So some of you have probably seen my entry in the Phobya case design contest that's currently going on, but I've actually been cranking out design concepts for PC cases for a long time. I got a pretty positive reaction from a few people to my Phobya entry, so I figured some of you might be interested in seeing some of the other designs I've done. Some notes: I've never had the resources to actually attempt construction of any of my designs, so they're pretty conceptual, i.e., you won't find much in the way of construction details. Rather, the way I work is to mainly focus on the component layout and cooling/airflow, and then work on the exterior design to my liking. This part is fairly easy and enjoyable to me; the actual engineering and figuring out how things are going together is a lot less so, and frankly a bit beyond my skills/knowledge to pull off well in any case. Most of my designs up until recently have been small-form factor sized and they tend to make use of a lot of custom one-off stuff to get as small as possible, so I'll often use non-standard components and somewhat unorthodox methods to make it work (in theory at least). The style of my designs tend to be pretty similar; I prefer a simpler, clean, somewhat architecturally inspired aesthetic, and once I find something that works for me I tend to stick pretty close to it. Oh yeah, I consider a logo to be an important design element and therefore you'll notice I've incorporated my own sort of brand, "substation" (fitting, eh? Though moreso for the SFF designs) into these concepts. It's just there to give the design a sense of completeness. It doesn't have any significance beyond these designs. ATX Concept 1 I'll start off with a concept I put together just a few hours ago. I had the Phobya contest on my mind and was thinking about the feedback I'd gotten and some of the other entries, and even though it's too late to enter another design, I thought I'd make a new one from scratch anyway, just for fun. The visual style is essentially the same as my Phobya entry (this style preceded the contest actually). This is a mid-tower design, smaller than my Phobya entry, and it's intended to be equally capable of effective water or air cooling. To that end, the motherboard adopts the rotated orientation as used in Silverstone's cases. The bottom of the case can accommodate either a triple 140 rad or a pair of Phobya's 200mm rads. Two 200mm rads provide (200^2*2) 800 cm^2 of frontal area, which is roughly equivalent to five and a half 120mm rads (800/144 = 5.55). Air is blown up into the five HDDs and then drawn into the PSU and exhausted through the front vents. IO/power are on the top panel. HDDs are in a pop-out hotswap rack-type thing (technical term).
ATX Concept 2 Another rotated MB design. This one has no 5.25" bays and, like, many of my designs (though unlike the previous), is more geared to my own preferences. Shown here set up for air cooling: 180mm fans on the bottom and rear, both blowing in. Noctua D14 cooler and a pair of 3.5" drives, 2.5" SSDs stuffed in wherever they'll fit. Slim optical drive is attached to the inside of the front bezel, vertically and facing sideways. Mainly this is intended to be compact and able to effectively cool powerful hardware quietly, sacrificing drive bays. Set up for water cooling. Two slim 140mm rads in the rear, another 140 on top of the 180mm fan. Even fewer drive bays in this config. I didn't put in the power/front panel stuff, but it would go on the side of the front bezel (above or below the optical, or on the opposite side).
Mini-ITX Concept 1 One of my mini-ITX SFF designs. This one is actually designed to use standard components. This can fit a triple-slot video card (e.g., Arctic Cooling Accelero). The entire top compartment is ventilated just for this purpose. Again here we have a front-mounted PSU (cable would be routed to the back) exhausting out the front panel. Ideally, it would use one of the Nexus short-depth PSUs (125mm deep), which would afford just enough space for a Corsair H50/H70 to be mounted. Alternatively, a top-down cooler or shorter tower cooler (with e.g. a 92mm fan) would work as well. A single 3.5" HDD is located just next to the PSU, taking advantage of the PSU fan for cooling. A pair of 2.5" drives are next to that. Note the slim optical drive between the PSU and video card. This is a radiator expansion housing that attaches to the top of the case, which requires a little explanation. The housing has space for a dual 140 radiator and would ideally (this might be a tad unrealistic unless you have the resources of a big OEM) would be a sealed system with integrated pump and controller, and single-slot GPU waterblocks like the CoolIT OMNI (the LCD display is from their Vantage ALC). Oh yes, I said waterblocks because it's now a SLI/Crossfire system. On mini-ITX?? Not possible, right? Maybe, maybe not. These are PCIe risers that convert a single PCIe slot into multiple PCIe slots. Some are passive, some have an active chip mediating PCIe traffic. The idea would be to fix one of these risers just above the motherboard and connected to the PCIe slot via a very short cable. The video cards would then be moved up a slot to occupy the top two slots of the three available. Bonus - the original slot could conceivably be turned into a low-profile slot. I can't say for sure this would work or not, but I thought it was a neat idea.
