LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 hours
DIFFICULTY: Easy
With the hardware selected (although mildly erroneous on the PCIe SSD side, but we’ll leave that to the end), it’s time to start building this beautiful thing, and trust us when we say that it’s going to look like one heck of a machine when it’s done.
The bulk of that is thanks to the incredible design of the Geometric Future Model 8 Dharma. Okay, it may have a funky name, but this thing really is phenomenal. From a purely design aesthetic, it’s just good to see a manufacturer try to do something new and different. That goes for the majority of the company’s cases, too. All of them are somewhat odd, weird, and outlandish, with warping designs and differing materials (one literally has a cloth front). They deserve credit for taking those risks.
The majority of the time, the vast swathe of cases out there from the big manufacturers are pretty much the same. You get the same internal layout, cable management, and power supply shroud—even the same colours and chassis designs. There’s a reason the market is flooded with fishbowl cases and Lian Li PC O11 Dynamic imitators.
Capitalism drives competition and brings down prices—usually. It’s the reason we won the Cold War, and a defining element of Western civilization; one that very much drives progress. But when it comes to larger companies with significant investment behind them, there typically comes a desire to have predictable returns and continual growth—say, 10 percent gains year on year, rather than erratic swings one way or another. That’s where consistent and safe strategy is preferred over bold and dynamic plays and risk-taking.
What that tends to lead to is one smaller manufacturer taking a risk, trying to make a name for themselves, and designing something remarkable that usually challenges that status quo and becomes massively popular as a result, only for every other major manufacturer to then go out of their way to imitate that design, a year or so later, improving on it slightly, adding their own finer details, and pricing it accordingly.
That then ironically makes
