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

Eh, think a window would be cool, but it would just make it super hot if you don't have a blower style card.
 
HopkinsTea said:
I'm a noob when it comes to modding - how could you go about this? Where would you be able to "laser cut" it and obtain panels? Thanks!
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Laser cutting isn't the only option. Many people use Dremels, or hacksaw and file, milling machine... There are a few guides online on some other forums for modding (ltt and overclock).
 
Yes, it'll be the start of the countdown.

sdfewfe said:
Just to be clear: This will be the start of the countdown to the start of the campaign, not the start of the campaign?
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dondan said:
Non EU costumers will not have to pay the VAT. But the procedure is very extensive for me so the reduced price is less than 19%. Also the saving will not be subtract from the case price it will be subtract from the shipping cost.

E.G.: Shipping to the US will normally 42€ but now it will be only 22€. The advantage of this is that I don't need special non EU tiers.

Everybody should get the chance to see that on sunday only 7 days are left to the campaign.
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Hold on your breath...
the countdown has begun. Only 7 days until the Kickstarter campaign will start.
The countdown will expire on the 29. May 18:00 German time and will unleash the link to the campaign.

Some calculations for some time zones:

29.05 24:00 Taiwan
29.05 18:00 Germany
29.05 17:00 UK
29.05 12:00 New York (US)
29.05 09:00 Los Angeles (US)
30.05 01:00 Japan
30.05 02:00 Australia


See the current state of the countdown on www.dan-cases.com.

countdowng9sid.jpg
 
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dondan said:
Hold on you breath...
the countdown has begun. Only 7 days until the Kickstarter campaign will start.
The countdown will expire on the 29. May 18:00 German time and will unleash the link to the campaign.

Some calculations for some time zones:

29.05 24:00 Taiwan
29.05 18:00 Germany
29.05 17:00 UK
29.05 12:00 New York (US)
29.05 09:00 Los Angeles (US)
30.05 01:00 Japan
30.05 02:00 Australia


See the current state of the countdown on www.dan-cases.com.

countdowng9sid.jpg
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Wahoo! It's official! Congrats Dondan!
 
Just got linked this from a friend. Looks great.

Just quick question. Is the kickstarter meant to kickstart the company and judge interest and if successful the product will be available for other people eventually? Or will this be a limited run just on kickstarter and then never again? Thanks for your time
 
If he manages to sell 1000 cases on the crowdfunding, there will likely be future availability of the case, you could buy it on his or a retailers website then. If the Kickstarter case count is between 500-1000, this will be the only run (this will not happen though :) )
 
Dumb question...but where do we get the kickstarter link when the countdown ends? Email? Your website? The forum? All of the above? Any others?
 
This is amazing. First the ncase and now this? I have been watching this for a while myself and I am glad to say that this case is excellent looking. Consider my money going to your kickstarter!
Bravo sir Bravo!
 
I wonder what will happen if A4-SFX hits those 1000 orders mark - what will Lian Li do? In comparison to Ncase M1 which is beautiful and versatile but also complex in manufacturing the A4-SFX looks like something that can be easily mass produced. Because I think that this is the kind of case I'd like to see mainstreamed - shipped worldwide with resellers rather than all that handled by dondan's small company.

I hope there's a deal waiting Lian Li's drawer to see if there's enough interest in this project and we'll only know about it when the crowdfunding hits the right spot.

Anyway congrats and keeping fingers crossed!
 
And this is the plan, if I hit the 1000 mark I can place the next order without Crowdfunding. If it comes to future production runs I try to make some deals with resellers so I don't have to handle the logistic and sale stuff.
 
What I meant is that why not team up with Lian Li more closely for whole manufacturing, quality control/warranty and logistics on their end? What I'm afraid is the problem of oculus/vive and other successful projects that couldn't deliver on time because of problems with manufacturing quality.

I think Necere said they had similar problem with early series where the low quality forced them to look through the whole batch to fit pieces of the case to make proper whole units or something like that. The problem here is that Lian Li might treat differently manufacturing for their own (like making 25% more units with calculated low quality units) and for your order, and even if that's not the case then the quality control itself with shipping back faulty units might be an overkill for you.

