DAN A4-SFX: The smallest gaming case in the world

dondan said:
Because I read very often about the topic overclocking (oc) in the thread here are my thoughts about it:

In the past oc was a hobby of mine. It was a time where oc make sense, because you could get a real performance boost. The last real generation where oc make sense was Sandy-Bridge. For example I had a real good batch of an 2500k that I oc with a big water cooling solution from 3,3Ghz to 5 Ghz. All verified with a 2h Prime95 run. This was a performance boost of 1,7Ghz on all four cores and it was 100% stable.

But today CPUs does not have the same oc capacities as in the past. For example a 6700K comes with an maximum boost of 4.2 Ghz. So with a big water cooling solution and a good batch you can reach 4.8 Ghz stable. A boot of only 600 Mhz.
In a time where resolutions like 2.5K or 4K become more and more normal more CPU power is worthless without SLI, because in the most games you will run into the GPU limit and not the CPU limit. Only SLI will get an performance boost of oc.

We have two different types of oc user. The first group have the goal to break records with their oc so they are using crazy cooling technologies like LN2 to cool the system. The second group do it with the goal to have stable oc for daily usage and to have more power as currently available. The most important thing for using oc in daily usage is that it is stable. So you have to verify that your CPU is stable with stress test tools.

E.g. the 6700k comes with 4Ghz, a Turbo of 4.2Ghz and a TDP of 95W. With the Cryorig C7 the best cooler for the A4-SFX you will have a max temp of 70-80°C running Prime95. If you now increase the voltage and push the CPU to 4.3-4.5Ghz you will easily reach temperatures of 80-95°C in Prime95. I know in games the temperatures will be 10-20°C lower, but all in all you will have much higher temps with oc, that reduce the lifetime of you components for 1-3 more FPS and only 100-300Mhz more and a fan on 100% speed.

So if oc is your hobby, you know what you do and you do it for the fun and not for 3% more FPS maybe removing the heatspreader of your Skylake CPU can give you the temp buffer to do it. But for all the other guys, I recommend to buy a normal 6700 that have a TDP of 65W. You will save money, get a more silent system, lower temps in all and you will nearly have the same performance.
Click to expand...

I agree with you 110%. Overclocking for game performance is fruitless.

I want to add that you can get a REAL performance boost by buying an i7 instead of an i5. You get 2x more threads. Up to 100% more multithreaded performance. It's a significant benefit in many circumstances. Many apps aren't multithreaded, but many are. And more will be multithreaded in the future, because the game consoles require good multithreading, and DX12/vulkan enable developers to do more multithreading.

The best you can do in this case is an i7-6700 -- It is faster than a socket 2011 HEDT chip, it is cheaper than a 6700k, and it will be VERY quiet with a cryorig C7. Games should not make this CPU fan loud. Only encoding video and running stress tests will!
 
The only reason Overclocking CPUs is important is that for emulation (or older games) you're normally restricted by single-threaded performance and any AVX instructions that your chip supports. In some cases upgrading your CPU will yield more FPS than putting a high end GPU (pcsx2 and bsnes are the prime examples of this). You need 4Ghz+ for some games like SOTC.

For newer games it'll be how many threads you have.

Hence why I'd wait for Cannonlake to take advantage of AVX512.
 
Aircoookie said:
Sorry, but IMO a hypothetical A4XL defeats the purpose. You just get room for a bigger CPU cooler or maybe a short ATX PSU or even 3.5" bays, but it would not be the "Smallest gaming case" Dan wanted to create. While you're at it, why don't add 4cm? You could then mount the GPU in the classical way and omit the riser... This is the best way to turn a great project into a 10L-ish mainstream case with a premium price. Just my $0.02
Click to expand...

I am a kickstarter backer, but from how I see it there is no way to get the case reasonably smaller than it is now while still fitting a full-sized graphics card. So the next solution would either to build case that can only fit 7" or smaller graphics cards,, single-slot graphics cards, OR make an ever slightly bigger case that is still smaller than any other mITX besides the A4-SFX but allows for better cooling on the CPU side. Since his case is already the smallest case that can utilize full-sized components, if he is going to follow it up with a second case to sell along side, I think the next logical solution would be to increase capacity by the minimal amount needed to introduce a noticeably wider range of cooling options on the CPU side all while still being noticeably smaller than the RVZ01, ML-08, Fractal Node 304, etc.

