What Happens When an AI Generates Designs for PC Cases? (tomshardware.com) 94
Someone on Reddit used the Midjourney AI image generator to create "a selection of 28 fantastically alluring case designs" for the Mini ITX PC, reports Tom's Hardware:
Our sample gallery of the AI-generated Mini ITX PCs embedded above features quite a few designs that are rather rotund. This isn't a bias of the AI; instead, Hybective admits he has a fondness for Wheatley (the AI robot from the Portal franchise) and has wanted a spherical PC ever since casting eyes on the Games Sphere (a GameCube parody) in teen sitcom Drake & Josh....
For his shared Mini ITX PC case images, the Redditor says he commonly used 'spherical' as one of the inputs into Midjourney. More specifically, at least some of the images were generated with the prompt "Sphere ITX PC build hyper realistic," or similar.
For his shared Mini ITX PC case images, the Redditor says he commonly used 'spherical' as one of the inputs into Midjourney. More specifically, at least some of the images were generated with the prompt "Sphere ITX PC build hyper realistic," or similar.
So it's like (Score:5, Insightful)
fitting a square board in a round case?
Re:So it's like (Score:5, Insightful)
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Keeping useless people entertained is useful.
It's not overstating it to state that this stops revolutions and famines. The downside is that it spreads disease. If AI is the new opium of the masses, I'm hooked. Also, I'm always looking for a reason to upgrade.
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Keeping useless people entertained is useful.
Useless.
When we see proclamations like these, it is always helpful to remind ourselves that, with some people, every accusation is an admission and that every insult is a projection.
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You would think these people could quit wasting time and do something useful.
Don't be judgemental. Some people work on cars, others watch K-dramas on TV, and a few make custom computer cases. None of these hobbies makes anyone "better" than anyone else.
I spent a pleasant weekend helping my son pimp out his computer. It was quality father-son time, although we did cheat a bit: The LEDs are controlled by an Arduino, not the main computer.
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Reasonable (Score:2)
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This is a paid promotion, and you have been tricked into being part of the "social media buzz" sold by Slashdot's parent company.
Even if that is true, the most effective form of protest against people trying to 'trick you into being part of the social media buzz' is to ignore it. It's kind of hilarious that the 'smartest guy on Slashdot' just failed miserably at even that simple task.
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Lol, my fan fooled you. Wasn't me. AC was a good call.
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I have my first true fan!
"You like me! You really like me!" -Sally Fields misquote
Too bad my fan doesn't know than vs then. Oh well. Got what I paid for.
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Oh no! My fan isn't even a fan! I am sad. I'm not your buddy creamier. You'd know that if you were a real fan. You're just that spammer dude who hates some other guy I never see posting and generates more spam and garbage than anyone else here. You're worse than the Nazi ascii art guy. Not even remotely humorous.
And here I thought I'd made it to the big time but no. All my genius is being credited to some spammer's phantom nemesis.
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Boring. You don't even have the right guy. You can't even tell who your phantom nemesis is. You're not very bright.
Do you read _anything_ I write on here?
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Do you read _anything_ I write on here?
No because it's worse than what you excrete all over that YouTube channel. Go back to writing child porn stories.
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I suppose running around insulting yourself is a way to get attention. Negative attention is better than none. I still don't really know who his boyfriend creamier is except for his copy pasta rants about him. Or himself, as the case may be.
Either way it's boring shit I skip over.
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That's why you have no idea I'm not your lover creamier.
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Boring, repetitive, wrong. You created this account to be a troll. Until you actually say something new, going to ignore you from now on. Have fun alone in the dark, Chris.
Automating the easy part! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any eighth grader with some free time in history class can draw you a wicked cool ITX case. The real trick is designing one that has all the necessary stuff inside and is easy to work on without gashing your hands and shorting your motherboard. Or having useful failure modes like melting or cracking or overheating your CPU and RAM and SSDs.
