Hey everyone,
we are finally ready to share some more information about our SFF case concept.
When we first posted our ATX enclosure design on Reddit, many of you suggested we should also look into small form factor cases. And so we did.
Our initial attempt at designing a sub 20L case was to simply scale down our ATX design and apply it to different popular layouts, such as side-by-side (sandwich) and traditional with the PSU in the front. However, this created more problems than it solved (the fillets on the vertical corners of the case made it larger than it had to be, the wood panel placed on the top part of the case restricted airflow too much, etc.).
So, we went back to the drawing board and decided to design from the inside out. We picked the component layout that we preferred the most: traditional with SFX PSU in the front and either standard air cooling via tower coolers or water cooling via an AIO on the side. Then, since our goal has always been to cram as much performance into our case as possible, we scaled it up to allow for up to 165mm tall air coolers or a 280mm AIO. This means that our concept is on the larger side of the standard SFF case market (at 18.6L it's just shy of the 20L limit), but this way it has some serious performance potential and lots of flexibility when it comes to component sizes. When it came to the exterior design we had realized by then that we could take our ATX design and basically just tilt it forward by 90 degrees and then take inspiration from popular eGPU enclosures and have the inner chassis slide into the exterior shell.
Then came the refinement phase. We tweaked the details, tested different feet designs, and worked on the front I/O selection and placement. Eventually, we landed on this:
