Teenage Engineering is a design firm that's behind some of the most iconic
pieces of tech. Think the OP1 or the Rabbit R1. To be fair, they didn't make
the Rabbit R1. They just designed the chassis and stuff. And it looks pretty
nice. And that's not the only chassis design. They've actually designed a computer case. And this one is their
second computer case. And they refer to it as the $9 computer case or the
computer 2. But this is actually wrong because they're selling it for the price
of free, which is kind of crazy. And um
taking it out of the box, it looks like it it's all plastic in construction. Do
we know what the material is? >> Semi-transparent PP plastic.
>> The entire enclosure is made of polyropylene plastic and it's a
semi-transparent. The last time Teenage Engineering made a case, it was called
the Computer 1 and it was pretty cool, but definitely a form over function type
product. It was kind of criticized for its flimsy materials as well as its high
price and bad thermals. So, they've solved that by making their next case um
maybe a little flimsier, but free. And if it's free, that means you can't
criticize it. Okay, people on YouTube, I give you free videos. You cannot
complain. Okay, though. This was apparently supposed to be $9. They have
given it away for free, which means it's basically impossible to get because when
you have a such a hyped brand like Teenage Engineering combined with the
price of $0, it's going to be hard to track this down. Oh, cool. It kind of
folds out as a net. It's all one piece. I thought I was going to be assembling
separate pieces together. We got two header cables, I'm imagining, for your
power switch and your reset switch. And this one is um uncovered. I'm imagining
that's a manufacturing mistake. I guess we got it for free. We also have a very
very basic LED. It is It is kind of
different though. It's got a little a doink on it, you know, doink. And then
we have some rubber fasteners of sorts.
Uh there's no instructions. There was a QR code on here. Online assembly guide.
And it says that the first step is to tell you about our sponsor. Thanks to
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sale starting October 15th. All right, step two. Unfold the computer. Done.
Ensure your work area is static free. Close enough. Cut and detach the
carrying handle from the chassis and set it aside. It'll be attached at a later
stage in the assembly process. Sure. Can I get a strong man or scissors
that aren't broken?
Ow. Sorry. I now need to attach feet to
the bottom of the case. All right, it's time to build the computer. So, we have
a mini ITX motherboard. That is the only size that this is compatible with. For
our CPU, we're kind of going with the gaming champion. It's the AMD Ryzen 7
9800X 3D. The CPU is going to be running
a little hot because we're using a L9A
CPU cooler, which is really only designed for 65 watt CPUs. And the uh
9800 X3D runs a little warmer than that,
but shouldn't be too big of a deal because we're not turning it on.
Got our RAM and our CPU cooler installed. And now we're going to take our motherboard and put it into the
case. Attach the motherboard to the left panel. Rig it front, left. Okay, so this
is kind of different. Instead of screwing our motherboard in, we're just
putting these standoffs through the holes and then it's going to use these
plastic snap hooks to hold the motherboard in place. Not exactly the
most reusable solution, but if they're
doing all plastic, then I guess that's kind of how you'd have to do it because
if you you can't screw into plastic multiple times, but if you they would have to like insert like a nylon insert
or something in there. So, this is how we're going to do it. It says to install
the bottom left one first.
Okay. Two,
three,
and four. That's uh that's that's in there. How hard is it to pull out? Okay.
It's not too hard to pull out, but I imagine that if you're going to try and do any servicing on this thing, you're
going to have to open it all the way up. A fix PSU cable PSW power supply. Insert
un Oh, this is intentionally unsleeved. Insert unsleeved connector through the
power button. I am lost immediately. Where the hell is this power button
on? That is that's the power button. Oh,
okay. So, this unsleeved thing is going to go through here and that's going to
act as the electrode for the power button. This doesn't go through the
power button. And they didn't like punch out this hole. >> See if we can poke a hole. But don't
stab yourself. >> I won't. >> Don't stab me either.
>> A damn it. My plan has been foiled. Basically, the buttons just taking the
ends of two wires and letting them touch. Uh, which is how buttons
literally work, but usually somebody makes the button for you in a factory.
And what we found is that the sheathing for the header pins is too long for
where we're supposed to put the unshathed one through the power button.
We had to punch a hole through the button. It was very annoying.
And uh it just seems like it all barely freaking fits. I get again. I uh guess I
got it for free. And now I have to
fix the power LED. I'm so worried I'm going to break this. It doesn't stay in
the freaking hole. Okay,
we mashed it in there
and now we can plug it into the power LED. Please be how these plug in.