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I have a 3600x in a node 202, this is a simple flat pizza box ITX case and it requires a special psu, carefully chosen cpu cooler (ID-COOLING IS-55 if anyone is looking at one of the largest that will fit and still being made) and like 9-10 screws just to get the video card out
why? I dunno I think its neat ... I think that would be the average ITX user otherwise what you have is a uATX case ... 2 slots shorter, and what fun is that
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I have a 3600x
All I got is a 386SX
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Ah, a Fractal Design [fractal-design.com] case. I guess it isn't going to house any of the latest desktop GPUs being a pizza box. I though those went out of a fashion over a decade ago partially due to bigger fans allowing a case to run quieter?
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i have 2 120mm case fans, and the 120mm cpu fan might as well be outside the case its fairly quiet under load
Re: Automating the easy part! (Score:2)
one that has all the necessary stuff inside
Get real, dude. We all know these things are mainly made to look at. Cooler Master even sells two types of "silent" cases. You don't need me to explain why the only difference is that one has a glass panel on the side.
Re:Automating the easy part! (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the prettiest a functional cases was the Mac Pro cylinder. Easy to add memory. East to swap the SSD, very good heat management.
Gaming machines are like mustang cars. They make the boys think they have a fast ride, but in fact are often junk. They are styled to charge a premium for basically something that only exists to match your racing office chair. So one can waste hours on end plying with your joy stick.
Practically speaking, it is like letting an architect design a building without the engineer or parts buyer checking the spec. You will end up with bolt that cannot be acquired or made, so the contractor swaps a part, and the balcony fails down killing dozens of people.
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My favourite in that regard was the Silicon Graphics O2. From pulling out the power cord to starting it booting again, a memory upgrade took less than 3 minutes the one time I got to do it. A disk install or disk swap was much faster, took less than 30 seconds.
3 minutes? That's about 3 times as long as it takes on a sparcstation, and about 10 times as long as it takes on a VME Sun :)
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And that's infinitely longer than the time it takes to upgrade the RAM or SSD in the new M2 Mac mini. /sarcasm
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My gaming PC sits in a modified coffee table. Was $30.
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Wait, what! My gaming chair doesn't give me more fps??
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One of the most perfect tower cases was the Mac from the late 1990s. It opened, upgradable items slid out. Very easy.
The best case Apple ever did was the IIci. You popped off the lid with two snap clips, then you could slide the power supply up and out of the case, then you could slide the motherboard forward and lift it out too. Everything else has been inferior to that in some way. They didn't even need any sharp RF shields because the case was sprayed with a metallic coating.
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Loved it.
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The Macintosh LC was a several-years-later release but was contemporary to the Macintosh II line (it appeared about halfway through their run.) It was a low cost design, primarily in that it reduced labor (it could be assembled entirely by machine) and yet it still cost $3,000 with a 12" color display. This was about half the cost of a IIci... which it seems could also be mostly machine-assembled. The motherboard install might have been tricky at the time, but a human could do that very quickly.
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You had an SSD in the late 90s?!
Amen to that (Score:2)
The real trick is designing one that has all the necessary stuff inside and is easy to work on without gashing your hands and shorting your motherboard.
What I want to see is 20 designs with animations that all hinge open the case in some amazing ways, showing how various high end motherboards and graphics cards all fit within the space and showing cooling specs and airflow diagrams.
Re:Amen to that (Score:4, Interesting)
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The AI is here just to spark ideas.
Yes but ideas are always the easiest part, not impressed. As noted any half competent artist could come up with visual case ideas, and under that criteria these cases are actually mostly kind of bland compared to what they could be.
A much more interesting use of AI would be for someone to say "here's a visual idea for a case, now alter it as little as possible so it works for desired motherboards and graphics cards and power systems.
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Any eighth grader with some free time in history class can draw you a wicked cool ITX case.
