Update: I've increased the height of the case by 15mm to incorporate a slim 120mm fan towards the back. I'm not sure this is actually necessary, but beyond making sure the central chamber doesn't turn into a hot box, it also gives me a little more clearance above the PCI slot for extra-deep cards (like the FTW 1070 I'm currently running) and lets me double up my overhead drive mount in the front of I want to, so I figure why not? My plan is to have this configured in Speedfan or mobo settings to remain off unless motherboard or SSD/HDD temps go above 40 or so.
Previous update: new version of the design is finished! This is intended to be produced entirely with 3D printing and laser-cut acrylic.
The four corner pillars are 3D-printed pieces. The left one is my favorite piece of the design, with this angled shape and a continuation of the window from the left side panel. Power button's at the top, I/O and an SD card reader at the bottom.
The left and right panels are meant to be cut out of translucent black or smoked transparent acrylic. Bottom and back will be opaque. Still not entirely sure about whether the top and front will look better transparent or not.
One thing I dislike about some of the SFF cases I've seen is the way they handle the PCI slots, pushing the top out creating an ugly protrusion. Instead, I've created a sort of bracket surrounding the back of the card that pushes it in from the back wall, integrated with the back-left pillar.
The central section supports three 2.5" drives and a slim slot-loading optical. I'd like to figure out a way to mount another 2.5" drive on the top, but haven't figured out how to do this without putting screws through the top panel, which would look pretty ugly. Currently I'm thinking of 3D printing a bracket that would attach to the top of the two center walls.
You may have noticed the PSU is sitting on the bottom of the case with the outputs at the top. This is actually the element of this design I'm proudest of. The case has 2cm feet for airflow and the switch and power socket for the PSU are on the bottom. This has two benefits: it allows direct access to the PSU switch, and no space has to be reserved for an extension cord. Although PSU extensions themselves are quite small, they actually take up a significant amount of space because a large area behind the PSU has to be left empty for them. I was able to make the case almost 2cm smaller just by moving the PSU to the bottom so that the cable runs under the chassis. Now, I know airflow isn't entirely solved by giving the case large feet, because cold air is being pulled in the side and hot air pushed out the bottom, going against convective flow, but if this turns out to have any effect on temps it's not too difficult to open up the PSU and reverse the fan.
Internal dimensions are 308mm D x 150mm W x 189mm H, minus the 25x25mm corner at the front left, for an interior volume of 8.61 liters. External dimensions are 318x160x218, including the feet.
Obviously, ventilation will be added to all the side panels, but I probably won't bother to do this until I'm creating the laser cutting designs in Illustrator, as it will take a lot of time to create the pattern I want and it makes more sense to only do it once.
My next stage is, when I have the money (probably toward the end of October), to order the PCIe riser, SD card reader and other I/O components, and slim ODD mount bracket, in order to get exact dimensions so I can add things like hex nut sockets to the design, and fix the positions of a few cutouts more accurately.
Thoughts on the design or on manufacturing are welcome!
Check out the earlier stages here:
Previous update: new version of the design is finished! This is intended to be produced entirely with 3D printing and laser-cut acrylic.
The four corner pillars are 3D-printed pieces. The left one is my favorite piece of the design, with this angled shape and a continuation of the window from the left side panel. Power button's at the top, I/O and an SD card reader at the bottom.
The left and right panels are meant to be cut out of translucent black or smoked transparent acrylic. Bottom and back will be opaque. Still not entirely sure about whether the top and front will look better transparent or not.
One thing I dislike about some of the SFF cases I've seen is the way they handle the PCI slots, pushing the top out creating an ugly protrusion. Instead, I've created a sort of bracket surrounding the back of the card that pushes it in from the back wall, integrated with the back-left pillar.
The central section supports three 2.5" drives and a slim slot-loading optical. I'd like to figure out a way to mount another 2.5" drive on the top, but haven't figured out how to do this without putting screws through the top panel, which would look pretty ugly. Currently I'm thinking of 3D printing a bracket that would attach to the top of the two center walls.
You may have noticed the PSU is sitting on the bottom of the case with the outputs at the top. This is actually the element of this design I'm proudest of. The case has 2cm feet for airflow and the switch and power socket for the PSU are on the bottom. This has two benefits: it allows direct access to the PSU switch, and no space has to be reserved for an extension cord. Although PSU extensions themselves are quite small, they actually take up a significant amount of space because a large area behind the PSU has to be left empty for them. I was able to make the case almost 2cm smaller just by moving the PSU to the bottom so that the cable runs under the chassis. Now, I know airflow isn't entirely solved by giving the case large feet, because cold air is being pulled in the side and hot air pushed out the bottom, going against convective flow, but if this turns out to have any effect on temps it's not too difficult to open up the PSU and reverse the fan.
Internal dimensions are 308mm D x 150mm W x 189mm H, minus the 25x25mm corner at the front left, for an interior volume of 8.61 liters. External dimensions are 318x160x218, including the feet.
Obviously, ventilation will be added to all the side panels, but I probably won't bother to do this until I'm creating the laser cutting designs in Illustrator, as it will take a lot of time to create the pattern I want and it makes more sense to only do it once.
My next stage is, when I have the money (probably toward the end of October), to order the PCIe riser, SD card reader and other I/O components, and slim ODD mount bracket, in order to get exact dimensions so I can add things like hex nut sockets to the design, and fix the positions of a few cutouts more accurately.
Thoughts on the design or on manufacturing are welcome!
