boring – 9.7L Case

[AlexTzone]

Hey Alex,

The website looks great and cant wait for the updates to airflow. Im really interested to see how you adapt the project to our concerns.
I would also be interested to see the results of the Instagram votes.

Thanks,

Dhruv

Hey Dhruv!

Sorry for the late response! We've been doing adjustments to MJOLNIR I day in & day out, really look forward to sharing them with you in update #4; AIO, Case fans and airflow improvements are going to be the topics I have a good feeling about these adjustments, they are the result of all your wonderful feedback!

Also, I'll make sure to share the vote-results in update #4 as well.

Best,
Alex

 

[AlexTzone]

Hey guys! Update #4 is finally here.

Have to say this straight away, these updates are part of MJOLNIR I because of your epic feedback. So thanks a lot




Improvement 1 - Water Cooling

Added compatibility for 92mm AIO water coolers. The AIO / Fan below are dimension-wise identical to Asetek 545cl / Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM. This configuration is only compatible with SFX-psu's. The radiator is mounted to the bottom of the internal frame.

Improvement 2 - Case fans

Since there is compatibility for a 92mm radiator, there is of course compatibility for a 92mm Case fan Here there are a couple of possible configurations:

• Low-profile 92mm case fan & SFX-L PSU. Suggested fan: Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM.
• Tall-profile (max 50mm height ) 92mm case fan & SFX PSU. Suggested fan: Noctua NF-A9 PWM.

Improvement 3 - Airflow

Lets start of with the coolest improvement in this section, a new sweet Tempered Glass Top Panel. It can be covered with an aluminium panel whenever your want. There are 5mm cutouts around the panel for improved airflow.

So, both the Radiator and Case fan have to blow out / pull in air from the bottom. This was an issues before due to MJOLNIR I's solid outer shell. SOLUTION: On the bottom you now find simplistic airflow cutouts and case feet (raise the chassis by 2mm). The aluminium case feet are part of the enclosure (unibody).

Last but not least, we added dust filters to keep dust from crawling up from your table / floor and into the chassis.

What about the Glass cutouts? (Tempered Glass Side panels)

We have tested a bunch of designs for different cutouts but have trouble coming up with something better than "MJOLNIR", feel free to give us suggestions (perhaps a simple drawing or something).




Instagram Polls

I will post the results here this week.




So...now what's the plan?

Tolerances and fit, the hardest part of product developing (our opinion). This will take 2-3 months, after which both prototype and Kickstarter campaign should come along nicely. A prototype is very important, but it can be created without making the product ready for mass-production, tolerances on the other hand...do just that. They are time-consuming, complex and pretty boring to calculate, but extremely necessary!




Cheers,
Alex

 

[rfarmer]

Looks really good. The only thing I would suggest is to check out recent posts in the Dan A4-SFX threads both here and at [H]ard. Many of the users have installed the Asetek 545cl in the v2.0 case, it has the same layout with the SFX PSU and the radiator/fan placement. A lot of those users are having problems routing their cables with the limited space between the connectors and the fan.

 

[dlal1520]

Adding to what rfarmer said, could there be a raise in where the psu is mounted? This would mitigate the issue of cable routing and allow for custom cables to be used (such as cable mod and ensourced)

 

[Ca11idus]

Every time I'm browsing the sffpc threads for new stuff and happen to see you guys on top I want to stop in. I want to see what new "Quality Build" TM you guys are offering. This looks amazing and I love that you were able to incorporate so many ideas from what the users in the Dan A4 Case community have been doing and or wanting. With that said, this looks like you just took the A4 and changed some aesthetics and called it your own.

 

[1461748123]

Every time I'm browsing the sffpc threads for new stuff and happen to see you guys on top I want to stop in. I want to see what new "Quality Build" TM you guys are offering. This looks amazing and I love that you were able to incorporate so many ideas from what the users in the Dan A4 Case community have been doing and or wanting. With that said, this looks like you just took the A4 and changed some aesthetics and called it your own.

It does look a lot like the A4, just a higher quality one The thicker panels definitely helps

 

[Kmpkt]

In all fairness there is like eight ways to orient hardware in a case. Originality will be in the details.

