The Benefits of Traveling with SFF Computers

For many enthusiasts of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF), traveling to land parties is an exciting adventure. Many of these individuals enjoy exploring new worlds, meeting fellow fans, and experiencing unique environments that bring their favorite stories to life. To facilitate this type of travel, some people opt for compact computers known as Small Form Factor (SFF) systems.

One popular method for transporting SFF computers is using a Pelican case or similar protective enclosure. This allows the device to be securely carried on airplanes and other forms of transportation without worrying about damage or disruption during transit. However, this solution may not provide adequate support for the computer's weight or prevent it from shifting out of its intended position.

A more suitable approach involves using a riser cable to create multiple points of contact between the SFF computer and the surrounding environment. This can include screws that attach the device to a metal block, which is then threaded into a long slot on the frame of the travel case or backpack. The resulting design provides three key areas of support: the slot itself, the screw threads that secure the device, and the top screws that hold everything in place.

The importance of this design cannot be overstated. A computer that shifts or flops around during transport can cause damage to delicate components, such as wires, fans, or even the motherboard. By providing a stable and secure environment for the SFF computer, enthusiasts can enjoy their favorite stories and games without worrying about equipment failure.

One notable example of an SFF computer is the Founders Card, which was used in a recent review to demonstrate its versatility and compact size. The reviewer discovered that this particular card still allowed room for additional components, such as radiators and fans, within the travel case or backpack.

The benefits of working with smaller companies like Thorzone are also worth noting. These organizations often possess a more agile approach to product development, allowing them to quickly respond to customer feedback and create innovative solutions to complex problems. This willingness to experiment and adapt enables creators to build products that meet the unique needs of their customers.

In conclusion, SFF computers offer a convenient and portable solution for enthusiasts of Science Fiction and Fantasy who enjoy traveling to land parties or exploring new environments. By using riser cables and other design elements, individuals can create stable and secure systems that minimize the risk of damage or disruption during transit.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou guys remember this guy the uh Nano Q from Thor Zone well I had some critiques in our review some things that I said I wish I had done this instead they've already responded and they're like hey we hear you and here's what we're doing so I want to kind of do a followup to this case review before I even got a chance to building it cuz now I'm I want to wait for the reev revised version um yeah let's talk about it let's talk about why companies like this literally are like it's such a breath of fresh air versus the crap we're used to dealing with around here the Corsair a15 high performance Tower CPU air cooler features a copper coal plate and six 6 mm heat pipes for high efficiency thermal transfer two Corsair af140 Elite pwm fans boast corsair's air guide technology for concentrated air flow and durable fluid Dynamic bearings at speeds of up to, 1600 RPM slim slide and loock fan mounts enable variable mounting height for wide compatibility with most systems to see the full lift sus specs of the allnew Corsair a15 Tower cooler follow the sponsored Link in the description below so this is the Nano Q from Thor Zone they come in two sizes the S and the r 11 L and 16 L worth of volume for a mini ITX build if it looks like a cheese grater it's I think it's cuz it's very Apple inspired you know what's funny is if I were to tell Phil like hey check out this apple case he would totally believe it's an apple case like if you didn't know any better um I'll put a link down below but our initial unboxing tear down review showing you how it works there was a couple of things in this build that stood out to me as problems and I kind of want to go over those again right now and then show you what their response is and their renders and how they're applying it to every single production version of the case because one of the things I refuse to do in working with Brands is get involved in their Kickstarter phase I will not be involved in companies taking money for something they're not ready to produce or even guarantee I guess that will ever come I'm not saying that that's what Thor Zone would do but I've seen it in the past so I refuse to ever get involved in Kickstarter stuff it needs to be ready for production fortunately by them sending me this case when they did and giving them the um critiques that I did came at just the right time between mass production it's between engineering sample and mass production and these are easy fixes they were able to implement that every single case that they send out to end user customers will have so they won't be like oh the first batch doesn't have it the second batch will they all will have it which I think is great and that's what's fun about working with small companies is they can pivot and adapt quickly whereas every Big Brand is like well it's going to take some time and then maybe in our next revision next year you know maybe we'll give people like a $15 coupon code that didn't get it or it's stupid stuff like that right this is actually like fun to work with small companies that are like yeah we can do that we'll do it quick in fact it's barely been a week since we did this video and they've already implemented the the fixes so the first fix uh in fact let me open this up if I remember how to do this so that I can get this out yes if he you haven't seen this case that's probably like what the heck did he just do and yeah I hear you all this is extruded not miled well the holes are miled but I don't look I'm not an aluminum magician okay I don't know how any of that crap works Alum an