I hope that year from now we'll be able to get a mass-production-optimized $99 A4-SFX off-shelf at the local stores rather than playing the same "batch ordering game" like with the ncase M1.
 
I think this is only possible if I leave Lian Li and use a no name ribbon riser extender (that will not work reliable with all GPUs on PCIe Gen3). But I think a very low price for losing all the great quality we have now is not the aim of this project.
 
Yeah, but that's still not what I meant - I don't want you to loose the quality at all.

If LianLi were to make such case in few thousands it should be possible to do it with such price tag. It doesn't look more complex than node 202 which is $75 and getting mass produced riser with revenue for $25 doesn't look like impossible thing as well.

Currently your case manufacturing costs this much because it's manually bent edge by edge rather than bending the whole pieces with a single hit of a press, which is possible if you want to mass produce, so the cost of forms/molds wouldn't be such a big deal. We've got the same thing going for us with manufacturing cost but we've got welding to count in additionally.
 
The node 202 is made out of very thin steel and not 1.5mm aluminium. Furthermore it hast many plastic parts. The Riser is a PCB based one and not a very long twin axial one. A PCB Riser like this will be around $5. If you buy 1500 3M Twin axial flex Riser the price at this point is higher than the half of your $99.

You are right pressing will reduce the price but not as much as you think. I think realistic in mass production with alu and 3M could be 140€, but not $99 = 87€. May with steel and plastic $99 is possible.
 
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Plastics are irrelevant in this - The complexity of node 202 base metal piece is somewhat similar to what your base piece looks like. the difference between the 0.5mm steel and 1.5mm aluminium is negligible when bent on few-tonne-force machine press. I get that anodizing might cost but I don't thing it's as significant cost as the bending.

Cost reduction in mass production comes from less time spend by the operator - he just sets up the forms and hit the sheets with press making pieces in huge series so it minimizes cost of labour as well as quality check costs since whole serie coming out of the press will be of same quality.

As for the riser - I think that the ones made by hd-plex could fit below $25 if ordered in thousands.

Anyway I get you - it's not your target at this point, but I wish you could mainstream your case like this.
 
Hi dondan,

Really hyped for the fundraiser being almost here, following this project for almost an year, this news were great! :D

I just have some questions regarding shipment costs. I showed this project to my friend and i conviced him to buy one, so probably shipment will be cheaper if i buy two togheter cases than buying 2 separately. From what i understood in the previous posts, the price in the kickstarter doesn't have shipment costs, so my question is when do you pay the shipment costs?

Best of luck
 
M4vr1c1o said:
Hi dondan,
From what i understood in the previous posts, the price in the kickstarter doesn't have shipment costs, so my question is when do you pay the shipment costs?

Best of luck
Click to expand...

1. Choose your reward for example 2x A4-SFX black
2. Choose your country in an dropdown for example Germany
3. The buy system sum the price for the reward and the price for shipment.
4. You now have to pay the calculated price.

So you see the price you have to pay includes the shipment price.
 
Have I understood correctly that shipping will be:
6€ to Germany
15€ to rest of EU
22€ to the US (and rest of world?)
 
More like this:

8€ toGermany
20€ to rest of EU
2-32€ rest of world (because of the saved VAT)
 
This is the fault of DHL not mine. If you like you can directly pick it up in Flensburg and get you shipment fee back.
 
Is the 230,- pricetag for the case and the 20,- EU shipping fee final?
 
Necere said:
A big part of it was simply the active thread we had going here. That's where we got most of our initial support from. But besides that, when we launched the first crowdfunding campaign for the prototype costs, we did write a press release and sent it to a number of different PC hardware sites, a few of which did run it. I will tell you though - presentation is key. High quality pics or renders and decent written material is very, very important if you want any hope of success.
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Are you planning on doing some sort of press release to additional companies? Is your extra spare prototype still not in your possession? If so, any chance you could get Linus to look at it? He's got a good following in North America. (I know we mentioned this before but any updates on this?)
 
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