Competition Phobya Design a Case Competition - Stage 2

Maybe it is me, but the poll is said to be closed on march 8th (see above the voting results)

 

There's no average case among these...if I were hardcore Starcraft fan I'd grab Photon, it looks like some protoss device

 

Some really professional design work in there, must have been really fun for you guys to be able to put you minds to work on something that might actually go into production! Great idea for a competition too.

 

Ummm... I registered in December so that I could vote in this competition, but the poll is still locking me out. Maybe the rule is actually set to be two weeks and 15 posts?




I was greatly impressed by the improvement in these cases from round 1. Good stuff!

 

Voted!

Every single case is absolutely amazing but case design is subjective and I found it easy to pick an outright favourite. Second to fifth was difficult but got there in the end.

 

Very fitting date as I luuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvvvv some of these designs.

 

some nice and interesting design concepts, but i always am left wondering, why are they always so freaking over sized giant cases? there have to be more people than just me that are entirely put off by large tower size.
so after my complaint, i prefer the following in order:
II, Dominus, Proteus, Phobya Gladio.
all of them still have little niggles that bother me though, besides just the size.

 

I wouldn't call mine oversized?

 

Even though my design is fairly large, I actually agree with you. Personally, I prefer smaller cases, and usually I stick to small form-factor designs.

I think though, what comes up when you're trying to design a case specifically for watercooling, is that you quickly realize it's hard to come up with something that hasn't already been done. There are already quite a few cases on the market that will handle a couple of radiators internally, or can be easily modded to do so. There are only so many configurations that work well, and most of them have been done.

Another point is that watercooling takes up a lot of space; the rads, pumps, and reservoirs take up a lot of extra room on top of the space needed for drive bays and power supply. The TJ07 is arranged pretty efficiently, but it's still fairly large. Its 240+360 (+/-120) rad support was what I considered the baseline for number of rads in a proper "watercooling case." There's an argument to be made for a smaller watercooled case, IMO, but there's so much "you need a quad+triple rad to handle that hardware" sort of posts floating around on enthusiast forums that it seems like a case with just a 360 rad, say, would be overlooked by a lot of people.

Considering what I managed to fit in my design (the SR-2 is a huge board, you don't realize how big until you see it next to a standard ATX mb), it's pretty efficiently packaged. It does trade off some drive bays for big rads and dual PSUs, but overall, for something smaller than an 800D it's not bad. Actually, I think it wouldn't be too hard to scale it down a bit, dropping the SR-2 and dual PSU support, along with smaller rads.

 

I decided to only cast 1 vote, to emphasise how much better then the rest i like the design.

Roboduck, Ixmatal and Confusis, you guys missed out on my vote. You should blame GuilleAcoustic though. The Monolith is by far the most specialised, inventive and original design of the bunch. I can't believe how few votes it has. To compensate slightly, it's gets my only vote.

 

True, so true. That's what lead me to my design, even if I didn't manage to make it as small as I wanted. I'm still pretty happy with the result since it is not that big (87L, about the same size than Mick64 case). The case is about 50% wider than normal case, but it is 50% shorter too.

But as someone already said ... it is subjective and all taste have to be fed .

Maybe I should have stick with microATX design (I managed 50L case with 2 triple 140mm rad). Eveything is about choice, I made mine

Anyway, good luck to everyone and whatever happens, this was a very nice adventure

 

FWIW, Guille, I like your design a lot and tend to agree with Xtrafresh in regards to its originality and clearly WC-oriented design. You really put in a lot of work and it really came together well in round 2. I only cast one vote last round (not for myself ), and I haven't yet decided if I'll vote this round, but if I do, yours will be it, I think.

 

Guille got one of my votes . I used all 5 of my votes (didn't vote for myself) and I wish I had more. I would really like to see a number of these designs go into production.

 

@Xtrafresh, subtec, roboduck : Thanks guys. I used my 5 votes too, and it was hard to pick only 5 designs.

 

Wow!!! All amazingly cool (no pun intended) designs, though have to admit Razer and Roboduck's cases are edging ahead as my joint top favourites, really look the part and can see them being very commercially viable! If it wasn’t for the itch to build my own I'd definitely consider buying either of those two cases! Now the issue is who to vote for the other three positions, d*mn near impossible to choose if you ask me...

 

Didn't make the effort that I really want to put on this contest , maybe because I couldn't balance studies with designs so make this contest an annual thing (as someone already said) .. giving the chance to elaborate a design for a full year it's less stressful and then on the last month , start a discussion to change little details and to change some ideas that would be nice , just because I've so little time to work in designs like this one

 

Labrego my friend you have my vote

Cumpts,

Freddy

 

I don't like any of them so not hard at all
One of those I might buy but others, don't care.

 

For me I like these the most because they are a step away from the norm while not being too extreme to make.
Phobya Aurora by Confusis (they might have trouble manufacturing this though but I like it but if it's acrylic it'll be nothing thermo forming couldn't do )
Phobya Gladio by Razer2007
II by Roboduck
Black Owl by SnowyOwl (they might have trouble manufacturing this though but I like it)
Dominus by Subtec