To each his own, and Dan will definitely do what he feels best insofar as if/when/what future products come, but that is my lone opinion. Till then, I'll be a happy A4-SFX owner.
 
tviceman said:
I am a kickstarter backer, but from how I see it there is no way to get the case reasonably smaller than it is now while still fitting a full-sized graphics card. So the next solution would either to build case that can only fit 7" or smaller graphics cards,, single-slot graphics cards, OR make an ever slightly bigger case that is still smaller than any other mITX besides the A4-SFX but allows for better cooling on the CPU side. Since his case is already the smallest case that can utilize full-sized components, if he is going to follow it up with a second case to sell along side, I think the next logical solution would be to increase capacity by the minimal amount needed to introduce a noticeably wider range of cooling options on the CPU side all while still being noticeably smaller than the RVZ01, ML-08, Fractal Node 304, etc.

To each his own, and Dan will definitely do what he feels best insofar as if/when/what future products come, but that is my lone opinion. Till then, I'll be a happy A4-SFX owner.
Click to expand...

Because of the current layout, it will not be possible to make a shorter version. Maybe it is possible rotate the PSU, but otherwise the length of the card is the length or motherboard plus PSU. Rotating the PSU 90 degrees (clockwise looking at the top of the case) might allow making the case 30mm shorter or so, and would restrict the GPU size to a little under 7 inches. The PSU might not fit in this orientation so it may be necessary to rotate again, but SFX-L probably won't fit.

An ever slightly bigger case for better CPU cooling is a great idea. That's why I suggested the addition of a side panel option that is 10mm thick (hollow of course) which would be the same thing as having the case 10mm thicker in the first place. The reason I suggest upgradeable side panels instead of a whole new case is it's probably much cheaper to manufacture plus it's much easier to upgrade. Just take off the current side panel and pop the new one on and now you can fit a 57mm cooler! This might also present a way to support watercooling for CPU and GPU, and it could also allow for more hard drives.


Maybe A4v2 can be single slot (I think the best single slot GPU is the ELSA 750Ti SP) with an optional side panel to make it dual or even triple slot, and another extra side panel to allow for bigger CPU coolers. But being single slot with a modified PSU orientation (If it even fits) would probably only make the unit 1L smaller, is that worth it?
 
Just an update,

I returned my MSI 1080 X. It is a really wide card, so wide in fact that it can't even fit my Cougar QBX case... The PCB sticks out the case, not to mention that the connectors are then outside the case! So scrap that idea. Ordered the EVGA SC.
 
rude said:
Just an update,

I returned my MSI 1080 X. It is a really wide card, so wide in fact that it can't even fit my Cougar QBX case... The PCB sticks out the case, not to mention that the connectors are then outside the case! So scrap that idea. Ordered the EVGA SC.
Click to expand...

wow, dan's case is smaller yet has more space! to my eyes, it looks like DAN A4-SFX supports almost an inch wider video card than cougar QBX:

dan: http://abload.de/img/8rwsvp.jpg
cougar: http://www.pcgameware.co.uk/images/Cougar-QBX-back.jpg
 
kyle and paul look at the case on KS. starts at 8:10ish


edit: they seem a little unsure about it but I think that will change when people get their hands on one.
 
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pendragon1 said:
kyle and paul look at the case on KS. starts at 8:10ish
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I don't think they realize quite how little space there is on the motherboard side for an AIO. The pump/block alone on the lowest profile AIOs are around 28mm tall, leaving only 20mm for a rad and fan in the 48mm height clearance that's available. No way it would ever fit that way.
 
I took a look into that video and I can only say, wow
they have no idea what they are talking about. It looks like they did 1 minutes of research on my project.


- They don't understand why this case is more expansive than other ones
- They don’t see that this case is much smaller than any other case on the market
- They don't see that I worked together with LianLi and 3M two professional and huge companies.
- They think this case is bad because you could not mount a water cooling solution


Currently Linus Tech Tips is working on a Review of the A4-SFX. Let's see what he will say about it.
 
dondan said:
I took a look into that video and I can only say, wow
they have no idea what they are talking about. It looks like they did 1 minutes of research on my project.


