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

illram While you are right in many of your points, Dan has to think about the future (I'm sure he does). Thanks to those in this thread who understand and supported Dan; Those who took part on the evolution of the case, who realize that the price is reasonable understanding the reasons, the concept and the work put to this product, others will benefit even if they don't understand and don't appreciate the effort put into it.

After the successful campaign, Dan's case could go to the production line, making it cheaper for other type of users who won't care about anything happening on this thread of a limited privileged customers who had the amazing opportunity to take part of this project. So, what prava said is true for them.
 
Prava had really good constructive points made, but I still think that the average PC Builder will find the Ncase M1 to be more attractive due to more storage and cooling options especially having the option to watercool at an already small size to the grand majority of PC builders. I think that highlighting how long it took you, the fact that you are the sole project owner that took in the feedback of the hardcore SFF community while not sacrificing your original vision of this case, the partnership with Lian Li and 3M, as well as size comparisons to Ncase M1 (pictures and numbers) are the main marketing suggestions.
 
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.
Dondan, I helped Necere and W360 a little with their marketing for NCASE M1 a couple years ago (time flies). If you need assistance, I would happily offer my time.

Also I backed the Kickstarter for one black case. ;)

EDIT: Hopefully Linus' video on the case will clear up a lot of questions for folks who aren't SFF enthusiasts and who haven't followed the production of this case from beginning to end.

If Linus doesn't go into the limitations of the case, then someone else really ought to.
 
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I gotta agree with prava on all counts. This coming as a follower of this thread for years and a day one KS backer.

All my computers have been SFF systems, starting with Shuttle boxes. I've always lusted after Lian Li cases, particularly the PC-Q01B, because of the alu construction, but not the layout. Part of the appeal of SFF building is that you're constrained, but can still pack a lot of punch. The A4 nails this all because it's got a unique layout due to the riser cable.

You gotta get some comparison shots of it with other typical cases, otherwise no one will really appreciate it unless they've been building SFF systems like us.

I whipped up some comparisons in Solidworks:
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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.

Mmmm you are mixing things here. The A4 was(is) a success because the product is good on itself and has been announced back and forth on the forums were people with such needs, taste and budget spend their time. My point being: the campaign on KS being as bad as it is didn't have such an impact because the case was probably already sold out before you announced it anyway. But since you have the opportunity on KS to market your product... I suggest that, next time, you brainstorm a little or find somebody who does marketing to help you out a bit. For starters, you need to be clear on the main selling points and put them on top. If the product has any major drawback (in this case, price) you should explain it at the very beginning.

You need to understand that time is money here, and you will have the attention of many people a few seconds... so you better be brief if you want to cause a good impression that makes potential consumers go into the full website and read everything. For the record, everybody does the same. You get a quick overall look at something then decide if its worth your time. If it is, you keep digging... if it ain't, you drop it off. Of course everybody has preconceived ideas that might alter this in some way but, in the end, everybody is willing to listen for 5 seconds.

Regarding the second outlined text... that is plainly an excuse. Again, you shouldn't be afraid of properly explaining the shortcomings and drawbacks of your design. For what I see, anyway, It doesn't look to be a terribly difficult computer to assemble. Yes, the list of things that work is terribly short... but that isn't something very hard to explain.


What I wouldn't do is make such wonderful statements:

Every component is able to cool itself by getting fresh air directly from the outside. Hot air in the case will move to the top and then outside without the need of an extra fan. This principle works perfectly and results in an amazing cooling efficiency compared to other cases.

Specially since they aren't true or they are too broad to mean anything. Once the case gets saturated with heat (and it will with many, many setups) temperatures will rapidly spike.

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.

I would never recommend open air coolers in this case. You will saturate the case with heat and will make it into an oven. This is specially true because the case has no active cooling of sorts... so it relies on convection in order to refresh the air inside. I would stay with blowers-only.

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.

Important information shouldn't be hidden away. Also, it is normal that people have very short attention span. We are targeted by online content thousands of times a day. We would only check for garbage we don't care for if we didn't scan and drop stuff quickly.

--

For the record, I'm very happy that the crowdfunding was a success even if the product isn't for me. Just trying to point out that marketing is very important if you plan to sell anything. And having a wall of text and a few pictures isn't marketing.
 
I love Paul and Kyle, but they got SO MUCH wrong. It's okay if it's their first time seeing the case, but they could have at least read a bit of the information on the page, or used their brains a little before they started talking. And they're clearly not up to speed on the SFF world, I mean they do mostly huge watercooled systems so it's not their niche, but it's such a huge booming sector right now, they really have to get caught up. Any SFF-savvy person would immediately look at the volume of the case, then look at the clearances/compatibility and then proceed with conclusions from there.