aluminium guy so major problem number one is these handles don't come preattached and the reason for that is you can use this chassis in a bunch of different orientations standing up on the handles like I've already showed or you can put the rubber feet in any of these holes and then you can put it like long ways like this like I'm starting to think the more I look at this case I would probably end up using it like this on the table rather than upright only cuz it's a little Tippy when it's upright like I feel like the feet should be a little bit wider but whatever um that's that would probably be a major redesign in this handle like it would have to like be a 90 there and then come out wider but whatever I think most people would probably use it on the desk like like that with the rubber feet underneath it um but anyway the the issue was to attach these handles you had to remove these little screws and they're very difficult to see we'll get some close-up shots here um there's these little Flathead screws that go through this rod and into this cap so this is like a a steel cap I do believe this is steel as you can see it's just round so that little Flathead screw right there you've got to loosen the screw which is just threading into this cap so this cap plugs a hole where that handle goes in now the cap as you can see is round so as you're trying to remove the screw it's just wanting to spin the cap and what made it worse is the fact that they because they didn't want anything like rattling loose or whatever there's a slight amount of Loctite on these screws yeah it's blue locti it's nothing crazy I'm not about to apply any heat to this cuz I even a heat gun probably would have helped but I didn't want to discolor the metal or anything in any way so you'll notice there's some scratching and stuff on the screws and it's like kind of bent a little bit because the flathead screwdriver can't go in straight because of the fact that it's through that center of the rod so it goes in kind of at an angle and then as you're trying to turn it's wanting to jump out because of the Loctite and although this is an engineering sample that was manually put together um they did say they might have gotten a little bit liberal with the locktite so that's uh they were like sorry about that I'm like well there's got to be a better way because what I ended up doing was and I fortunately was able to do this without scratching the aluminum but I I took a razor blade like a thin like box cutter razor blade and kind of wedged it between the cap and the aluminum body in The Recess hole you can't tell because his handle's there that's recessed so the handle's going into the metal so I was able to create like a wedge that would give me just enough resistance to make it eventually turn so the very first thing they implemented and this this probably isn't going to be all that cheap because this isn't some like off-the-shelf machined steel cap like I'm sure these are being made specifically for this it would be super cheap if they were able to just like hey we'll take these off the shelf and just use them but these are being made for this particular use so what ends up uh they ended up doing was coming up with this so essentially it's the exact same like cap only they've added like a nipple to it for lack of a better term it looks like a side profile of a very happy boob okay I don't know how else to say it but that nipple keeps it from being able to turn inside the hole so that means they probably wouldn't even need to necessarily use Loctite either now when they're putting it together but because it doesn't turn um they could actually get that screw pretty snug the one thing I did mention in this whole mechanism that I wish they had was some maybe an allen head screw instead of the Flathead screw no mention of that in the email so maybe we still to deal with the flatheads but you know what it'll be a lot easier now the fact that this cap can't turn so already you can see the company made a choice to I don't know how many of these they had made already they haven't started like full produ full scale production yet so I assume there's not a lot of these made but it's not going to it's this is something that's turned on like an industrial lathe kind of a deal right that's just it's a machine that's just turning them Laing them chopping them and just there you go it's easy it's going to be a bit more work now to be able to machine that nipple in there so they're in they're incurring additional manufacturing cost I'm sure probably not a huge cost but definitely more expensive than this because of the fact that they recognized like hey this is maybe a problem it's probably something people would only have to go through like once but one of just one of those did not want to come off I was able to get it off but I was starting to think like dang maybe I'm not going to be able to put the handles on and that's not a good customer experience for especially for a premium product like this that's you know well over $300 for this case the other thing we talked about and this was a this was a more major problem as far as I'm concerned is the GPU Mount so as you can see this skeleton here or the spine as they're calling it it's all Rod It's All Steel Rod right steel rod that's been kind of milled and made Flat so that we have our light bar attached to it and all that sort of stuff and then you can see right here we have this adjustable Riser that allows us to mount our GPU but for tall gpus we can push the Riser down to get the top farther away from the top of the case we don't have any issues with cabling and stuff but the only place that mounts is right here and this is almost more like a like a plug so you can see that that that has two adjustable positions there's a screw hole right above it and then we're in the lower position right now cuz we did drop it down so if I just take our 480 and sort of like slot that in there real quick so it's all fine and dandy Until you realize as I just tilted it right there the GPU wanted to fall out so it doesn't have anything holding it in place up here which is normally where most of the weight is taken in a case is something attaches to there and then as you loosen do that a few times that screw loosens and then it doesn't hold its position so what