- They don't understand why this case is more expansive than other ones
- They don’t see that this case is much smaller than any other case on the market
- They don't see that I worked together with LianLi and 3M two professional and huge companies.
- They think this case is bad because you could not mount a water cooling solution


Currently Linus Tech Tips is working on a Review of the A4-SFX. Let's see what he will say about it.
Click to expand...

Agreed. These tools really have no idea what they are talking about. If they bothered to look at any of the specs they could see right away that it's smaller than the M1 and if they had bothered to watch your video or read the campaign they would see why the cost is what it is. Just wow.

Here's hoping Linus is a bit more thorough.
 
I guess any coverage is good coverage. (lmao @ € vs £...)
I think when someone get interested after watching this video, he/she will easily get the proper info from reading the Kickstarter campaign (doesn't look like they did so throughly) or does a bit of googling.
 
I posted a link to this thread in their comments hopefully they will look into it further. Don't be discouraged though it wasn't all bad and its free press!
And I still say i could water cool in it with an external psu...

Edit: Kyle is goofy pretty much all the time but Paul is usually more serious. They do do good work/vid though if you haven't seen their stuff before. And this segment when they get together is usually pretty lose and sloppy. Watch last week's to see what I mean. They try to have fun.
 
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pendragon1 said:
ever see channelsuperfun?! Or their scrap yard wars?
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IMO those are a product of his large audience, plus they're probably just fun to do. Especially the superfun stuff.
Linus is a fan of SFF, so I've got reasonably high hopes.
 
Yes, but it is likely that there will be a second production run sometimes because the KS is (practically) sold out.
 
Well, to be honest. This case is very small. And that's about it. If you're looking for an expandable case with lots of options, this just isn't for you. And yes, the 80,- riser cable does jack up the price quite a bit but hey, otherwise we'd just be getting an Ncase minus 2pcie slots.
 
Necere said:
I don't think they realize quite how little space there is on the motherboard side for an AIO. The pump/block alone on the lowest profile AIOs are around 28mm tall, leaving only 20mm for a rad and fan in the 48mm height clearance that's available. No way it would ever fit that way.
Click to expand...

But that isn't their fault, or is it? When you launch such a niche product in such a generalist website as KS you gotta word your product very wisely. Their pov is that of what a typical person without prior knowledge would have when opening the site by mistake, or simply because he was curious. Normal people do not know how much space has a typical ATX case has (in volume). Nor they do care. Heck I knew exactly how big my M1 was by dimensions yet still I couldn't believe how small it was once I opened the box.

dondan said:
I took a look into that video and I can only say, wow
they have no idea what they are talking about. It looks like they did 1 minutes of research on my project.


- They don't understand why this case is more expansive than other ones
- They don’t see that this case is much smaller than any other case on the market
- They don't see that I worked together with LianLi and 3M two professional and huge companies.
- They think this case is bad because you could not mount a water cooling solution


Currently Linus Tech Tips is working on a Review of the A4-SFX. Let's see what he will say about it.
Click to expand...

- They don't understand why this case is more expensive than other ones because you don't explain it yourself. They compare it against the M1 and say the latter is much better value because... it is. Unless you want a case much smaller for some reason. But you need to admit the reality here. Footprint isn't much smaller than an M1 (M1 having around 35% more footprint). Quality is the same. But your case features close to nothing. So unless a user wants exactly that set of features... it isn't a flexible case. Do you think it isn't legit for people to question a 230€ case from an unknown designer and an unknown manufacturer at such small size and little features?

- They don’t see that this case is much smaller than any other case on the market because you don't show proper examples. I only realised how small my SFX psu was after I put it on top of my ATX one. People's mind works in relatives. If you show no background it is impossible to appreciate size.

Tell me, how small is an SFX supply if I show you this?

ST45SF-3-4-VIEW.jpg


How about this, then?

wF9ycjD.jpg


- They don't see that I worked together with LianLi and 3M two professional and huge companies because you only mention it at the very bottom. Case manufacturer should be on the first line, just like the NCASE team did. It is a main selling point.

- They think this case is bad because you could not mount a water cooling solution. Nope, they think it is too expensive for the things they think they get. And they think they get less than they actually get because you didn't market it properly.