Dan, maybe it would be a good idea for the future to replace that stock cooler gallery with one featuring the C7, and while you're at it put the biggest graphics card that can fit, just to showcase the biggest components the case can fit.
 
This is specially true because the case has no active cooling of sorts... so it relies on convection in order to refresh the air inside. I would stay with blowers-only.
In this case, the active cooling fans ARE the CPU and GPU fans because they're situated at the case holes, so they force air into the case with air pressure. The elevated air pressure in the case causes the now-warmer air inside the case to be forced out in all directions. It has nothing to do with convections.
 
- 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?

"Unless you want a case much smaller for some reason" - that is the main reason you would want this case, and the main reason over 1000 people have bought it. That's essentially the point of the case. It makes very little sense to buy it otherwise. The case is OPTIMIZED for size, NOT versatility. the M1 is optimized for versatility. This is why we have different products in a free market, so you can pick the one that you prefer/need. Should Dan have done a better job promoting the case's size in his marketing? Yes. Has he done an awful job? I don't think so. It's pretty easy for people looking for a tiny case to find the A4-SFX. But it could be easier for people not knowing they want a tiny case yet to be persuaded by marketing. Having a better gallery with more comparison images would certainly help. A better website in general would certainly help. But all in due time. Dan is one guy who tried to get a project funded through Kickstarter and guess what -- it was funded several times over. I call that a success. For the next batch, there are certainly areas of improvement we can talk about, marketing being one. I'm also willing to volunteer my time to help with those efforts, I already did with proofreading for Dan.

Speaking of marketing, here's a point I haven't seen anyone make that I think makes a lot of sense for the future:

Accessibility should be emphasized in marketing, alongside with size. SFF cases often sacrifice accessibility for size - look at the SilverStone SG13 or the NCase M1. Both great cases at their price points. But to achieve their small sizes, things are crammed and difficult to access. With the A4-SFX, all 3 components are at your fingertips. So it's not only compact, it's very practical. And it showcases your components better. The GPU looks much better oriented this way. In fact, some kind of vented acrylic + hinged panels would make this case an absolute aesthetic and practical monster, although I realize that's sci-fi at this stage.
 
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I love Paul and Kyle, but they got SO MUCH wrong. It's okay if it's their first time seeing the case, but they could have at least read a bit of the information on the page, or used their brains a little before they started talking. And they're clearly not up to speed on the SFF world, I mean they do mostly huge watercooled systems so it's not their niche, but it's such a huge booming sector right now, they really have to get caught up. Any SFF-savvy person would immediately look at the volume of the case, then look at the clearances/compatibility and then proceed with conclusions from there.
Yeah it was really unprofessional and they were clearly unprepared to talk about it at all.
 
I think prava's advice is not applicable for THIS campaign.
Whether it was intentional or not on Dan's part, the KS campaign attracted only ones who know what they needed in that case.

Like someone said, a broader audience would bring people who will not be satisfied with this case, thus have negative views on Dan & the company. In a way, a smaller, more focused audience is better for something as new and compromising as this case.
This focused group will give better feedback of 1st batch/version, thus better in the long run for Dan's image. It will also be less stressful for Dan and he would then be able to concentrate on the next step instead of dealing with customers queries and complaints.

BUT when dan is ready for a full run, ready to handle a Large customer base (with lots of questions and complaints), prava's advice are all excellent points.
 
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jjsyht The thing is, the campaign is almost finished and it was already successful for users like you and I. But Youtube videos and any marketing from now on will be with views to the future and not with views to the kickstarter campaign, that's why prava is right.

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In this case, the active cooling fans ARE the CPU and GPU fans because they're situated at the case holes, so they force air into the case with air pressure. The elevated air pressure in the case causes the now-warmer air inside the case to be forced out in all directions. It has nothing to do with convections.

Not really. The cpu fan won't completely work as an intake: that would only happen if it was touching the side panel. If it isn't it will take air from whatever has less restriction, which means that it will probably be air from inside the case. The gpu... well, if it is a blower card, then the card will feed itself... but won't offer any sort of airflow to the rest of the case. And if isn't a blower... then it will depend on the cards ability to evacuate the air outside.

That is true , however you could consider that the marketing has been done through the forums, directly to the targeted audience, and the Kickstarter was/is just a tool used to collect the necessary fund

I only wrote what I wrote in response to the comments against the youtube commenters. Based solely on the KS campaign their comments are spot on.

I think prava's advice is not applicable for THIS campaign.
Whether it was intentional or not on Dan's part, the KS campaign attracted only ones who know what they needed in that case.

Like someone said, a broader audience would bring people who will not be satisfied with this case, thus have negative views on Dan & the company. In a way, a smaller, more focused audience is better for something as new and compromising as this case.
This focused group will give better feedback of 1st batch/version, thus better in the long run for Dan's image. It will also be less stressful for Dan and he would then be able to concentrate on the next step instead of dealing with customers queries and complaints.