 

[Narwhal]

idea for the side pannel design that would increase airflow: honeycomb design. also, when do you think youll have a selling prototype? i'm very interested in the case its the most attractive of all the sff cases imo

 

[AlexTzone]

Looks really good. The only thing I would suggest is to check out recent posts in the Dan A4-SFX threads both here and at [H]ard. Many of the users have installed the Asetek 545cl in the v2.0 case, it has the same layout with the SFX PSU and the radiator/fan placement. A lot of those users are having problems routing their cables with the limited space between the connectors and the fan.

Adding to what rfarmer said, could there be a raise in where the psu is mounted? This would mitigate the issue of cable routing and allow for custom cables to be used (such as cable mod and ensourced)

Thanks for letting us know, we'll get it fixed

Every time I'm browsing the sffpc threads for new stuff and happen to see you guys on top I want to stop in. I want to see what new "Quality Build" TM you guys are offering. This looks amazing and I love that you were able to incorporate so many ideas from what the users in the Dan A4 Case community have been doing and or wanting. With that said, this looks like you just took the A4 and changed some aesthetics and called it your own.

Thank you very much! Yes I totally understand that you have this feeling; basically all cases with "shoebox" design will look similar to DAN A4 SFX if you minimize enclosure volume constrained to GPU / PSU / case fan / MOBO size. Run this optimization problem in Matlab and it will show that you should arrange components in a similar fashion to DAN's case So not much can be done to make it different in that regard. But we really hope that aesthetics of the case are vastly different

In all fairness there is like eight ways to orient hardware in a case. Originality will be in the details.

Indeed

idea for the side pannel design that would increase airflow: honeycomb design. also, when do you think youll have a selling prototype? i'm very interested in the case its the most attractive of all the sff cases imo

Thank you very much for the appreciation / idea We'll make a honeycomb pattern and then let everybody vote between a couple of glass panel designs The Kickstarter campaign will be up in 3-6 months.

 

[AlexTzone]

Update #5

Hey Guys, we're back with another update - This time it's regarding the new Tempered Glass design for MJOLNIR I




Tempered Glass - V2 [NEW]

Many have asked us to do less branded glass panels (that is, no "MJOLNIR" text), we really hope you like these new ones Polls on Instagram are 80% for vs 20% against the new design - this is certainly better than V1 (60% for vs 40% against). As always, thanks for pushing us into doing it

Tempered Glass - V1 [OLD]

For comparison. Who knows, perhaps we'll be able to offer both versions...though no promises as of right now (Have to be careful with incurring a bunch of fixed costs. Economists would argue that fixed costs aren't important in the long run, which is true...but not when you're initially on a tight budget).

What do you think guys?




Cheers,
Alex

 

[owliwar]

Its definitely better, the v2. but its really tempered glass? with those cuts? if it was acrylic it would be very nice already, i'm just curious

 

[AlexTzone]

Its definitely better, the v2. but its really tempered glass? with those cuts? if it was acrylic it would be very nice already, i'm just curious

Glad that you like it It's our aim to do them in tempered glass, do you think it will be significantly more difficult compared to acrylic?

 

[owliwar]

Glad that you like it It's our aim to do them in tempered glass, do you think it will be significantly more difficult compared to acrylic?

Yes. I'm not even sure if sharp angles are possible in tempered glass. with acrylic you could do all sorts of things, even a 'cheese grill' vent pattern for maximum airflow.


lets say tempered glass are very .. temperamental....

edit: I did some more research and usually the glass is cut before being tempered, so my suggestion would be to simple send your renders to the factory and ask if it is possible. if not them go with acrylic or remove the venting cuts if you really with to go with tempered glass because of the premium feel.

 

[AlexTzone]

Yes. I'm not even sure if sharp angles are possible in tempered glass. with acrylic you could do all sorts of things, even a 'cheese grill' vent pattern for maximum airflow.


lets say tempered glass are very .. temperamental....

edit: I did some more research and usually the glass is cut before being tempered, so my suggestion would be to simple send your renders to the factory and ask if it is possible. if not them go with acrylic or remove the venting cuts if you really with to go with tempered glass because of the premium feel.