IMO, you need to re-think how do you market your stuff... because you did a pretty terrible job with the A4. Why?

a) You don't announce your biggest selling points. Those being SUPER UBER SMALL, ALL ALU, LIAN LI QUALITY. Everybody recognises Lian Li and all alu as quality standards. For the size... you have to show proper examples.

b) You don't show proper comparison of how small your case is. You should at least have included pictures against typical mass-market mITX cases so that people get an idea of how very small this thing is.

All in all, the way you have designed the KS it is only interesting to those that were interested in the first place, those that knew the product before you started the campaign. To those you didn't even need to write a single word. Instead, there is a lot of gibberish on the kickstarter but the useful information isn't present. That you worked hand by hand with 3M and Lian Li should be mentioned on the first paragraph. Such statements means that: a) your unknown company might have a real background b) the case has no quality compromises.

The comments in such video are totally legit and reasonable for those people not having profound knowledge on the thing itself. Which they don't need to have in order to speak about it.


Necere said:
It's all too typical, unfortunately. You'd think if you're going to talk about something for ten minutes in front of an audience, the least you could do is take ten minutes to read up on it and inform yourself a tiny bit about it first.
Click to expand...

Not really. Many youtubers just speak spontaneously about whatever is in their minds. It's is precisely part of why many youtubers have such a big following. In any case, the KS page isn't properly done, which is why the youtubers got such an impression.

You guys did a much, much better job at capturing what the M1 was about. First thing your eyes see is precisely a size comparison (against nothing less than an internationally recognised can of Coke) and then a MANUFACTURED BY LIAN LI. Bam. You got everybodies attention to read the fine print because your main selling points are just there, in plain sight: uber small and top quality.
 
Followed the discussion here closely. Had some time on my hand so i did a few quick size comparisons to the NCASE and an iPhone 6 (non s) in orthographic and persepctive scale. Hope this helps a bit. dondan . you can use these freely if you like. Everyone else as well.

comp1.jpg comp2.jpg comp3.jpg comp4.jpg comp5.jpg comp6.jpg

Also, any way i could get a bill with seperate tax for a kickstarter pledge (i live in germany), so i can directly deduct it from my taxes?
 
prava: Thank you for your feedback. It looks like for future project I have to optimize my campaign in the point of marketing. Too bad that you don't offered you help in the progress of reviewing the campaign 5 weeks before.

But I think after 1570 sold A4-SFX Cases in the first run the campaign couldn't be as bad as you wrote.

By the way, sometimes it is better to not get every person directly buy that case since in the first sentence is written Lian Li, because you will get costumers that aren't familiar with computer hardware so that they are not able to buy and assembly the right components. In the end you will have a lot of trouble with these guys and maybe bad publicity. So it is better to have costumers that read the whole campaign and form their opinion. It is the same with the best price hunter.
 
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For measuring this case just pick a measuring rule (a ruler) and you know how small it is.

You just have the measures and the volumen, what more do you need to know how small it's the case.

By the way there are many comparison with another cases in this thread, but if people talk about this case without reading a single page of this thread..

And there are a video in the kickstarter and you can see how much smaller it is compared to a xbox controller.
 
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prava said:
But that isn't their fault, or is it? When you launch such a niche product in such a generalist website as KS you gotta word your product very wisely. Their pov is that of what a typical person without prior knowledge would have when opening the site by mistake, or simply because he was curious. Normal people do not know how much space has a typical ATX case has (in volume). Nor they do care. Heck I knew exactly how big my M1 was by dimensions yet still I couldn't believe how small it was once I opened the box.



- They don't understand why this case is more expensive than other ones because you don't explain it yourself. They compare it against the M1 and say the latter is much better value because... it is. Unless you want a case much smaller for some reason. But you need to admit the reality here. Footprint isn't much smaller than an M1 (M1 having around 35% more footprint). Quality is the same. But your case features close to nothing. So unless a user wants exactly that set of features... it isn't a flexible case. Do you think it isn't legit for people to question a 230€ case from an unknown designer and an unknown manufacturer at such small size and little features?

- They don’t see that this case is much smaller than any other case on the market because you don't show proper examples. I only realised how small my SFX psu was after I put it on top of my ATX one. People's mind works in relatives. If you show no background it is impossible to appreciate size.

