Indiana Jones may have rated the Lost Ark, but has he ever built a PC in one?
Probably not, because Indiana Jones takes place in the 40s, I think.
There's Nazis in it, right? Indiana Jones is old, is what I'm saying,
and he couldn't build in a computer even if he tried. But today, we're in the future, the geometric future.
Geometric Future is a computer case company that I have never heard of.
So this is the first case that we're looking at from them, and I'm pretty excited.
We saw this online and we thought, this looks really cool, we have to get this in. And first impressions are negative.
It's like,
it's just, it's plastic-y. You know what, it's the outside of the case, whatever.
It's kind of a showpiece. If you're not planning on moving your computer around,
maybe that doesn't matter too much to you. I'm excited to see if it's gonna be interesting to build in,
how it comes apart. Apparently, it's reversible.
The bottom and the top can change. And then it also looks like it has support
for a 360 millimeter rad, maybe more. Let's start by taking it apart.
Where's the front IO? We got a power button up here.
Okay, we'll figure that out as maybe, maybe there is no front IO.
That's what I'd call a bad choice if you were building a PC case,
because I think most people like to plug stuff in. And also, it doesn't even look like
you'll be able to have access to the back of your computer either very easily.
Because these mesh filters slash plastic side pieces,
they don't just come out, they come out with screws. So it's not like these are like doors
that would swing open, which would be nice. They only bend because they're so plastic-y.
Now that we've taken off one of the side panels, we can take a little bit of a closer look
at the kind of inside pattern, which I think looks really cool.
It kind of reminds me of Cocoon, if you've ever played that. It's a really good indie game that came out in 2023.
Highly recommend it. Yeah, it's flimsy.
Another downside is also that the mesh filter is bent into the structured side panel,
which is kind of annoying for cleaning. But there's a lot of space
between the mesh and the actual structure. So I don't think that cleaning this
would actually end up being too hard. You could probably just take this out, run it under some water or vacuum it,
and you'd have no problem. So this is also kind of weird.
There is two screw holes here, but these only had single screws in them.
Maybe this was supposed to be another screw hole and they just didn't drill through it in manufacturing,
but looking at the other side panels,
they all don't have these screwed in. And if this is supposed to be
some sort of like press fit kind of lock, like to clip into this little hole,
it does a terrible job at that. It just doesn't do anything.
As you can see from these two side panels, it's not exactly a square on the ends.
It is a rectangle. So this side, one side is slightly wider than the other.
They're a relatively new case manufacturer, but they do have like four different models
of case available. So it's not like this is like their first time.
It looks like here at the front, they have support for a radiator.
What's weird is that these cutouts here are like,
they don't look like they're 120 millimeter increments.
This looks like it's a, they're kind of more like at 90 millimeter increments.
Looks like this supports 120 or 140 millimeter fans.
And it also looks like it supports to a 360 rad.
This is a micro ATX or mini ITX enclosure.
Wow, these are some, look at the size of these zip ties.
Those are thick. That's like kidnapping somebody thick.
Is it, you know, like, is there, there's no front IO.
This is the only included cables. There must not be any front IO.
They have an RGB header for your power light and then a switch button.
Inside this box, inside of our box,
we got, wow, a big microfiber cloth,
which is great because you're gonna be polishing this plastic a lot.
We got more absolutely ludicrously thick zip ties.
And what is it, this bag is so nice. Oh, nevermind, take that back.
It's like a Ziploc, it's a Ziploc bag, but it's like, it's thick.
And inside we have some brackets for stuff.
I think maybe this might be a GPU anti sag bracket. We got some PCIe brackets.
Some thick ass, real thick cable ties for what?
I don't know. This looks like it's supposed to be some sort of power supply mount,
a extension cable for your power supply, a whack load of miscellaneous screws.
On top of that, we got a lot of cable ties. Like I think like that's five, this is like maybe seven.
So I mean, accessories wise, it's pretty okay.
And then what is this? What is this like a faux leather mouse pad?
Okay, that's kind of, that's a cool value add, I guess.
It's really curled up, also leather, it's like fake leather.
Oh, it flans too messy. Also, wait, there's a texture on it, which is not ideal.
This printing on top of it is not flush, it's textured, which is definitely not ideal
for any sort of tracking surface. They refer to it as a customized double sided table mat.
So they don't specifically say it's for mousing. Whoa, and a thick bound user manual.
A new approach, M2 Mini ITX open frame compact chassis.
It's not really an open frame if you have four walls on it.
But before we get any further, there's one last thing in the box.
That looks like a USB-C header for a motherboard.
And that goes to this dock. Oh, this goes directly into your motherboard.