Please, dear God. Attach the supplied silicone fasteners to an 80 mm chassis
fan. So, you take these rubber fasteners. You will pull them through
the screw holes of your fan. It's very reminiscent of the like antiibration
mounts that you can get with these Noctua fans, the little brown rubber
guys. And then we slide these on to
these pegs right here at the front. Secure the power supply.
Um where
oh it only takes SFX power supplies. I
would be very surprised if it took an SFXL. You just really don't have that
much room in here. And it has to be oriented with the fan pulling in air
from the outside like so. you can't
orient it around. So, if you're somebody who's using custom cables for this case,
then uh note that when you're taking your measurements.
If your graphics card is part of your build, make the necessary cutouts
on the rear cover for the GPU. Oh, okay.
I was worried that it was going to be more complex. It is just these uh little
guys.
The GPUs we pulled out today are kind of odd choices because this supports very
short GPUs, 180 mm max. Uh, this is a
Radeon 6400. And the reason we chose this today was because it is the only
thing in our library that we have that fits in here that's not um being used
for another project. We also got the Gigabyte low profile 4060. This is about
3 mm too long, so it might squeeze in,
especially if we're willing to let the plastic um bow a little bit, but I think
we're going to try and keep a cleaner look. So, we're going to go with the 6400. Really, you're not going to be
expecting this to be a killer gaming machine, but it could do really well as
like a small media PC or even if you
wanted to do some like just simple office work with a stylish free case. We
just noticed this at the end, but the case can also hold a 2.5 in SSD right
here.
This is kind of slick. Right here on the plastic, they do have a little cutout that's specifically for this nut. So, it
sits in there nice and fastened and steady for you so that you can just come
in with your screwdriver. I like that. I wish there was more of that kind of
stuff, you know, with the power button and but you win some, you lose lots, you
know. wire up our power supply and then CPU.
Okay, plugged our CPU and our motherboard in. And because this is such
a low power GPU, we don't need to plug it into a power supply cuz it can draw
from the 75 watts provided to it from the PCIe slot. So now we just kind of
fold stuff. One thing to think about is cable management because there is no
real mounts or anything in here to help you with it. So, you're kind of just
gonna be in charge of trying to tie the things up nicely. Um, so you're on your
own. Good luck, team. Now that I'm
folding it closed, one thing that you might want to consider is a fan extension for whatever fan you put in
here because it might struggle to reach some of your fan headers and prevent you
from easily opening the case in the future. I don't really care about future
me. And the last snaps.
And the last piece, the handle. Wow,
that is
that's that's something. Uh, as a design
exercise, it's very interesting. But as a computer case, there's um I don't
know, it's made of cheap plastic and it
looks flimsy. You can already see pieces are misaligned or bowing. Uh there's
lots of gaps which to be fair is I guess
could be considered a design choice. Um the power button is just an abomination.
I mean you know the more I look at it the more I kind of have come to
appreciate what it is in terms of kind of subverting the idea of premium
computing and using something that's so cheap and plasticky as a Z product. It's
really really intriguing. It's not the great build experience but it is such a
unique project. if it set out just to be
a conversation piece and kind of a cool
experiment, it really succeeds at that.
Um, the issue is that you can't get it
because it is sold out. Um, which is a
shame. So, there's people that are like reselling this for large sums of money.
Do not spend that. Do not buy this for large sums of money. There's just a lot
of things that like I am worried about the longevity in terms of like if you're trying to game and this thing gets hot,
how well will this age? Is the plastic going to yellow over time? It probably
will though that might kind of be its own kind of cool aesthetic and you'll
even be able to see like heat marks as it unevenly yellows. I don't know. What
do you think? This is like ugo as hell. But I think if you're kind of going for
this, if you're appreciating it for what it is, you can consider that part of the
experience. I don't think I'd want a yellowing plastic computer. But I will
say this is by far the most interesting case I've looked at in my entire time
here at LMG. And I mean, you know, if
you just if you can get your hands on one for $0, like here's $0. Got to hand
it to them. And you got to like, comment, and subscribe because Short
Circuit's awesome. We've got so many other PC build videos. If you liked this, why don't you check out um the
tearown I did of the Falcon Northwest Tiki. It's a premium case from a premium
vendor, but it's very, very cool and also quite compact.