Amazing tips, we'll do that

Haha that video...omg

 

[dlal1520]

This new design is a huge improvement over the previous design. As owliwar stated, the cuts will have to be made before tempering. I do hope you go with tg though. Acrylic panels imo really diminish the quality and are much harder to maintain compared to tg (acrylic is very easy to scratch)

 

[AlexTzone]

This new design is a huge improvement over the previous design. As owliwar stated, the cuts will have to be made before tempering. I do hope you go with tg though. Acrylic panels imo really diminish the quality and are much harder to maintain compared to tg (acrylic is very easy to scratch)

Thank you, we're very happy that people seem to be satisfied with the new glass panel design as well: it's the last major change to the chassis, meaning we can start moving over to production-oriented things (tolerance adjustments for the 3D model, prototype, supply chain, final/short marketing push and the finally Kickstarter).

Our goal is to use TG if it's possible, we're in talks with firms as of right now. I'll post a quick update regarding this once I have all of their answers. I totally agree with you on your opinion, TG is definitely preferred in a quality build

Cheers,
Alex

 

[AP2]

Can't wait to back this! keep up the good work.

 

[ebc92]

I agree with what others have said here, that you will most likely benefit greatly in terms of fitting a radiator if you're able to raise the PSU just a little bit. With that said, very nice looking case! Also liking the mjolnir design on the side panel

 

[dlal1520]

hey Alex,

I was digging around on the cooler supported for the current build you are going for, which seems to be the 545LC. That cooler seems to be difficult to get your hands on cause it is always out of stock (im not 100% sure if asetek still makes it). You may wanna look into that as the coolers are a big issue on here. Maybe widen the case to support more powerful, reliable and readily available 120mm aios? Hopefully this change only marginally increases the case width (looking at the ghost s1 design, they support such coolers and the case is not much wider then what you guys are going for) and place the 120mm aio in the same place that you have the current cooler is. Again, just a suggestion.

Also I dont know if this was brought up before, but you can lower the pcie extension placement to support taller gpus/ hide the extension itself. These were just some ideas I was thinking about looking through the forums here and looking back at your design.

Looking forward to more updates.

 

[AlexTzone]

Can't wait to back this! keep up the good work.

So happy to hear that! We'll make sure you get an epic case

I agree with what others have said here, that you will most likely benefit greatly in terms of fitting a radiator if you're able to raise the PSU just a little bit. With that said, very nice looking case! Also liking the mjolnir design on the side panel

Yeah true, we'll get it done (getting it done as we speak actually ). Thank you very much, always nice to hear that after so many many hours working on something. Would you say that the new glass panel design is a deal-breaker for you, or is it a minor issue?

hey Alex,

I was digging around on the cooler supported for the current build you are going for, which seems to be the 545LC. That cooler seems to be difficult to get your hands on cause it is always out of stock (im not 100% sure if asetek still makes it). You may wanna look into that as the coolers are a big issue on here. Maybe widen the case to support more powerful, reliable and readily available 120mm aios? Hopefully this change only marginally increases the case width (looking at the ghost s1 design, they support such coolers and the case is not much wider then what you guys are going for) and place the 120mm aio in the same place that you have the current cooler is. Again, just a suggestion.

Also I dont know if this was brought up before, but you can lower the pcie extension placement to support taller gpus/ hide the extension itself. These were just some ideas I was thinking about looking through the forums here and looking back at your design.

Looking forward to more updates.

Heey, thanks a lot for sharing such valuable information!

Regarding AIO

• 30mm width has to be added to the case in order to fit a 120 mm AIO / case fan in there. If all goes well with MJOLNIR I campaign, we'll do that for MJOLNIR I+. Also, we'll contact AIO manufacturers and encourage them about the rise of SFF Case market (perhaps to no avail, but better than doing nothing). I certainly feel like the demand for SFF cases is increasing, this should lead to more 92mm AIOs if this indeed is the case.

Regarding GPU

• Great point, looking at our 3D model we can lower the GPU 10 mm. Would that suffice?

Cheers,
Alex