This would be way better as an extension. If this was female, and then I would have this on my desk.
Also, if you were wondering if the arc was related to something biblical, this is called NOAA.
Clearly the talk in the Bible. It says that the USB-A ports are 10 gigabit per second,
as well as the Type-C. I am unsure if they can do all of that at the same time.
And it has a microphone headphone jack. So this goes to your PC,
then you put your microphone, your headphone, and that all goes through your single USB-C port.
I like it though, you know, I don't hate it. I like how we can get so much connectivity
through just one USB-C port, though it would be nice to just have more expansion,
but three USB-As and a Type-C is not so bad.
They claim to have durable materials,
but also that it's one millimeter plus 1.15 millimeter steel,
which is not famously durable, that's pretty thin. Thankfully, it looks like the chassis is put together
with all of the exact same type of screw, so there's not gonna be a ton of sorting
that you need to do. I really appreciate that, and I'm glad that more and more companies
are doing that these days. And then we're supposed to take out this thing.
It's a thumb screw, but it's also in there pretty good.
Which looks to be support for some SSDs.
That's gonna be my guess for this. Probably maybe a couple of two and a half inch drives.
And that basically leaves us with just the shell. That's kind of all you're really looking at
when it comes to what the case actually is when you take off all of the nice fascia.
Let's see what it's like to build in it. Well, there's not a crazy amount of different ways
to orient the stuff in this case. You are gonna have to be careful based
on how thick your graphics card is, because that's gonna affect where your PSU is going to be mounted.
You might actually have to turn your PSU 90 degrees of using a full-sized four-slot GPU.
We're gonna take out these little rails, and I might as well just get them straight mounted
onto the CPU cooler we have. That's just gonna save me time.
And these look, I wonder if these are interchangeable.
We'll find out when we take them off if they're exactly the same.
Oh yeah, that's the same component, cool. Now we can see we have a movable
and adjustable motherboard back plate. You can see that we have these rails along which we can
slide it through these screws, as well as multiple screw holes for fastening it down
in these various different settings. What I do actually appreciate is that,
I don't know if this is anywhere on their website, but they have a lot of different specs
if you're worried about hardware compatibility here. It's really great to see that
because it talks about the differences in hardware compatibility if you have a GPU
of a different size or a power supply of different size. Oh wow, so if you know the length of your graphics card,
they actually tell you exactly where you should slide it along the scale,
300, 310, 320, that's actually really nice.
And the fact that it's stamped in there makes it really, really easy as the user to do.
What I will say is that because I can take off pretty much all of the sides,
this is absolutely easy to build in.
Like I have so much space. Like look, look at all that room.
It's incredible. It supports ATX power supplies too.
And now we take a little bracket and we just slap that on.
This bracket here doesn't quite align with the power supply screw holes
because it has this top lip. And I think that this top lip is gonna be a little thick
and it's like maybe not expecting the top of this power supply to be so thick.
While this, maybe this mount doesn't work, maybe we'll have to try the 90 degree mount,
which we have over here.
So that's just kind of in there with the two screws.
Apparently the solution to this is one of their nylon cable ties.
Nylon? Is that the Velcro ones?
That must be one of their long Velcro cable ties, which is on the ground over here.
This is very unconventional to just be like,
yeah, yeah, we're not gonna give you like a full power supply bracket.
We're just gonna give, I thought this was five wide ones.
It turns out I was totally wrong earlier. It's just one long boy.
I should have done that before. I should have routed this three before
because I guess I go under. I mean, it wiggles less now.
One weird thing is that we don't have any pre-installed PCIe brackets.
So apparently we put this here and then we get the rest of the GPU in
by screwing in this side to somewhere.
Honey, I don't got a lot of faith. This is gonna be interesting.
Because of how thick the metal is on these, you can kind of see actually that there's a little
bit of space between the two of these because it's not perfectly flush.
I can't plug this DisplayPort in here
and have the security latches actually engage.
Oh, yeah, see? So it just comes out without using the switch.
Oh, that time it seems like it caught. Something to be careful of, I guess.
So that mounts to there. Oh my God, this is only mounting to the motherboard tray.
So we're gonna have like so much weight on just this plastic right now.
All right, let's get some cables in here.
And oh my God, no, that's bad.
In terms of cable management, it looks you're gonna have a decent amount of space
just coming up from behind the power supply, which is pretty good.
Obviously there's not much room to hide your cables in a case such as this,
but it's mesh on all the sides anyway. So it's not gonna be super visible.
Though I guess actually you kind of can see in through the corners. So it might be a bigger ordeal than I would hope.