BUT when dan is ready for a full run, ready to handle a Large customer base (with lots of questions and complaints), prava's advice are all excellent points.

Why would you claim such thing? IMO, it isn't that hard to know what you are getting into. If you have the money and the case aesthetics makes it into your brain... what there is not to understand about the case? It isn't like you need very expensive tools or technical knowledge to mount it... you only need to understand what components the sheer dimensions of the case forces you to use.
 
Not really. The cpu fan won't completely work as an intake: that would only happen if it was touching the side panel. If it isn't it will take air from whatever has less restriction, which means that it will probably be air from inside the case. The gpu... well, if it is a blower card, then the card will feed itself... but won't offer any sort of airflow to the rest of the case. And if isn't a blower... then it will depend on the cards ability to evacuate the air outside.

Dondan tested the temps already and they look good. There will be no space in the case for warm air to sit and recirculate. Go back and read up on Dondan's testing. You'll find that what you're saying is not true. The fans will be located up against the vents, directly blowing air out of the case. The space between the fans and the interior of the case comes down to only milometers worth of space.

And related to marketing this case, Dondan did a fine job. His customer audience wasn't the general audience or even YouTubers. His audience was people who wanted to build an sffpc and have the resources to start the manufacturing of this case. Once he's able to get a deal for cheaper cases in mass production, then he can cater the marketing to the average Joe. This project was more of an inside, personal project. Now that Dondan has traction he can focus marketing to people who don't know what this case is about.
 
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I swear I'm tempted to buy one and build a second rig that I don't need lol. It's a damn shame it doesn't have enough room for 3.5" drives. I have no problem downsizing the cooler and running at stock clocks but I can't give up the 8tb's of storage my two drives give me.
 
I swear I'm tempted to buy one and build a second rig that I don't need lol. It's a damn shame it doesn't have enough room for 3.5" drives. I have no problem downsizing the cooler and running at stock clocks but I can't give up the 8tb's of storage my two drives give me.

Get this enclosure or something similar. Yes, it's external, but you can still set it up to use only one power cable. Just snip the DC connectors off the wall warts and wire them to the computer PSU.
 
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I swear I'm tempted to buy one and build a second rig that I don't need lol. It's a damn shame it doesn't have enough room for 3.5" drives. I have no problem downsizing the cooler and running at stock clocks but I can't give up the 8tb's of storage my two drives give me.
If you want 8tb of space you can get 2*4gb 2.5" drives as per the link below and install them below a SFX (not sfx-l) PSU. Other possibilities are running your 3.5"s in a external NAS or external enclosure of some sort.
Amazon.com: Samsung Momentus 4TB SATA III 5400 RPM 2.5-inch Hard Drive (ST4000LM016 ): Computers & Accessories
 
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shinjinian I'm buying 2TB 7200RPM 2.5'' HDD I've seen enterprise editions on ebay :D

If you want 8tb of space you can get 2*4gb 2.5" drives as per the link below and install them below a SFX (not sfx-l) PSU. Other possibilities are running your 3.5"s in a external NAS or external enclosure of some sort.
Amazon.com: Samsung Momentus 4TB SATA III 5400 RPM 2.5-inch Hard Drive (ST4000LM016 ): Computers & Accessories

Be careful with these. Some bigger 2.5" drives are twice as thick as normal 2.5" drives. I don't know if the A4 supports 15mm drives, it might only support 7mm drives.
 
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If you want 8tb of space you can get 2*4gb 2.5" drives as per the link below and install them below a SFX (not sfx-l) PSU. Other possibilities are running your 3.5"s in a external NAS or external enclosure of some sort.
Amazon.com: Samsung Momentus 4TB SATA III 5400 RPM 2.5-inch Hard Drive (ST4000LM016 ): Computers & Accessories
Holy smokes. They made 4tb in a 2.5" drove happen a lot sooner then expected. That might be an option of two of them will fit in the A4
 
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Be careful with these. Some bigger 2.5" drives are twice as thick as normal 2.5" drives. I don't know if the A4 supports 15mm drives, it might only support 7mm drives.
The bottom bracket supports 15mm, total space between an SFX PSU, cables taken into account, and the bottom of the case is 39mm according to Dondan, so two 15mm drives should fit. The front allows for another 2TB HDD or SSD.
 
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The HDD I mentioned is my choice because (though expensive) is the maximum capacity I've found for 2.5'' 7200 RPM, the height according to the official site is 15mm.
 
Dan,

Why will the MSI 1080 X not fit, but you say the MSI ARMOR OC will?

Their connectors are in the same position and they are the same width???

Thanks,
 
Well it looks like the case may now be a little cheaper for some people depending where they live. Hopefully the EURO strengthens before you have to pay for the major expenses.

It might pay to send a reminder email over the weekend to point out that there are only a few days left to order via kickstarter.
 
