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Completed SLATE-CASE AQ >>Status Update - Finalizing Order Fulfillments!
- Thread starter TaylorChiller
- Start date
Hey Everyone!
Just wanted to say "thank you" for all the support. We wouldn't have been able to do this project without you all. All of the pre-orders from last year have been shipped, and so this stage of the project comes to completion.
It was definitely a journey for Protolyth as a new company. Many good things were birthed and many other things came as learning experiences. I think if I was to sum up my interpretation of this project, and how I have felt since August 2022, I'd say go watch the entire docking scene from "Interstellar."
In all everything has come out well and I'm excited to share the next things we have on our design schedule.
Best Regards,
Taylor, Protolyth
Just wanted to say "thank you" for all the support. We wouldn't have been able to do this project without you all. All of the pre-orders from last year have been shipped, and so this stage of the project comes to completion.
It was definitely a journey for Protolyth as a new company. Many good things were birthed and many other things came as learning experiences. I think if I was to sum up my interpretation of this project, and how I have felt since August 2022, I'd say go watch the entire docking scene from "Interstellar."
In all everything has come out well and I'm excited to share the next things we have on our design schedule.
Best Regards,
Taylor, Protolyth
Me: Taylor, What are you doing?
Taylor: Making a bad ass case that fulfills all of your needs.
Me: It's not possible.
Taylor: No.... It's Necessary.
Taylor: Making a bad ass case that fulfills all of your needs.
Me: It's not possible.
Taylor: No.... It's Necessary.
I'm having issues with mine. Running it at anything above 60% actually causes the blades to get lodged inside my radiator fins.
Are we talking about the slim Arctic 140s (refresh my memory)? If that's the case, YES. These things... The amount of wobble on them is insane. I have 2 that are useable out of the 4 I bought. HAd 1 wobble so bad it broke a blade after I had already freed it from the radiator, another one got stuck on it's own.... Methinks I'm gonna have to swap to 120 rads and fans, but it's gonna be a while given how much money I've poured into this build already....
Yup, I was referring to the Arctic slim 140s. They're really horrible. If I even nudge my desk while it's at 60%, it descends into wobble madness and eventually the blades get stuck in the rad fins.
I hope an alternative crops up soon. Preferably this: https://noctua.at/pub/media/wysiwyg/computex/2019/computex_2019_slim_140mm_fan.jpg
It's been a journey but glad everything is coming along. I'm excited to see what cases you have in store for the future.
Also not sure if this was answered but will individual side panels be for sale separately in the future (Mesh/solid/glass/etc)?
Thanks
Such a shame on the quality. a noctua Slim 120 with a 120 to 140 mounting bracket could be an alternative on a 280 rad.
OMG I have the same fans and the same thing happened!! I thought it was just a compatibility problem with the corsair xr5 radiator Im using. I was able to fix it and I can run them at 100% with no problems. What i did was push the fan blades down at their center towards the housing, while it was spinning and clipping/wobbling. This seems to have better seated the fan blades and they no longer clip or wobble. I used a good amount of force (i was fed up and mad at them at the time lol).
Edit: forgot to mention I also super glued 8 washers to the screw holes on both sides of the fan.
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It wouldn't surprise me that the washers helped a bit, too. It seems as if the frames on these fans bend when screwed down. I thought "wow, slim fans for 12 bucks, what a deal!" After more than a decade in this industry, I should know better. Keep in mind all of mine are horizontal, so they shouldn't wobble at all as gravity is distributed evenly...
Thinking of going slimmer 120 rads and thicker fans when I change things up.
@TaylorChiller - congrats! This has been a really great project to follow.
Do you think there will be another group buy for the Slate Case AQ in 2023? I (regrettably) didn't get in on the first one.
Do you think there will be another group buy for the Slate Case AQ in 2023? I (regrettably) didn't get in on the first one.
Great case, unfortunately my computer turned off yesterday and won’t turn back on. Think my ram died so I ordered more to see about getting it working again.
