QUINTESSENTIAL

“The quintessential portable gaming PC case” is the 5th culmination of my attempts at a fully capable/upgradable- yet portable gaming chassis.

Brief history:

The earliest version was an incredibly ugly welded-together conglomeration of other chassis parts that didn’t see much action, but had some potential…

The second was the result of Providence, as the hinge idea literally came to me in a dream after getting frustrated and praying for a solution. It was unsurprisingly the most successful, as it saw 12 years of service as my LAN box. I probably would still be using it if games had not moved to widescreen format. With its built-in 17" 4:3 monitor rendering it obsolete, I new I needed to incorporate a 16:9 monitor…

For the third I tried a radically different approach to reimagine my goal.
It was a tiny ITX box hanging behind a 20" monitor on a custom Aluminum stand/handle that was both hideous, and unhandy to put in a car trunk. Its short 2 year life of poor framerates and pants-leg-tearing ended when its non-standard TFX PSU failed. While this helped me to realise the importance of using normal-sized components and minimising protrusions, I went too far in the opposite direction with the fourth attempt…

Number 4 was a large briefcase-like AIO that flipped over and had a clamshell to hold peripherals. “The one-trip wonder” I called it, since I no longer needed to carry a bag for gear. This looked good- and seemed like a great idea, but resulted in a center of gravity so distant from my own that it seemed much heavier than it actually was, rendering it unpleasant to carry.

The Fifth:
After trudging around with the fourth for a couple years I realized that I had strayed from the one design that had worked; the Mk2 simply needed an update. The result is shown here in its most elaborate configuration that debuted at Quakecon 2018. This monster setup sported a dual-radiator full custom hardline loop to cool a Threadripper and pair of RX480 GPUs. I’ve since reverted to air cooling to make it lighter and more practical, but even at 52 pounds that setup was far easier to carry than the 10 pound lighter Mk4.