Sorry if it's been asked before, but when does kickstarter ask us about shipping adress and stuff??? Will it be before of after the payment on the 28th???
 
You will get the Kickstarter Mail with shippment details after the campaign ends. :)
 
Yes, there are loads of boards with one M.2 M-Key and one B-Key, but I guess you want two M-Keys with PCIe x4 for storage, right? In that case, no and probably no. While there is physical space for the slot, the traces for the signals have to be placed as well, and you can't really place the slot underneath the CPU socket, PCIe slot, rear I/O or RAM slots, so actually there's not that much space. If you wanted to make it happen, you'd have to move the CPU socket very close to the back or the front of the board, which limits heatsink compatibility and the board would probably also need a few more layers, which makes it even more expensive.

I think manufacturers just see this as too much effort for too little payoff. Heck, apparently most of them don't even care about implementing Thunderbolt, and the user-group for that is arguably larger than for double M.2 SSDs.

I was doing more research today and thinking about this. Z170 CPUs can use up to 16 PCIe lanes. So if you run a graphics card and an M.2 drive, your GPU will run at 8x and your M.2 at 4x, and if the board only has 1 M.2 slot there will be no way to utilize the remaining 4x. Seems wasteful. The ASRock X99 ITX board is even more wasteful in that regard as X99 CPUs support 28-40 PCIe lanes. It's clearly a limitation of the form factor, though M.2 is essentially a miniturized PCIe 4x slot that can be placed anywhere, so there should be a way with super clever engineering to put 2 of them on an ITX board. Up until NVMe this wasn't really much of limitation for ITX/people who never intended to run more than 1 GPU since nowadays nothing really gets put in PCIe slots other than graphics cards. At most a sound card, but an external DAC is better for that anyway. But now with the rise of NVMe, PCIe lanes are becoming relevant again. NVMe storage is the most expensive yet most limited by number of connections and that's not a good combination. I'd like to be able to get a 512GB M.2 drive and then maybe another one when the price drops. I can put them in RAID too for unbelievable performance. But ITX boards (and many ATX boards) don't allow for that. In the meantime, they feature at minimum 4 SATA ports, none of which I intend to use, and at least half which almost no one will use. Let's hope with the upcoming PCIe Gen4 and increasing demand for NVMe, they relocate some of the PCIe lanes dedicated to the chipset to NVMe storage. Anyway... /rant
 
You're correct that skylake CPUs offer 16 PCIe lanes, however they all will be available to the graphics card in most cases. On all current Z170 ITX board the m.2 PCIe x4 is connected to the chipset, which can offer an additional 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes on Z170, albeit with higher latency and lower connection speed to the CPU.
 
You're correct that skylake CPUs offer 16 PCIe lanes, however they all will be available to the graphics card in most cases. On all current Z170 ITX board the m.2 PCIe x4 is connected to the chipset, which can offer an additional 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes on Z170, albeit with higher latency and lower connection speed to the CPU.

Ohh really? This stuff always confuses me. But isn't the Z170 connection to the CPU limited to PCIe x4 bandwidth? It has 20 lanes, but can only interface with the CPU at 4-lane bandwidth? So If I have 2 4x M.2 drives connected to the chipset, then I can expect bottlenecking if I also connect SATA and USB 3.0 stuff? Or if M.2 drives start to get significantly faster, that 4x connection split between two of them + all the I/O will quickly run out. Ah, that's really false advertising, so an M.2 doesn't really have dedicated access to x4, and if you have 2 they are essentially x2 in RAID and even less if you use lots of I/O. Especially for ITX boards this doesn't make much sense as x8 is plenty for a GPU, tho I am talking all sorts of hypotheticals here. Either way, I still want 2 M.2 slots on ITX boards haha.
 
Honestly if you want more pcie lanes then the mainstream processor line isn't the way to got. An x99 board would be ideal though, imagine a mini itx x99 board with 4 m.2 connectors on the back running at full x4 bandwidth.
 
Honestly if you want more pcie lanes then the mainstream processor line isn't the way to got. An x99 board would be ideal though, imagine a mini itx x99 board with 4 m.2 connectors on the back running at full x4 bandwidth.

I have imagined it many times... In my dreams it also has dual Thunderbolt 3.
 
So , in theory, one could get a mITX board that supports PCI bifurcation, use some sort of dual slot PCIe riser cable & have the GPU in one slot and a PCIe AIC (add-in-card) with dual M.2 slots on it in the other…?!?
 
So , in theory, one could get a mITX board that supports PCI bifurcation, use some sort of dual slot PCIe riser cable & have the GPU in one slot and a PCIe AIC (add-in-card) with dual M.2 slots on it in the other…?!?

Check my post in PCIE Bifurcation for M.2 carrier cards with PCIe switches.
 
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