Greetings from a little farm in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. As a computer and gaming enthusiast I’ve always been a big fan of building my own setups, and of course choosing a case is an important step, as that means a lot for cooling, size on your desk, visual style, and access to your components. Over the years I’ve bought a lot of great cases and learned what I like and don’t like. I started designing my own cases to try and combine the things I liked into a single setup, and I have tons of CAD files and fabricated and 3D printed parts sitting around from various iterations as I learned, often the hard way, what really worked and what didn’t.

As my designs evolved I noticed I kept moving in the direction of simpler, smaller, and more focused. Eventually I just stripped everything that wasn’t needed away and reduced the case to its elemental form. But that’s not enough, there are plenty of open air cases on the market, and plenty of “test bench” style setups that treat the case as just a frame for your parts, the real trick comes in making it usable, making it work with the parts you have, and making it look good no matter what those parts are. For instance, any case can use custom length cables and things will look great, but I also wanted to be able to use the cables you already have and be able to manage them neatly, which can be a trick especially when you can see pretty much everything from most angles. Or how about being able to use anything from a shorter, 2 slot reference style GPU to a 330mm long 3.5 slot monster GPU and both of them look visually balanced alongside your other components and proportional to the footprint of the case? Maintaining the visual balance of the case with a wide array of GPUs and CPU coolers was a primary focus. These are just a couple of points to consider, and there were many more that went into the design of what you see here, and I hope it gives you a sense of how when you strip away so much each decision made is even more visible and more impactful on the final product.

I have greatly enjoyed this journey so far and I hope this is just the beginning. I’ve learned so much and put it into this first offering, and I plan to keep learning and keep improving. If you have any questions or comments or feedback please don’t hesitate to send me an email. I’ll do my best to reply quickly.

Thank you,

Craig

craig@crowsbluffdesign.com