Tell me, how small is an SFX supply if I show you this?

ST45SF-3-4-VIEW.jpg


How about this, then?

wF9ycjD.jpg


- They don't see that I worked together with LianLi and 3M two professional and huge companies because you only mention it at the very bottom. Case manufacturer should be on the first line, just like the NCASE team did. It is a main selling point.

- They think this case is bad because you could not mount a water cooling solution. Nope, they think it is too expensive for the things they think they get. And they think they get less than they actually get because you didn't market it properly.


IMO, you need to re-think how do you market your stuff... because you did a pretty terrible job with the A4. Why?

a) You don't announce your biggest selling points. Those being SUPER UBER SMALL, ALL ALU, LIAN LI QUALITY. Everybody recognises Lian Li and all alu as quality standards. For the size... you have to show proper examples.

b) You don't show proper comparison of how small your case is. You should at least have included pictures against typical mass-market mITX cases so that people get an idea of how very small this thing is.

All in all, the way you have designed the KS it is only interesting to those that were interested in the first place, those that knew the product before you started the campaign. To those you didn't even need to write a single word. Instead, there is a lot of gibberish on the kickstarter but the useful information isn't present. That you worked hand by hand with 3M and Lian Li should be mentioned on the first paragraph. Such statements means that: a) your unknown company might have a real background b) the case has no quality compromises.

The comments in such video are totally legit and reasonable for those people not having profound knowledge on the thing itself. Which they don't need to have in order to speak about it.




Not really. Many youtubers just speak spontaneously about whatever is in their minds. It's is precisely part of why many youtubers have such a big following. In any case, the KS page isn't properly done, which is why the youtubers got such an impression.

You guys did a much, much better job at capturing what the M1 was about. First thing your eyes see is precisely a size comparison (against nothing less than an internationally recognised can of Coke) and then a MANUFACTURED BY LIAN LI. Bam. You got everybodies attention to read the fine print because your main selling points are just there, in plain sight: uber small and top quality.
Click to expand...
There may not be a huge diff in footprint size between the ncase and a4 sfx, but in volume in is closer to a 75% diff (7.25L vs 12.6), which does make it somewhat more mobile.

Despite the native support for water cooling, one other benefits of the a4 sfx that you may have noticed people mention is the greater height allowance for graphics cards compared to the great majority of smaller cases, making taller cards usable (such as MSI gtx 1080 gaming, although this may depend on the power connectors used). Also due to the design where the gpu is in a different compartment getting air directly from outside the case, this allows open air coolers to work better than a number of other sff cases allowing for either less noise or a greater OC.
 
prava I'm with you with this:


''You have designed the KS it is only interesting to those that were interested in the first place, those that knew the product before you started the campaign. To those you didn't even need to write a single word. Instead, there is a lot of gibberish on the kickstarter but the useful information isn't present.''

Because Dan already convinced us (People who read HF) to buy the case via this thread, but there are a lot of potential customer out of this forum.

External people maybe has a lot of questions, because they don't read this forum as i said:

Why is this case so expensive. How small it is compared to another cases. Temperatures, is this case hot?

But i wouldn't say that the marketing of the KS it's a 100% disaster. Just need some tweaks.

Lian Li and 3M should be on top.
Picks of the Dan A4 SFX compared vs standart ATX vs mATX and vs ITX (Mass produced) + Final pic of the Dan A4 vs M1.
Temperatures showroom.

Because this case offer too much, but i know it because i follow this thread, it's the smallest one, with top quality materials, silent, cool, and you can add SFX psu's all ITX boards, full GPU's, 3 HDD / SSD.

But not all people know this.

Who need a flexible case? By the way, what's ''flexible'' with any ITX case you know that u need to select the hardware very carefully. For me A4 it's flexible being an ITX case with such small volume.

No need for dvd reader or external bays, and AIO aren't efficient money/perfomance vs air cooler.

People who buy ITX don't have AIO as a priority thing.

Final thing:

The KS is 95% sould out, that's good.

The good thing about this is that the project is going to be realized and guess why?

''A lot of people'' will build a Dan A4 SFX, the case will be good and all the backers are going to talk good about this case, that's perfect, because the feedback of the first runs will motivate others to buy this case. Because the opinion of 1.000 people who build this case is strong.
 