We plan to, but we are not sure when that will be.
Yep ram died after 2 weeks :/. New ram booted with XMP first try. Old ram took a ton of fiddling to boot at higher than normal speeds at all.
Alright wow its been a while waiting for parts but here it is.Mine arrived on the 25th of November! I was order 1019!
Im sad I did not purchase the rotational IO accessory and hope that I can do that relatively soon. The case is absolutely beautiful and i've been very excitedly exploring the possibilities of building in it. My only regret (which is my fault because Taylor has always done a great job of detailing the dimensions on the website) is that my current GPU (ASUS TUF 3090 with an EKWB Vector waterblock) is too tall to fit my FLT pump/res at the topthe sandwhich layout makes it so that my pump/res at the top are exactly in-line with the GPU and it won't fit.
I will likely need to get a CPU/pump block combo, but have been putting it off due to cost. The goal was to get a no compromise dual 280 radiator case, and this achieves 95% of that, so I am satisfied.
Taylor if you see this - can I somehow buy the Trad bracket from you
Excuse the literally complete lack of cable management. Not only are these cables LONG, I didn't understand how strapped for space I'd be in this case with 2x 280's. I have some cablemod cables on the way and my intention is to redo a few things in about a month and a half once the cables arrive.
1. Swap the cables out for custom shorter cables
2. Redo the 90 bend going from RAD to GPU to be more level
3. Attach the Quadro to the core of the case that the PSU is attached to.
Once that is done, should be MUCH cleaner. But since I don't see many dual rad pics and showings, figured id upload the current pics!
12900K
32GB DDR5-6000
MSI Z690 Unify-Itx
ASUS Loki SFX 1000W (ordered this thing from Taiwan, came in a week, cost me 50$ more than MSRP. Highly recommend lol)
RTX 4080 FE with Corsair waterblock (smallest block available)
Aquacomputer Quadro
Aquacomputer High Flow 2
EK DDC/CPU Block 1700 Combo
1x Corsair XR5 280mm (2x 140mm Noctua NF-A14s)
1x Alphacool ST20 Slim 280mm (2x 15mm Noctua NF-A12 Slim's with 140mm brackets attached)
After 2hrs of gaming (WoW on all ultra, 1440p, and then about 35min of BF2042, 1440p all high), coolant temps hit about 38c.
CPU will spike to 90c when loading BF2042 maps, but its just the 30sec loading spike, other than that, CPU normalizes at around 65-68c in games. GPU normalizes at 49c core, 40c memory junction, and 61c hotspot.
Overall very happy. I assume temps will drop another 2-4c once the cables free up some air space/ventilation. Its brutal in there.
After spending a few hours today, I finally got my PC swapped over to the Slate Case. Overall, it wasn't too bad but there are some things I noted. Some pictures included below
The one thing that always came back to me from the beginning to the end was the lack of anywhere to really hold on to this case beside tipping it over to one side, putting your hand over and same on to the other side. I think an easy fix to this is to make the included feet just a bit taller, I couldn't get my fingers under with the feet on to just pick it up from the bottom. Of course you can always pick it up from the sides and apply force but I wouldn't want to risk doing that since I could damage the case or it could just slip out of my hands.
The next point is the side panels, not a huge fan of how to remove them based off your manual, if you have no nails, good luck getting them off. The magnets are pretty strong which is great but makes it a pain to remove for the nail-challenged people out there. I think a fix would be to put an indent or divet somewhere to leverage removal easier.
As for during the build process, The clearance on the motherboard tray didn't allow me to keep my m.2 shield on my rear M.2 SSD. I have a Z390i Aorus board so not sure how many more recent motherboards still do rear M.2s. I think a fix if feasible is to cut out a small space since it was very close to clearing with the m.2 shield on.
As for an improvement, I think the cutout on the bottom right of the PSU from the motherboard side could be a slight bit wider/bigger. I wanted to pass my 24pin cable through that for neater cable routing, I was only able to get my 8pin EPS cable through though.