I said was this would be a terrible transport type of case meaning if you had small form factor you probably going to land parties or most people I know that are super into sff like to travel on airplanes to go to land parties and stuff and you might be thinking like who does that I know people that do that okay it's a very real obvious thing so this would not be a comfortable solution for traveling in a Pelican case or something and and not having this like flop out of its position so what they're going to be doing is right along here so remember this whole thing can shift up and down and in and out okay so right now we have it sort of shifted but they are going to be Milling a long Port right here that also has a a metal block that's going to go on top of the corner right here that then threads into it so you're going to have this block threaded into the GPU and then that block threaded into a a long slot on the frame right here we'll call it the GPU frame that then is going to give us at least our second major point of contact so there's three points of contact when the GPU is attached there is the slot itself and you don't want that taking load you don't want that being loadbearing that's that will break it's plastic and small pins right the second place is we already showed you where that screw is that's normally in a normal case where those will like rest in a slot so it takes weight and then the third point of contact is the top screws which hold that down so it can't possibly pop out of that slot so without this there as you can see right now watch I can just pull it up well I guess I could if that screw was looser but um anyway so that's going to allow us now to have that third point of contact which is desperately needed to me this was the biggest concern of the current design the other stuff like the screws and all that I mean that's that's problematic but it's not major this is Major the last thing you want is damage to your motherboard uh well I guess it wouldn't be your motherboard this is a riser cable you don't want to damage your Riser cable you don't want to damage the slot lot on your GPU um you don't want it flopping around and banging inside your case you don't want to damage a fan or your wires cuz if if we had wires attached to this right now and it wanted to flop out it could be yanking on the wires we know how the 12volt high power PL plug is we don't want to put any undue stress on that so anyway I'm actually realizing just how good the founders card looks in here like we did with our review we used the stricks card to see how one of the biggest cards on the the market would work as you could see we'd still have room for a radiator and a fan right here cuz this does have a fan and rad that come out right there so maybe if I were to do like a AO or whatever I don't know whatever I just like to look at build cases and think about what the builds could potentially be like so I'm going to go a and get on out of here this video is probably longer than it needed to be but I wanted to sort of show you the this is what I love about working with Brands like Thor zone is the fact that it doesn't take them they're not this giant aircraft carrier of a ship although I shouldn't use aircraft carrier as an example they're very maneuverable they are not the new icon of the Sea's largest cruise ship in the world that just made its way into Miami that literally looks like a city yes we've all seen giant cruise ships this thing is absolutely redonkulous it takes a long time to turn that sucker in a different direction they are a speedboat they they are literally like we're water skiing behind this thing because they are so maneuverable and that's what I love about small companies that are just a that one are able to be like hey we've got designed people that are doing nothing but working on this right now so let's make this change let's make it happen and they came up with the solution so quickly and that's the thing is we were like oh yeah there needs to be a thing I didn't know what the thing needed to be but they did they saw my my reaction and they were like hey here's how we'll do it and I and I love that they came up with it and you know I just I I like that the new caps are kind of booby shaped I mean that's fun so all right than I don't know what it's time to go okay the more I talk the more I'm going to dig myself into YouTube jail okay all right guys thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one links below go watch the review and check out the brandyou guys remember this guy the uh Nano Q from Thor Zone well I had some critiques in our review some things that I said I wish I had done this instead they've already responded and they're like hey we hear you and here's what we're doing so I want to kind of do a followup to this case review before I even got a chance to building it cuz now I'm I want to wait for the reev revised version um yeah let's talk about it let's talk about why companies like this literally are like it's such a breath of fresh air versus the crap we're used to dealing with around here the Corsair a15 high performance Tower CPU air cooler features a copper coal plate and six 6 mm heat pipes for high efficiency thermal transfer two Corsair af140 Elite pwm fans boast corsair's air guide technology for concentrated air flow and durable fluid Dynamic bearings at speeds of up to, 1600 RPM slim slide and loock fan mounts enable variable mounting height for wide compatibility with most systems to see the full lift sus specs of the allnew Corsair a15 Tower cooler follow the sponsored Link in the description below so this is the Nano Q from Thor Zone they come in two sizes the S and the r 11 L and 16 L worth of volume for a mini ITX build if it looks like a cheese grater it's I think it's cuz it's very Apple inspired you know what's funny is if I were to tell Phil like hey check out this apple case he would totally believe it's an apple case like if you didn't know any better um I'll put a link down below but our initial unboxing tear down review showing you how it works there was a couple of things in this build that stood out to me as problems and I kind of want to go over those again right now and then show you what their response is and their renders and how they're applying it to every single