But hey, you watched my cube video and you know how much I care about cable management.
Nothing, it's stupid. You know, I really wish there was cable management
like along here, because I kinda got this extra little cable that I'd like to deal with.
And this seems like the only real good place to strap it.
I guess maybe I could strap it along the edges.
Just be nice to run it flush down all the way. Let's get the CPU cooler in there.
It's gonna be a tight squeeze, but I think we're good.
I think we're good. Now that we've put an AIO in it,
there's actually rigidity, which is good.
No more wobble, except for maybe this part.
That's pretty good. Yes, I'm sorry.
I know a white AIO. It was not my fault, blame that man.
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So you came out your drives here. This goes behind the motherboard tray
and it supports one three and a half inch and two and a half inch drive or two, two and a half inch drives,
which is pretty sick for a small, more effective place. I'm always loving the extra room
and especially support for hard drives. I'm a big data hoarder, so I like drives.
I don't mind this solution. I think it's kinda cool to have your AIO
on a little puck on your desk. You can put this under your desk or something. But this is so short.
This cable, if I plug it into where my motherboard is,
I could get it out the side here and it can dangle or maybe it can make it on top of the case.
Like it's really not long. So what they should have done is made this a female
so that I could put any other USB-C to C cable in there
and then just run it as an extension or make this long enough
that it can reach somewhere on my desk. Now, one thing we haven't done, but that you can do,
is we can change the top panel and the bottom panel
so that the button and the stuff is at the top and you can route all your cables through the bottom,
which is a good idea because you have your back IO out here
so you can run all of your cables at the bottom. One thing to note is that putting them at the bottom
will make them a little bit less accessible and that will mean that you'll have to lift up your computer
to plug stuff in. But if you're not plugging stuff into your back IO that often and you can make do with the front IO
and considering that you have a pretty good amount of front IO, I don't understand why you wouldn't
just flip it no matter what and why it didn't get shipped that way.
We're gonna leave it the other way because that's how they shipped it.
And also, I don't got time for that. Now, as I put all of my side panels back on,
I guess I should put that on too. I realize, you realize kind of the issue is that
you're gonna have to route all of your cables out of this somehow.
And there's not gonna be a really cleaner, accessible way to do that because you have these screwed on.
It would have been really, really nice if at least this one side had a hinge
because then we could open it up and easily access our back IO.
But that's just not how it is with this case. And now I get to use my fancy cloth
because my filthy grubby fingers got all over this.
So they gave me the world's biggest Michael Fible. You know, there's something satisfying
about building a computer and I think that high is kind of like making me like this more than I should
because I feel good about building this case, but it's bad.
Sure, it was easy to build in because it was very open and I think that the styling is unique,
distinct and pretty cool. But, and you know what, this pocketing kind of neat.
Shout out to Noah. But it's just so flimsy, which might not be a bad thing
if maybe this is like a budget case, right? If this is a design we could get at a lower price
where you don't see these kinds of cool designs, then maybe it's worth it, but it's...
So what is the price? Shut up, $169 US.
That's bad, this is a good, no. If this case was maybe $100,
even then I would be kind of hesitant to recommend it. Maybe at the 60 or $70 price range, it would be cool.
I think that, you know, you don't have to worry about thermals, noise is probably gonna be okay too
because there's just lots of airflow here. Dust is obviously gonna be an issue.
It's an open case. It's a very open case, so dust is always gonna be an issue.
Luckily, it's so open that it shouldn't be too hard to clean.
It will take maybe four, eight screws to take apart,
which is pretty bad compared to just like a case window where you can just get in there with a vacuum
or something like that. But again, we're in the small form factor realm.
And if you, in the small form factor realm, while it's very compatible, it's also very big.
But I just can't really get past the shoddy build quality.
It is so plastic-y, it feels like it's bent.
Is it, Andrew pointed out, is it actually on level?
Yeah, it's like bent. I don't know if I, it's not flat.
And I think that bend is because of the weight
that was put on this while I was working in the case. And the fact that it can't survive a single build,
like it's garbage, it's bad. So it turns out that this is not a mouse pad,
so that's good, but it's a pad so you can lay this on its side without scratching its delicate plastic body.
Oh, look at that.
Hey. You know, you hate to see it.
If this was $70 and didn't suck, it would be worth buying.
But at $169, out to lunch pricing, it's awful.
It's mostly plastic. It's, yeah, don't buy it.
It's a big disappointment. Thanks for watching ShortCircuit. If you liked this video, why don't you watch a video
with a case that's actually worth buying, like the Cooler Master Cube 500.
It's a flat pack case and it's pretty cool.