That is pretty weird 😳

Is it not meant to be used with a 90° angle plug?

Is it not meant to be used with a 90° angle plug?

It is. And the feet are of course there to elevate it enough to clear the angled plug and also allow enough room for the exhaust air to escape.

However, it still seems like an incredibly stupid design, in terms of both practicality and airflow.

I think you mean "dustflow", with a fan pointing straight to the floor.

jwt27 wrote:

I think you mean "dustflow", with a fan pointing straight to the floor.

Well, I guess the fan blows out of the case, so it would not suck dust in... But at the same time it makes the entire design even more of a brainfart, since warm air rises upwards, and there does not seem to be a fan up top, where does the hot air go? And is there any fan pulling air in the case, if not, then go slap the people who bought a computer like that 😜

First thing that came to mind was a table with holes in it through which both the power cables and the ventilation could go through.. hiding at least some of the "ugly cables".

Then I remembered that some people use sort of metal cages to hold their PCs under their desks - they're hung in the air, so there's space enough for the cables, but you don't really need the "feet" in that case.. (the secondary reason for the "cage" is theft prevention; I've mostly seen this arrangement in schools).

But yeah, odd.

I recently came across another one.
A lady had flown down here from Europe, packed all the PC components in her suitcase and called me to assemble everything for her.
So I asked her to find a new case locally near her flat as I couldn't carry one on the bike (possible, but awkward).
I honestly never thought I'd see one of these again and luckily it had the angled plug which was in fact a passthrough cable to the rear.
Maybe just a third world set up?

If that last PSU pictured, is taking/sucking in cold(?) air from the (perforated) front of the case, and pushing it out on the bottom ('closed loop' sorta), it is almost like having the PSU outside the case - the airflow not affecting (or being affected by) the temperature of the other inner parts.

Or am I overthinking it...? 🤣
Might be a tiny extra advantage in battling hotter climates, assuming that the rest of the case has normal/sufficient cooling.

An added benefit would also be that the case could be much smaller(space saving), micro-ATX like, and still fit a full sized ATX mobo... I think ?

Is the case one that can be oriented in more than one direction? If it is, it's possible that the plug for the main PSU may be obscured and unusable in a flat orientation.

First thing I thought of was how some audio equipment has "bumpers" to prevent pushing it so far back to the wall as to damage connectors. Having it standing up is certainly unique, but it isn't the only case I've seen with the front PSU (Lian-Li has made a few cases with the PSU in the front-bottom, but it isn't exhausted straight down). I don't see any dimensional advantage to this kind of orientation either - it doesn't look like they managed to make the tower shorter/smaller by re-arranging the PSU.

Here's a picture of what I'm thinking of:

You can see the rubber "squares" on either side that will provide some clearance for wiring in the event that the unit is pushed all the way back up against the wall. Not the most common thing on audio equipment, but it isn't so uncommon as to be rare IME.

Perhaps they're trying to "rip off" Silverstone's "stack flow" design?

That's standing "right side up" and SS' reasoning is that heat rises, so orient components to vent "up" - I don't know how well it works in practice, but it's their new thing. If this case is meaning to copy that, it seems like they're doing it backwards though. 🤣

Does it seem like the machine runs very hot in practice? I'd expect with a low power/efficient PSU there shouldn't be a lot of heat being exhausted, so as long as it isn't sitting on shag carpet it shouldn't cook itself, but otherwise I don't see any advantages. Do you know anything about the manufacturer or model of this case? Certainly an oddball. 😕

bestemor: Perhaps you're onto something there - I have a Thermaltake PSU that has two fans and would "work" like that, assuming there was enough clearance for the exhaust at the bottom. Still seems somewhat counter-intuitive as heat rises, and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be kind of noisy as well.

I never made a note of the brand of case, but I'm finding out. Obviously, it's some obscure Chinese brand.
It actually sits upright quite nicely as the feet are oversized of course.
I don't see any advantages to this design at all to be honest.
Before I fitted the mobo, I had a good look around the case to see if I could rearrange stuff, but no.
I asked the lady customer, who herself has been in computing (game designer/programmer) for years, if she had any idea, but she scratched her head on that one.

Edit:
The brand is Kanji and doesn't appear in any Google search as I suspected. 😀

Very odd indeed - I can also see why "Kanji" isn't going to return any results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji). Does the PSU have the "bottom" fan per bestemor's idea, or is there even a cutout for front intake like that?

And somewhat unrelated, what graphics card is that? 😵

The PSU is the cheapo single fan variety and the only cutout is what you see for the PSU exhaust.
All I remember is that the GPU is an Asus of some variety.