NCASE M1 V6 info
- Thread starter Necere
- Start date
No, this small drop is because of the new year break approaching soon. After that, they say stock depletes in 3-5 days. Not 3-5 minutes like today.
Why can't production be scaled up?
I think it would be preferable to just have more units available for everyone so there is not too much waiting at all.
Imagine if they did add a pre-order system. You're going to have people at the end of the queue waiting a heck of a long time. And even longer as the queue grows.
I think it would be preferable to just have more units available for everyone so there is not too much waiting at all.
Imagine if they did add a pre-order system. You're going to have people at the end of the queue waiting a heck of a long time. And even longer as the queue grows.
There should definitely be a pre order option for customers to just place their money down first and then maybe a delivery date will be sent to them, which you can do by forecasting based on number of cases you can produce at a fixed set of time and their place in the queue. You can increase margins if you are afraid of not hitting profit from future price changes.
Or you create a waiting list and then send out a specific link for these people to buy the case in queue order(giving them maybe 12 or 24 hrs to make the order before the link expires somehow, or setting a pw on the page itself for them to reach order page and this pw changes once stock is out or when the time limit is up), so you just send this page link to ppl based on their queue number on the waiting list or smth.
Or you create a waiting list and then send out a specific link for these people to buy the case in queue order(giving them maybe 12 or 24 hrs to make the order before the link expires somehow, or setting a pw on the page itself for them to reach order page and this pw changes once stock is out or when the time limit is up), so you just send this page link to ppl based on their queue number on the waiting list or smth.
This is much more fairer and also efficient as
1) You wanna get smth you get in line, that makes sense. Provided we get everyone on this system to already pay so we know they are not just taking up a space in the queue to eventually back out of their order.
2) If orders indeed got to the pt where ppl have to wait for a year to get a case then it would be a pretty good indication to the case makers of the demand and that it'd be safe to ramp up production. Not fun to plough 100k into these cases only to end up with no takers.
Preorders don't need a cap, think of it a next in line.
I would not care if I had to wait a batch or two and happy to pay up front.
I just want one to my name so I don't have to take time off work / waking up at 3am just to trying to place an order.
We have to order months in advance. We try to size the order based on historical demand and the number of email signups on the website. The current and previous production runs were twice the size we were doing for V5 and earlier, and clearly still not sufficient.
What's more, Lian Li has limited factory time available for us. The next production run isn't scheduled until late February, so our existing stock (~40% of the last production run) has to last through then (or we just sell it all in 3-4 days again and live with being OOS for 2 months).
I understand that, and I tried to time it this time so it was on a weekend and during daylight hours for North America and Europe, at least. But obviously that won't work for everyone.
Pre-orders are somewhat problematic. The more time between taking pre-orders and delivery, the more people cancel. If we charge upfront, those cancellations are refunds that cost money to do and our payment provider could start limiting us or take other action. If we just authorize payment, on the other hand, that's only valid for 7 days through Shopify. There's also things like customer address change requests to deal with. And then of course we get the reputation for being a case that takes months to get, and all the criticism that comes with that. Back during the three or so years V5 was the current version, we'd gotten to the point of having pretty regular availability. It's only since V6 that there's been so much extra demand we can't keep up with it.
Look, I know it's far from ideal currently. That's abundantly clear right now. I wanted to try a smaller drop size on a specific day of the week that people could plan for so there'd be at least some semblance of regular availability. Clearly we don't have the stock to make that work with the current demand. I will look into it to see how feasible some kind of pre-order/reservation system is with Shopify. But if that doesn't work out, we're just going to have to go back to opening orders for a few days a month until supply and demand reach something closer to parity.
To be more optimistic, and not like everyone are upset, I will wait even a year if there won't be anything better than NCase for my use case. Be happy and enjoy your life 
@Necere Don‘t bother, as long as there are more demands than production capacity, you never can win. Take it positive, the V6 seems to be the best you ever made and everybody wants a case like this :-) If they are upset, I really can understand this, as I know the feeling of waiting imapatiently to get one of the cases.
Great job you are doing! Also keeping production at LianLi is in my opinion the best decision you can do to keep the quality standard. I am looking forward to get my case.
There is only one question I wanted to ask: when there is enough production capacity, could you please built up some stock for spare parts? Would be great.
By the way: Happy new year to everybody here!
Great job you are doing! Also keeping production at LianLi is in my opinion the best decision you can do to keep the quality standard. I am looking forward to get my case.
There is only one question I wanted to ask: when there is enough production capacity, could you please built up some stock for spare parts? Would be great.
By the way: Happy new year to everybody here!
Just wanted to chime in, as for me it was just pure luck I visited ncases.com on December 19th just as orders went open. Received my case yesterday and super happy with it, this thing is so well put together I can understand it's so popular and demand is very high. It doesn't help, which is a strange thing to say, that this case is praised on several Youtube channels as well. Optimum Tech in particular convinced me to purchase the M1. The V6 iteration improves it significantly making it almost the perfect SFF case for a lot of folks.
I guess people also underestimate that this is a boutique case and will probably never be a mass produced product. Hence it will always stay in limited supply for the foreseeable future. Look at the Loque Ghost S1, exact same issue. We're lucky that Lian Li offers the possibility to produce these cases on their production line. So unless @Necere has plans to expand and invest in his own supply chain and manufacturing capacity this situation probably won't change any time soon.
What did make me wonder though If Lian Li is the only option available. Wouldn't other case manufacturers be open to producing the Ncase? Silverstone, Corsair or NZXT for example? I guess Lian Li is one of the few with good experience on manufacturing aluminium cases.