production version of the case because one of the things I refuse to do in working with Brands is get involved in their Kickstarter phase I will not be involved in companies taking money for something they're not ready to produce or even guarantee I guess that will ever come I'm not saying that that's what Thor Zone would do but I've seen it in the past so I refuse to ever get involved in Kickstarter stuff it needs to be ready for production fortunately by them sending me this case when they did and giving them the um critiques that I did came at just the right time between mass production it's between engineering sample and mass production and these are easy fixes they were able to implement that every single case that they send out to end user customers will have so they won't be like oh the first batch doesn't have it the second batch will they all will have it which I think is great and that's what's fun about working with small companies is they can pivot and adapt quickly whereas every Big Brand is like well it's going to take some time and then maybe in our next revision next year you know maybe we'll give people like a $15 coupon code that didn't get it or it's stupid stuff like that right this is actually like fun to work with small companies that are like yeah we can do that we'll do it quick in fact it's barely been a week since we did this video and they've already implemented the the fixes so the first fix uh in fact let me open this up if I remember how to do this so that I can get this out yes if he you haven't seen this case that's probably like what the heck did he just do and yeah I hear you all this is extruded not miled well the holes are miled but I don't look I'm not an aluminum magician okay I don't know how any of that crap works Alum an aluminium guy so major problem number one is these handles don't come preattached and the reason for that is you can use this chassis in a bunch of different orientations standing up on the handles like I've already showed or you can put the rubber feet in any of these holes and then you can put it like long ways like this like I'm starting to think the more I look at this case I would probably end up using it like this on the table rather than upright only cuz it's a little Tippy when it's upright like I feel like the feet should be a little bit wider but whatever um that's that would probably be a major redesign in this handle like it would have to like be a 90 there and then come out wider but whatever I think most people would probably use it on the desk like like that with the rubber feet underneath it um but anyway the the issue was to attach these handles you had to remove these little screws and they're very difficult to see we'll get some close-up shots here um there's these little Flathead screws that go through this rod and into this cap so this is like a a steel cap I do believe this is steel as you can see it's just round so that little Flathead screw right there you've got to loosen the screw which is just threading into this cap so this cap plugs a hole where that handle goes in now the cap as you can see is round so as you're trying to remove the screw it's just wanting to spin the cap and what made it worse is the fact that they because they didn't want anything like rattling loose or whatever there's a slight amount of Loctite on these screws yeah it's blue locti it's nothing crazy I'm not about to apply any heat to this cuz I even a heat gun probably would have helped but I didn't want to discolor the metal or anything in any way so you'll notice there's some scratching and stuff on the screws and it's like kind of bent a little bit because the flathead screwdriver can't go in straight because of the fact that it's through that center of the rod so it goes in kind of at an angle and then as you're trying to turn it's wanting to jump out because of the Loctite and although this is an engineering sample that was manually put together um they did say they might have gotten a little bit liberal with the locktite so that's uh they were like sorry about that I'm like well there's got to be a better way because what I ended up doing was and I fortunately was able to do this without scratching the aluminum but I I took a razor blade like a thin like box cutter razor blade and kind of wedged it between the cap and the aluminum body in The Recess hole you can't tell because his handle's there that's recessed so the handle's going into the metal so I was able to create like a wedge that would give me just enough resistance to make it eventually turn so the very first thing they implemented and this this probably isn't going to be all that cheap because this isn't some like off-the-shelf machined steel cap like I'm sure these are being made specifically for this it would be super cheap if they were able to just like hey we'll take these off the shelf and just use them but these are being made for this particular use so what ends up uh they ended up doing was coming up with this so essentially it's the exact same like cap only they've added like a nipple to it for lack of a better term it looks like a side profile of a very happy boob okay I don't know how else to say it but that nipple keeps it from being able to turn inside the hole so that means they probably wouldn't even need to necessarily use Loctite either now when they're putting it together but because it doesn't turn um they could actually get that screw pretty snug the one thing I did mention in this whole mechanism that I wish they had was some maybe an allen head screw instead of the Flathead screw no mention of that in the email so maybe we still to deal with the flatheads but you know what it'll be a lot easier now the fact that this cap can't turn so already you can see the company made a choice to I don't know how many of these they had made already they haven't started like full produ full scale production yet so I assume there's not a lot of these made but it's not going to it's this is something that's turned on like an industrial lathe kind of a deal right that's just it's a machine that's just turning them Laing them chopping them and just there you go it's easy it's going to be a bit more work now to be able to machine that nipple in there so they're in they're incurring additional manufacturing cost I'm sure