Phobya water-cooled case design thread - FINAL STAGE

Welcome to the final stage of the Phobya case design competition​

The votes have been counted and verified and we have now got the 5 cases that will progress to the final stage of the competition!

At this point I would like to say a special thanks to the 5 other entries that were not lucky enough to make it through to this stage. We really apperciate the effort you put in to make the competiton what it is today and I hope you stick around to give your opinions on the final 5.

The 5 cases going through to the final stage are as follows:

mick64 with Proteus



Razer2007 with Phobya Gladio



Roboduck with II



SnowyOwl with Black Owl



Subtec with Dominus



The final stage:

This stage's focus it to implement changes to your design to make the cases production ready, Making sure Phobya can physically produce your case for you. Going from concept to prototype if you will.

You will have 4 weeks to complete this stage. After that point the community will vote for the top 3 designs. Then these 3 designs will be forward to phobya to pick the winner.

Your designs are currently being looked at in detail by Phobya and discussion on any manufacturing issues has already started. You will be directly advised in this thread about any possible manufacturing issues or questions we need answering so you can make the changes if needed.

We wish you luck guys and this thread will be updated shortly by the Big Boss of Aquatuning so play nice guys

 

Rawr!

II by Roboduck looks the most practical and compact. That would be nice to see in the flesh.

 

Ugh... sorry to say but I'm getting a little frustrated at people saying such-and-such case looks big or compact (no offense). It's really difficult to get a good impression of how large these are, relative to eachother, based on pictures of the cases individually. So I'm going do us all a favor and list the cases in order of size, smallest to largest, based on each dimension in turn.


Overall Volume

1. SnowyOwl - 73.3L
2. II - 78.5L (71.6L w/o feet)
3. Dominus - 79L
4. Proteus - 108.5L
5. Gladio - 110.2L

Height

1. Dominus - 540mm
2. SnowyOwl - 545mm
3. II - 570mm (520mm w/o feet)
4. Gladio - 590mm
5. Proteus - 630mm

Depth

1. II - 567mm
2. SnowyOwl - 585mm
3. Gladio - 595mm
4. Dominus - 665mm
5. Proteus - 700mm

Width

1. Dominus - 220mm
2. SnowyOwl - 230mm
3. II - 243mm
4. Proteus - 246mm
5. Gladio - 314mm

In my view, there are two sizes of case here: big and really big, with SnowyOwl, II, and Dominus in the former category, at 70-80 liters, and Proteus and Gladio in the latter, at 100+ liters. Some are deeper or taller, some are squatter; simply comes down to personal preference or space requirements what people are going to prefer. As you can see though, none of the cases really qualify as "compact" by any measure.


Edit: oh, and congrats to the winners and all that

 

wooohah let's go!!!! Polish up the design, engrave a pic of your girlfriend in it, and go to a LAN and make all the losers soil themselves!

to get serious...

I'm glad that Mr. BIGBOSS will be involved. Must we like indicate where everything are? like screws/rivets?

 

I thought I had the biggest case (but it was "only" 87L) ... anyway, good luck to all the five of you. I'll look closely and give you my opinion and advises.

 

This should be fun... I know my case has some serious engineering challenges to overcome... I'm afraid my lack of experience in this area may be my undoing

 

thank you Guille. It will be appreciated!

 

Just to make a point this does not need to be too in depth i.e showing every single screw etc more about making sure we are able to produce the main components etc

 

thank you


let's go!

 

So I got the idea in my head last week that if I rotate the PSU I could fit a slim rad underneath it, and this was the result:



That's two slim 280s end-to-end on the case floor, with the PSU taking the exhaust from the foremost rad. It's a shame nobody makes a slim 560 because that'd be perfect. Still, a pair of 280s is pretty awesome. With the 560 on top that's a total of eight 140mm rads in the case

You do lose the second PSU option in this config, but really, who uses two anyway?

 

Here's my vote...

- Make all five cases.

I'm down for one of each right now if you'll have me.



On a serious note... I really hope to have a chance to buy one of the cases that ends up being built. I guess it will be a limited run, but how do we go about finding out if one can purchase one of these babies?