I guess people also underestimate that this is a boutique case and will probably never be a mass produced product. Hence it will always stay in limited supply for the foreseeable future. Look at the Loque Ghost S1, exact same issue. We're lucky that Lian Li offers the possibility to produce these cases on their production line. So unless @Necere has plans to expand and invest in his own supply chain and manufacturing capacity this situation probably won't change any time soon.
What did make me wonder though If Lian Li is the only option available. Wouldn't other case manufacturers be open to producing the Ncase? Silverstone, Corsair or NZXT for example? I guess Lian Li is one of the few with good experience on manufacturing aluminium cases.
Here's an option I hadn't considered: someone on r/sffpc accidentally received black panels on their gray Velka 5.
I think this looks incredibly nice, and would love if it could be done on request. I understand that it's likely not feasible, but the other option of buying two cases and swapping the panels is a little spendthrift for the aesthetic. Maybe I'll look into painting it somehow. Food for thought.
I think this looks incredibly nice, and would love if it could be done on request. I understand that it's likely not feasible, but the other option of buying two cases and swapping the panels is a little spendthrift for the aesthetic. Maybe I'll look into painting it somehow. Food for thought.
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I know this will probably pass by but your doing a great job @Necere. This was the compromise you created and thanks to you even a few more people will have the case.
The panels (eventually) will be available for purchase separately on ncases.com.
Having reflected on the situation perhaps this first order period was always going to go this way as it’s the first time things have gone from a larger quantity with fewer windows for ordering to lower quantity and more windows of opportunity.
maybe things will die down a little, but there is the concern that smaller quantities will provide more of the same, especially as more people find out about the case and decide to order.
if production is limited with the manufacturer, is that in terms of quantity they can produce or time they have spare to produce. I would have thought knowing advance numbers would help, which preordering should provide. Don’t see how people can cancel as shouldn’t a purchase be binding?
maybe things will die down a little, but there is the concern that smaller quantities will provide more of the same, especially as more people find out about the case and decide to order.
if production is limited with the manufacturer, is that in terms of quantity they can produce or time they have spare to produce. I would have thought knowing advance numbers would help, which preordering should provide. Don’t see how people can cancel as shouldn’t a purchase be binding?
Pretty sure the exorbitant amount of consumer protection laws that exist prevent this from being the case, especially with the use of credit/paypal that have their own consumer protection mechanisms (e.g. charge back) that make it dangerous for vendors to even ignore cancelations.
Ditto!! Completely worth waking up (then falling back asleep) at 4am.
I noticed the black variant sold out in about 3 minutes. I was quite surprised. So amazed by the following this case has.
Yeh I knew it would so I didn’t even try for it! Wish I fell back asleep, so smokey & hot in Canberra
Well considering that the V6 basically had all the community feedback fixed into the new version, it's quite obvious as to why it most likely has become the most popular revision to date.
@Necere clearly checked all the "faulty" boxes out of this version and made it almost perfect. Sure, anything can never be 100% to everyone, you can never suit everyone's taste and preferences. But you can try and hit somewhat of a middlegound here and I think that he has more or less nailed it with the V6 - which you can cleary see by the extremely high demand for this case.
Personally I haven't seen this kind of a high demand for a case, from any manufacturer and that is saying alot. This is a very small business and when you compare it to the likes of the industry giants such as Corsair, NZXT, Cooler Master etc, you get a pretty good picture of just the raw scale of how impressive and amazing job @Necere has done here. With the limited options he has available to him, by being a small business and not having a larger company and hence the financial muscles behind him.
I also understand everyone's frustration with having to wait a month or two to order a case, and then some more time to recieve it. That is basically a 3 month wait, which is a long time by todays standards.
Although I want to take this opportunity at hand and back @Necere here a bit, and to give everyone a perspective of the amount of time, work and effort he has put into all of this and continues to do, to give us the service and case we all admire and want.
I was one of the backers of the original Dan Case A4 SFX and even got one of the early versions of the NCASE M1.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but if I recall correctly, both of these cases were dealt through SFFLab (the same guys that do it today). And at that time, the time of ordering, to the time of delivery was over 9 months. Yes, you read that correctly.
I purchased it either at the end of the year (december) or early the next year (january/february), can't remember 100% precisely and I recieved it late the same year.
You could all have been in the same situation today, as I was back then. Imagine having to wait almost a full year to just recieve your case, and now we're only talking about a month or two, untill availability again. And this is down to Lian Li having limited time for these guys, so it's more or less out of @Necere hands here.
And for that time to have been shorten down to just a month from ordering to delievery, is hella impressive and one hell of an achievement.
Again, for being such a small business.
So all in all, I get everyone's frustration here... But after seeing all the posts and pages after pages, of the same issues and frustration, I thought I'd make this post to give you all some kind of perspective here.
And saying things like "if you don't sort this out soon, I'll get something else", doesn't help one bit. On the other hand, it gives you a bad reputation around here. As to be honest, no one cares if you buy it or not. And I'm pretty sure that @Necere already has his hands full (which you can read this post to understand what I mean by that).
All in all, @Necere dude, you're doing an great job. Don't take the hatred, keep up the amazing work you do and trying to provide everyone with this amazing case that you've designed. You truly deserve this cred!
Best regards,
Dawelio
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I’m more frustrated with the fact that I got in within 2mins and had the silver case in my cart and was checking out, filled in my CC and delivery info and when I hit the confirmation to buy....I’m greeted with an Out of Stock on my cart entry. WTF? Usually once an item is in the cart it should technically be “spoken for” at least for a few minutes and not taken out from under you while you’re completing the payment process. I was soooo looking forward to getting this case too. Guess I’ll hope for a Louqe Ghost S1 release soon but not holding my breath.