Mini-ITX Concept 2 Another mini-ITX design. Lots of custom work would be required here. "Sidearm" is another brand/name I thought was fitting to a SFF system. The front is supposed to be a touchscreen OLED that serves as a power button and presumably some sort of system monitoring/control (via an Arduino board or the like). The CPU cooler is a Scythe Big Shuriken that's been... smushed, kinda. It's taller than I wanted and I figured I could probably achieve a height reduction of 10-15mm by bending the heatpipes. 140mm Koolance rad on the left for the GPUs. There are two video cards, again connected by a flexible riser to a PCIe expander, similar to the one described in the prior concept. They would have CoolIT OMNI-style single-slot waterblocks (not shown) connected to the single 140mm rad. DDC pump up front. Yes it would be hot. I did the numbers, and it would work (probably). Didn't run the tubing in this one, though obviously it would be a bit of a challenge. Probably corrugated Norprene. The PSU is the long dark box on the bottom; it's actually a 750w module from a 1U redundant PSU. As such, it only outputs 12v, which is why we have a PicoPSU plugged into the motherboard. Obviously, a lot of custom wiring here. The 140mm rad fan also serves to pull air through the PSU.
COM-Express Concept 1 This one is pretty cool. It's based on a COM-Express board, which is a form-factor that utilizes a small board (smaller than mini-ITX) for the CPU/Chipset/memory and a larger carrier board for all the IO and expansion slots. This would require a complete custom carrier board to be engineered and built. It's pretty dang small - 1.5l or thereabouts. Two 50mm fans provide all airflow for the system. They draw air into the side vents, through the PSU (a 160w 2"x4" single-output open-frame unit - yes, it's internal!), and push it up through heatsinks attached to both sides of the primary board "sandwich." A 1.8" SDD is the only drive in the system. The sandwich consists of: heatsink > COM-Express board > carrier board > MXM card > heatsink. Did I mention it has an MXM graphics card? Yup. Tiny box with upgradable graphics. Actually, that was the idea behind this concept: a super small PC that could actually be upgraded - with a new CPU (yes, there are (mobile CPU-)socketed COM-Express boards), graphics, even the COM-express board could be upgraded, since it's a standard form-factor. Compared to a first-gen Mac Mini. Pretty close in size, though we make some tradeoffs (smaller HDD, no optical - but we have a discrete GPU!).
"Tripod" EPIC-Express Concept Watchu lookin' at? Alright so this one was just for fun, and not terribly realistic. The front "legs" are 2x40mm radiators. The things coming off the sides are a pair of tiny water pumps made by a company called TCS. The rear "leg" contains the same 2x4" 160w PSU as the previous concept. The main body is a thin sandwich of slim optical drive, custom waterblock, EPIC Express board (another sub-ITX sized form-factor using socketed mobile CPUs), and 1.8" SSD. I think I wedged in an MXM board, too (I made this a while ago). EPIC Express has a PCI/104-Express connector, which carries PCIe signals (full 16 lanes), so it's possible to create an interface to a PCIe or MXM card, which is the idea here.
Mini-ITX Concept 3 Yet another mini-ITX based design, though again, requiring plenty of custom work. Just 76mm thick. Fully watercooled - dual 120mm rad has a clean air path straight through. The GPU block had to be single slot, thus the Bitspower (which is slightly thicker than single slot, but close enough). Video card is again connected via a flexible PCIe riser cable (not shown). The PSU is actually three PSUs (four if you count the PicoPSU), wedged between the video card and the slim optical. They are the same 2x4" 160w units used in my other designs. I figure one dedicated to the CPU connector, one for a PCIe 8-pin, and one shared between the PicoPSU and PCIe 6-pin ought to work. Admittedly, I don't really know enough about electronics to know if there'd be a potential problem with grounding 3 PSUs or voltage regulation. But, well. It's just a concept. -- Hope you guys enjoyed seeing some of my stuff. Maybe it'll spur some ideas
Anything mini-ITX or smaller always gets my attention! Excellent ideas here. Scribbling in notebook mode on. john
5 star thread indeed. I am loving the mini itx concept 1. If this case was available to buy I would order it this second.
Brilliant case designs, very much like something a high-end company would sell without being butt-ugly or too boring. I like...
Sure. I mean, there wouldn't be much I could do to stop someone using an idea even if I wanted to. But I don't mind if people do.