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dondan said:
I took a look into that video and I can only say, wow
they have no idea what they are talking about. It looks like they did 1 minutes of research on my project.
Click to expand...
Necere said:
I don't think they realize quite how little space there is
Click to expand...

DAN A4-SFX is the smallest gaming case, manufactured by the most expensive case company, using the most expensive PCI-E cable. It's so small that you literally cannot comprehend it, until you see it next to a coke can or the controller. I don't blame the common man for not understanding, because A4-SFX is beyond him.

I would like to see A4-SFX next to old gaming consoles. Nintendo or Super Nintendo. Or sitting on a magazine. There are many opportunities to show the scale!
 
prava My thoughts exactly. I've tried to explain that from a customer point of view and I was hardly criticized here.

I know how much work was put into this project, and I understand why it is more expensive than other cases, but it is normal that the regular customer thinks that way. And from a commercial point of view those who jump into new users just because they ask something that you already know and was already discussed, it doesn't help DAN to sell more cases. Some of you were waiting for 2 and 3 years, and appreciate Dan's work a lot, I can tell by reading your comments in this post. If you want to help and support Dan for what he's done, then be nice and take the time to explain as many times as needed to new comers, or just step aside if you don't want to. I might be new here but I was waiting as long and even longer than many here for something like this to be real. I've felt in love with the IN-WIN BQ-660 five years ago or more. Of course, the technology at that moment, and the size made it impossible for me to build the powerful mini PC I always wanted.

I was thinking for hours today going back and forth between the M1 and the A4, and finally I bought your case. Unfortunately I will be out for holidays for 4 months in October, so I won't have the case in my hands until after 6 months :(
 
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You can scroll down and see a GPU inside the system which should give you an idea of how tiny the case is. The video also shows it next to an XBOX controller, which again, should give you an idea of the small size. The title is also "The World's Smallest Gaming Tower Case". You can scroll down and see the price breakdown chart. You can scroll down and see the partners. Where is the "marketing" failure here? I think it's just people are lazy and don't want to read through an entire page to understand the project, which I can understand.

Just fix the page presentation to cater to the lazy. Most people look at something really quick and leave. I remember reading an article about Youtube videos, where if the video doesn't start playing in like 10 seconds, people leave. Or how a large percentage of people watch a 5 minute video for 30 seconds and then leave. People have developed a really short attention span for online content.

My suggestion, move all that stuff listed to the "About this project" section. That should be a nice little TLDR section rundown of the project for the lazy. It's much more important information to be viewed than a flashy Photoshop render.
 
I have a different take than prava. This case is a niche within a niche within a niche. (Mini-ITX-->USFF-->indie USFF kickstarter!) The kickstarter was primarily circulated among people interested in one or two or all of those niches, and among those people, the response to this case has been resoundingly positive. In other words among people who actually live in this space and buy things in this space and are knowledgeable about things in this space, the case was a tremendous success. In other words among people who know what the fuck they are talking about this case was a grandslam. I would be very pleased if I were dondan about that because we are a fairly picky bunch.

The "general public" of PC buyers and builders might not "get" it and so what? There is no water cooling, there are no big CPU coolers, there is no big time OC'ing going on in here. Those users need not apply, and they never will apply, so why bother trying to "explain" it to them. Who cares.If someone is hell bent on buying a pickup truck, good luck explaining to them that really, they should buy a Tesla.

This also goes to trying to explain the price. You can't explain it with just features. This is another thing that is just part of existing in the niche. Yes, the riser is expensive, yes, it's all aluminum...but that marketing explanation would not change the video review everyone is talking about here, because those features don't address the issue that this case is simply not for everyone. The 1300 or so people who get one (myself included) are all buying one knowing we are paying a first time user tax of sorts.

It's expensive in large part because it is a one man kickstarter show and it is unique. There is literally nothing else like this currently, except for MSI's inferior Nightblade or whatever that POS was called. And we are all paying a premium for this case now. It could very well be cheaper later, but goddammit I want it now! So for this first round, I am going to stare at the two beautiful A4's I ordered and part of my giddiness is definitely going to arise from knowing that hardly anyone else in the world has one of these masterpieces.

tl;dr: screw the haters! :)
 
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