Let's make a case designed by the LTT community

[hammy]

Hi everyone,

 

Longtime member, mostly lurker in the LTT community. As a fellow nerd with the rest of you, I've had a passion for PC hardware for a long time.  

 

A few friends and I started up a little case company, we all have careers so this really just in our spare time between family and work. We've been working on some neat design concepts (small form factor stuff, modular cases), nothing to sell yet (prototyping and procurement is so much trickier than it seems) but I was curious to gauge the interest in a community-led case project. 

 

There's no right or wrong way to start this, but I'd love to make something that's designed by the LTT community for the LTT community. Obviously, I can't promise anything without knowing what the design is, but I'd love to make it available for anybody who wants one to purchase one.

 

If it gets to that stage, maybe we throw up a kickstarter or an indiegogo to get it off the ground (anyone who has worked with manufacturing before will know the primary obstacle is purchase order size). 

 

So feel free to vote in the poll: should we make an LTT Community Designed Case?

[aisle9]

Why bother? It would come out looking exactly like whatever the f*ck ATX mid-tower is popular right now.

[Jeskspie]

Turnips

[hammy]

1 minute ago, aisle9 said:

Why bother? It would come out looking exactly like whatever the f*ck ATX mid-tower is popular right now.

I think the community here is pretty hardcore. Whatever design or direction we would go in has a lot of potential to be novel or at the very least different than what's out there. 

 

Personally speaking, I think it'd be neat to see some more affordable plex non-rackmount desktop options for piling a bunch of drives into. Or maybe a more affordable SFFPC case that caters to a specific community desire. Lots of fun options. 

[IkeaGnome]

5 minutes ago, hammy said:

I think it'd be neat to see some more affordable plex non-rackmount desktop options for piling a bunch of drives into. Or maybe a more affordable SFFPC case that caters to a specific community desire. Lots of fun options. 

There's the problem right there. What I want in a case probably wont work for you or @aisle9 or anyone else. How do you fit all the RGB in the world into a case where someone else doesn't want any of it, but might want a lot of drive bays and room for multiple GPUs? If we just talk about the front panel. I want no RGB. Mesh. Room for 2 140mm fans or 3 120mm fans. You might want one of those front panels that look like RGB going into the panel like the Inwin 805. How do you plan to make both of those work? Then how do we fit that all into a 1u server rack for people here that want them?

[hammy]

7 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

There's the problem right there. What I want in a case probably wont work for you or @aisle9 or anyone else. How do you fit all the RGB in the world into a case where someone else doesn't want any of it, but might want a lot of drive bays and room for multiple GPUs? If we just talk about the front panel. I want no RGB. Mesh. Room for 2 140mm fans or 3 120mm fans. You might want one of those front panels that look like RGB going into the panel like the Inwin 805. How do you plan to make both of those work? Then how do we fit that all into a 1u server rack for people here that want them?

 

I think it would be a multi-step process for sure. First step would be to decide on a form factor, and begin there. This wouldn't be "take every person's idea" and implement it, but a process of narrowing down a case design that reflects ideas and concepts the community wants to see. I'm sure there'd be lots of polls and concepts thrown out there, it'd be up to me and everyone else here to determine what seems like the most fun and interesting. 

 

Obviously it's impossible to make something that's everything to everyone, but it is possible to make something appealing that fits a niche nothing else is fulfilling. 

[TVwazhere]

400mm fan. That's it. That's the whole case. 

[hammy]

4 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

400mm fan. That's it. That's the whole case. 

Let me hit you with this one...

 

Two 400mm fans...

[TVwazhere]

Just now, hammy said:

Let me hit you with this one...

 

Two 400mm fans...

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Itd end up being a case similar to a meshify c if I had to guess, but like tiny for only itx/dtx boards, and have a glass side.

And also having built in cable routing

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

And also having built in cable routing

I started thinking Seasonic Syncro route. How nice would it be to have that set up in something like a Lian Li o11. PSU in the back, "syncro" acts as a pass through on the top/right side of motherboard and then short little extension cables. 

[Chris Pratt]

A zebra is a horse designed by committee. You're thinking the community could design some super case that would be the best at everything, but what would really happen is that it would end up as a hodge-podge of things stripped from other cases on the market, good at nothing in particular, and reviled by as many as liked it.

 

As just one example, I don't really care for RGB, like clean minimalism,  and care almost exclusively about airflow. There is at least one person out there that has the exact opposite sensibilities as me, and would hate my case with a burning passion.

 

Best to leave this to the existing market. There's already fantastic cases out there than span the entire spectrum of things people like.

[tkitch]

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

I'm gonna design a case where the side panels are just a pair of Box Fans, and the rest of the internals are suspended between them!

[Middcore]

There are many good cases available already and no reason to think that the LTT community would be capable of designing one that was superior to them, even if some kind of consensus could be achieved. 

[ryo0hki]

MMmm m Steampunk LTT build.

[thrasher_565]

[thrasher_565]

5 hours ago, hammy said:

Let me hit you with this one...

 

Two 400mm fans...

old school been done

 

[thrasher_565]

6 hours ago, IkeaGnome said:

There's the problem right there. What I want in a case probably wont work for you or @aisle9 or anyone else. How do you fit all the RGB in the world into a case where someone else doesn't want any of it, but might want a lot of drive bays and room for multiple GPUs? If we just talk about the front panel. I want no RGB. Mesh. Room for 2 140mm fans or 3 120mm fans. You might want one of those front panels that look like RGB going into the panel like the Inwin 805. How do you plan to make both of those work? Then how do we fit that all into a 1u server rack for people here that want them?

intake from bottem to top for mb and gpu up front

 

what about rads...easy pedestal

 

ill have to work on one with multi gpus thow...

[thrasher_565]

hold on i see some flaws...

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by thrasher_565

[thrasher_565]

[thrasher_565]

that gets you a solid front. rotatable mb tray

 

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by thrasher_565