Check out the earlier stages here:
I'm planning on moving soon, likely overseas, and that's given me cause to reconsider the long-term future of my PC. I can't carry my current 80-liter full tower enclosure with me, but I'm not ready to go back to dropping $1500 on a non-upgradeable gaming laptop every two or three years; thus my new fascination with small form factor cases. I've been considering the Dancase A4, the Ncase M1, and the Dr Zaber Sentry, but none of them were 100% what I wanted. The Dan and the Sentry are extreme in the space-saving department, but sacrifice on features I want. The Ncase, on the other hand, seemed in comparison overly large. I figured if it had room for people to set up custom water cooling inside it (serious props to you guys btw), it was bigger than it absolutely needed to be to provide what it does in terms of features and hardware support.
I decided to try and build something that would be half Dan/Sentry and half Ncase: a case with as close to zero empty air space as possible with no compromises on support for storage drives and even an option for a slimline optical - a necessity for me, as I'm a photographer and use writeable blu-rays to back up the tens of thousands of photos I take in a given year. The resulting idea was a three-chamber design, inspired by the two-chamber design of the Dan but with a slim center space supporting an optical drive and multiple 2.5" storage drives. Since these components generate little heat (the reason I decided not to incorporate support for 3.5" drives), they can be housed in a space with relatively poor ventilation and provide a kind of dead air space between the hotter-running components on either side. I've decided to call this case Project Polaris, after what is probably the best-known trinary star system.
Enough backstory, though...you came here to see progress.
The original idea was an all-aluminum case, made of 10 pieces that could each be cut and bent out of a single piece of metal. Vents would have been added to the top, sides, and bottom. The central section supports three 2.5" drives up to 15mm thick - one attached to the left panel at the top and two attached to the right panel at the bottom. The PCIe riser snakes up between them. Another 2.5" drive can be attached to the case bottom near the front. The front half of the center section holds the slim optical bay, for which I forgot to add a slot to the top panel in this render. You can also see the bracket for front I/O and an SD card slot (another concession to my photography-related needs) at the top-left-front corner.
I sent this design to a design and fabrication company whose name I won't mention, and they came back with an estimate of over $10,000 to build this thing. I have no idea how that's possible, but it doesn't really matter; it became clear at that point that I would need to find a way to simplify the design and build it myself. I'm currently in the process of reworking this into a design I can build out of laser-cut acrylic panels.
Here's the acrylic design so far. I'll post updated pictures once I've finished putting in all the details, but it's pretty much the same layout as the previous version, with two changes: the slot-loading optical faces forward now, allowing me to mount a 2.5" drive on the top of the case instead of the bottom; and the PSU now sits on the bottom instead of hanging from the top, allowing access to the cord and power switch from under the case (don't worry, there will be large feet for ventilation).
My first step in building this will be to obtain PCIe, motherboard, and slimline optical brackets, either by buying them online or by 3D printing them, and to buy the SD card reader and top IO module I'll be using. Once I have exact measurements of the mounting hardware for all those pieces, I'll be able to position mounting holes correctly on the acrylic pieces, and I'll go forward with getting those cut.
I'll post more pictures and updates as version 2 of the design comes together.
I decided to try and build something that would be half Dan/Sentry and half Ncase: a case with as close to zero empty air space as possible with no compromises on support for storage drives and even an option for a slimline optical - a necessity for me, as I'm a photographer and use writeable blu-rays to back up the tens of thousands of photos I take in a given year. The resulting idea was a three-chamber design, inspired by the two-chamber design of the Dan but with a slim center space supporting an optical drive and multiple 2.5" storage drives. Since these components generate little heat (the reason I decided not to incorporate support for 3.5" drives), they can be housed in a space with relatively poor ventilation and provide a kind of dead air space between the hotter-running components on either side. I've decided to call this case Project Polaris, after what is probably the best-known trinary star system.
Enough backstory, though...you came here to see progress.
The original idea was an all-aluminum case, made of 10 pieces that could each be cut and bent out of a single piece of metal. Vents would have been added to the top, sides, and bottom. The central section supports three 2.5" drives up to 15mm thick - one attached to the left panel at the top and two attached to the right panel at the bottom. The PCIe riser snakes up between them. Another 2.5" drive can be attached to the case bottom near the front. The front half of the center section holds the slim optical bay, for which I forgot to add a slot to the top panel in this render. You can also see the bracket for front I/O and an SD card slot (another concession to my photography-related needs) at the top-left-front corner.
I sent this design to a design and fabrication company whose name I won't mention, and they came back with an estimate of over $10,000 to build this thing. I have no idea how that's possible, but it doesn't really matter; it became clear at that point that I would need to find a way to simplify the design and build it myself. I'm currently in the process of reworking this into a design I can build out of laser-cut acrylic panels.
Here's the acrylic design so far. I'll post updated pictures once I've finished putting in all the details, but it's pretty much the same layout as the previous version, with two changes: the slot-loading optical faces forward now, allowing me to mount a 2.5" drive on the top of the case instead of the bottom; and the PSU now sits on the bottom instead of hanging from the top, allowing access to the cord and power switch from under the case (don't worry, there will be large feet for ventilation).
My first step in building this will be to obtain PCIe, motherboard, and slimline optical brackets, either by buying them online or by 3D printing them, and to buy the SD card reader and top IO module I'll be using. Once I have exact measurements of the mounting hardware for all those pieces, I'll be able to position mounting holes correctly on the acrylic pieces, and I'll go forward with getting those cut.
I'll post more pictures and updates as version 2 of the design comes together.
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