The sliding rails, I'm not sure yet. They were super robust, I wish they were easier to slide through in and out. This is probably a bit on my part for my naivety and lack of knowledge, It wasn't so bad at the end getting it back in though had to give it a little push here and there.
I bought a DP cable but it seems every order comes with one by default or I got an extra since they were identical. I like this and no real complaints, I wish it were a little longer though. From a cable management perspective, Longer is better than short since I can just hide under the desk but if it's too short, it's a bigger headache.
The finish is absolutely gorgeous, I think you really outdone yourself in this department. I will say though that it's highly prone to scratches even if you are careful. I did my build on a study wood table with a towel under the body, I still got some minor scratches in a few spots. I'm not really sure how you would improve this though.
Build Pics
The one thing that always came back to me from the beginning to the end was the lack of anywhere to really hold on to this case beside tipping it over to one side, putting your hand over and same on to the other side. I think an easy fix to this is to make the included feet just a bit taller, I couldn't get my fingers under with the feet on to just pick it up from the bottom. Of course you can always pick it up from the sides and apply force but I wouldn't want to risk doing that since I could damage the case or it could just slip out of my hands.
The next point is the side panels, not a huge fan of how to remove them based off your manual, if you have no nails, good luck getting them off. The magnets are pretty strong which is great but makes it a pain to remove for the nail-challenged people out there. I think a fix would be to put an indent or divet somewhere to leverage removal easier.
As for during the build process, The clearance on the motherboard tray didn't allow me to keep my m.2 shield on my rear M.2 SSD. I have a Z390i Aorus board so not sure how many more recent motherboards still do rear M.2s. I think a fix if feasible is to cut out a small space since it was very close to clearing with the m.2 shield on.
As for an improvement, I think the cutout on the bottom right of the PSU from the motherboard side could be a slight bit wider/bigger. I wanted to pass my 24pin cable through that for neater cable routing, I was only able to get my 8pin EPS cable through though.
The sliding rails, I'm not sure yet. They were super robust, I wish they were easier to slide through in and out. This is probably a bit on my part for my naivety and lack of knowledge, It wasn't so bad at the end getting it back in though had to give it a little push here and there.
I bought a DP cable but it seems every order comes with one by default or I got an extra since they were identical. I like this and no real complaints, I wish it were a little longer though. From a cable management perspective, Longer is better than short since I can just hide under the desk but if it's too short, it's a bigger headache.
The finish is absolutely gorgeous, I think you really outdone yourself in this department. I will say though that it's highly prone to scratches even if you are careful. I did my build on a study wood table with a towel under the body, I still got some minor scratches in a few spots. I'm not really sure how you would improve this though.
Build Pics
Really great feedback from you guys. Loving the builds so far. Its good to see so many different methods and parts coming together!
Your note about scratches. Something that has helped us when we have done our test builds is we almost never place the case on its top cap/side. And we try to only place/orient the case on the rubber feet or its front or back (with the grills off).
Also, scratches can be deceiving sometimes. You can try to take a little soap water on a soft towel/paper towel and see if it washes off gently. Sometimes what looks like a scratch is just a softer material being left onto the surface of the metal.
Taylor
Would you recommend going with a slim rad + 2 slim fans over a slim rad with 2 25mm fans or 1slim + 1 25mm?
Well funny you ask that. I think that the current rad setup I have is about as tight as I could make it. I know that the case can technically fit a single slim and a normal fan on the side where i have a slim rad AND slim fans, but it just doesn't seem like there would be enough room given the cables.
I don't know what the temp difference would be, but I think the ideal would actually be to keep the current setup but just do 2 slim rads, 1 with full size fans and 1 with slim fans. That would give you slightly more space and IMO enough room to manage everything, while still maintaining that little extra bit of cooling from the thicker rad on one side. I also have a relatively high power/heat output from my components, so depends on what you use.
My 12900KS is putting out about 227 watts and my GPU puts out about 387 watts, so I think with 2x 240's Id see water temps or fan speeds higher than i'd like.
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