probably not a huge cost but definitely more expensive than this because of the fact that they recognized like hey this is maybe a problem it's probably something people would only have to go through like once but one of just one of those did not want to come off I was able to get it off but I was starting to think like dang maybe I'm not going to be able to put the handles on and that's not a good customer experience for especially for a premium product like this that's you know well over $300 for this case the other thing we talked about and this was a this was a more major problem as far as I'm concerned is the GPU Mount so as you can see this skeleton here or the spine as they're calling it it's all Rod It's All Steel Rod right steel rod that's been kind of milled and made Flat so that we have our light bar attached to it and all that sort of stuff and then you can see right here we have this adjustable Riser that allows us to mount our GPU but for tall gpus we can push the Riser down to get the top farther away from the top of the case we don't have any issues with cabling and stuff but the only place that mounts is right here and this is almost more like a like a plug so you can see that that that has two adjustable positions there's a screw hole right above it and then we're in the lower position right now cuz we did drop it down so if I just take our 480 and sort of like slot that in there real quick so it's all fine and dandy Until you realize as I just tilted it right there the GPU wanted to fall out so it doesn't have anything holding it in place up here which is normally where most of the weight is taken in a case is something attaches to there and then as you loosen do that a few times that screw loosens and then it doesn't hold its position so what I said was this would be a terrible transport type of case meaning if you had small form factor you probably going to land parties or most people I know that are super into sff like to travel on airplanes to go to land parties and stuff and you might be thinking like who does that I know people that do that okay it's a very real obvious thing so this would not be a comfortable solution for traveling in a Pelican case or something and and not having this like flop out of its position so what they're going to be doing is right along here so remember this whole thing can shift up and down and in and out okay so right now we have it sort of shifted but they are going to be Milling a long Port right here that also has a a metal block that's going to go on top of the corner right here that then threads into it so you're going to have this block threaded into the GPU and then that block threaded into a a long slot on the frame right here we'll call it the GPU frame that then is going to give us at least our second major point of contact so there's three points of contact when the GPU is attached there is the slot itself and you don't want that taking load you don't want that being loadbearing that's that will break it's plastic and small pins right the second place is we already showed you where that screw is that's normally in a normal case where those will like rest in a slot so it takes weight and then the third point of contact is the top screws which hold that down so it can't possibly pop out of that slot so without this there as you can see right now watch I can just pull it up well I guess I could if that screw was looser but um anyway so that's going to allow us now to have that third point of contact which is desperately needed to me this was the biggest concern of the current design the other stuff like the screws and all that I mean that's that's problematic but it's not major this is Major the last thing you want is damage to your motherboard uh well I guess it wouldn't be your motherboard this is a riser cable you don't want to damage your Riser cable you don't want to damage the slot lot on your GPU um you don't want it flopping around and banging inside your case you don't want to damage a fan or your wires cuz if if we had wires attached to this right now and it wanted to flop out it could be yanking on the wires we know how the 12volt high power PL plug is we don't want to put any undue stress on that so anyway I'm actually realizing just how good the founders card looks in here like we did with our review we used the stricks card to see how one of the biggest cards on the the market would work as you could see we'd still have room for a radiator and a fan right here cuz this does have a fan and rad that come out right there so maybe if I were to do like a AO or whatever I don't know whatever I just like to look at build cases and think about what the builds could potentially be like so I'm going to go a and get on out of here this video is probably longer than it needed to be but I wanted to sort of show you the this is what I love about working with Brands like Thor zone is the fact that it doesn't take them they're not this giant aircraft carrier of a ship although I shouldn't use aircraft carrier as an example they're very maneuverable they are not the new icon of the Sea's largest cruise ship in the world that just made its way into Miami that literally looks like a city yes we've all seen giant cruise ships this thing is absolutely redonkulous it takes a long time to turn that sucker in a different direction they are a speedboat they they are literally like we're water skiing behind this thing because they are so maneuverable and that's what I love about small companies that are just a that one are able to be like hey we've got designed people that are doing nothing but working on this right now so let's make this change let's make it happen and they came up with the solution so quickly and that's the thing is we were like oh yeah there needs to be a thing I didn't know what the thing needed to be but they did they saw my my reaction and they were like hey here's how we'll do it and I and I love that they came up with it and you know I just I I like that the new caps are kind of booby shaped I mean that's fun so all right than I don't know what it's time to go okay the more I talk the more I'm going to dig myself into YouTube jail okay all right guys thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one links below go watch the review and check out the brand\n"