 

Just to point out to the haters during the voting round, not all the cases were huge.

Still, congrats to the guys! It shows full sized cases are still preferred over SFF though :/

 

More details will be provided once the winner has been chosen and we have started making the case.

 

As long as your design matched your personal tastes ... it doesn't mind if it is big, small, yellow, pink, curvy, flat, etc.

To be honest, I liked your case Confusis. I like case with a small footprint. It was original in its color scheme, layout, curvy shape. The acrylic was a nice idea and gave a shiny / glossy aspect to the it (especially with the gray / yellow colors).

But again, design is always a question of taste. To my mind, the more important is to always be honest with ourself and to always do what WE like. I made monolith to match my personal taste and what I would like to see in a case, not to match what others like.

When you follow the road of originality you always take the risk to create something that most won't like ... but that's not important to me. I never followed fashion and don't care about what the other think as long as I'm honest with myself. And if, by any luck, I'm matching the fashion followed by all those personality-less people, it would be only cause people have good tastes this year

You had a nice design and shouldn't be disapointed, you made a good work and I hope to see this case in project log, as well as all the others.

Good luck to the 5 nominee, you made a great work and deserve to battle for the best design.

 

Confusis - it was pointed out several times that you had the most compact design by far, don't take the generalizations too personally.

By comparison, The optional MBTray for my design mounts 12 m-itx boards, and here are the stats to compare:

 

As a comparison, but again ... the more important is a well balanced size / ease of use / cooling performance. The more WC performance you add, the bigger the case is. Confusis went for a single rad that lead to a compact case. But for heavy loaded rig, you need at least 2 rad and possibly 2 loop, which lead to bigger case.

I went for dual width case, but used tall and vertical design to shrink the depth (since I really hate to have my case depper than my desk). Others went for deep case ...

All design were driven by choices, and all were different. Single GPU with only CPU and GPU wc will only requiere a single rad .... but if you wc the MB, SLI / crossfire GPU, then multiple rad is mandatory.

I think we should now help the 5 finalist to improve their design and stop fighting because we are angry / disapointed not to be among them. All case were good for their purpose and the whole community will gain something from team work.

@Subtec : you're the first, so let's start opinion / advise

I like the idea of vertical / horizontal psu mounting option. I really think dual PSU is only needed for folding rig. I'd just like to see how the PSU power cable is routed outside the case and how you are going to manage PSU extra cable. Your design is awesome, very pro (and again it remind me of my beloved IBM workstations) and "compact". No wasted space, but PSU cable can become a real nightmare.

 

I wasn't angry - just a little miffed by the size comments by some of the voters! Nothing personal TBH, and the comment wasn't directed at any participants.

I'm happy to help any of the top 5

 

I understand, and so I felt and tbh I didn't know if I should comment those size haters ... especially when they said they don't like big case while voting for case that are bigger (w/o checking case volume). Anyway, lets focused on the nominee and not on haters / fanboy

EDIT : Is your avatar your baby ?

 

To Phobya and/or the Shop who will be producing the case

For the benefit of Phobya and all designer involved in stage3 can we get a specific list of availiable machine whit their dimension & capacity

Ex:
Amada press brake+ Bending radius availible
Folding Machine + Tooling (Because there are thing that can be easely done on a folder and not on a press brake)
Trumpf 6000watts laser
Punching machine + permission to create special die
3 or 5 axis CNC

The shop who will be producing these case probably has already a list of these spec Online...I don't think you are going to give us the name .....but it means it's easy to find

Do we have the right to use casted metal Urethane or plastic ?


I would be more than happy to make or find on the net video of what these machine can and cannot do and to answer any question the contestant have. Desining sheet metal part is what i do for living so i know a thing or two....but whitout the specification of the machine it's a lot harder.

I already know i can build my case because i work in a shop that has the LASER, the Press brake and everything (almost) i need to produce it. So i know i can build it ....BUT each shop has it's own requirement and it's very different from place to place....just imagine on another continent

The faster the production guys get into it the easier and quicker the winning case will be made.

Thank you for your time & Have a nice day

David