"good taste" is not ubiquitous, and is often quite rare. and styling can often be one of the hardest aspects to succeed, as you're merging form and function.
for example, there's a reason honda went to the italians for the original NSX's body.
The real trick is designing one that has all the necessary stuff inside and is easy to work on without gashing your hands and shorting your motherboard.
this is the easy part, as evidenced by all the cheap cases that do this without issue. i mean, shorting your mobo? maybe 30 years ago.
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It's like SilverStone only designed the case in CAD without trying to actually fit all parts and cables into their case.
Oh yes. My first NAS is a Silverstone mini-ITX case, and despite including a backplane in it, cabling is still a nightmare. It has an internal bay for four 2.5" devices and their cables have to go through the same space as the cables to the backplane. Getting it all together is very tricky, requiring right angle connectors in some places but not others and a very specific order of operations. Not fun.
Spherical cases look nice (Score:3)
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R2 (Score:4, Funny)
R2 what did they do to you?
Re:R2 (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah I was first struck by how closely they resemble Wheatley and the other AI cores in Portal
Stop drooling dude (Score:2)
Some of those case designs are sorta interesting but maybe y'all might want to dial back that "alluring" talk. It's a fricking electronics box not an onahole.
Also, those are 3D renders, not the actual cases. In real life they might not be so "alluring" unless you actually build them out of hard, polished and expensive metals.
Re:Stop drooling dude (Score:4, Insightful)
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Standards, please! (Score:2)
Look, I'm not one to disparage anybody. Kim is okay. But if the only part you're obscuring on your girlfriend is the face, you can do better than Kim.
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Don't put the PC on a pedestal. It's a tool, not an idol.
My PC is on a pedestal for the airflow through the bottom of the case you insensitive clod!
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Also, those are 3D renders
Are you sure? These AIs only make 2D images that _mostly_ get perspective right. I wonder if 3D shape or the functionality of objects can even be trained with the current models.
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Hm. Good point.
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... and the singularity will be powered by limitless energy thanks to the nuclear fusion breakthrough, right?
"In other words, they said
-2 + 3 = +1 !!! Breakthrough!!!!!!!!!
whereas anyone who knew the details would have said
-300 - 2 + 3 = -299 ? Cool bro, but..."
As someone said, this whole civilization desperately needs a reality check.
Look like ... (Score:2)
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I would buy some of them. (Score:1)
Speakers (Score:4)
Most of them look like giant speakers to me.
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Perspective (Score:1)
Seems the bot has problems with perspective in places. But there's certainly some cool ideas.
My AI added a picture of Chuck Norris! (Score:2)
Because AI knows there is a special neuron in the network reserved for Chuck Norris!
South Park is the Best Training. (Score:2)
Finally, I can get an Okama Gamesphere.
Not computer case, just picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like training an AI on pictures of airplanes and when it creates a new picture, saying it designed an airplane.
There are some very interesting applications for AI, but IMHO, this isn't one of them.
Re:Not computer case, just picture (Score:4, Informative)
There's a list of eight current cargo cults [wikipedia.org] in Wikipedia.
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These case designs remind me of all those concept cars where the designers didn't care if the driver can even see out the window, let alone have rearward visibility. I know it's all about experimenting and pushing boundaries, but... things still have to actually work, and we already have enough stupid-looking crap on the market that barely works.
Honestly, these would be more interesting as speakers than computer cases.
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There are only 3 legitimate case form-factors. (Score:1)
1U, 2U, and 4U. Of course, there's an infinite realm of creativity in depth, so go hog-wild there.
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You forgot 3U. Those are also good.
AI is needed to do this? (Score:1)
Pfft, hardly revolutionary (Score:3)
I know the form factor imposes some restrictions, but I find these a tad ordinary
As a contrast, try some of these designs [theguardian.com] for a wider range of gadgets.
So much stuff in there... (Score:2)
Almost all of these cases have a ton of stuff. Like a dozen waterblock-like, speaker-like or fan-like things.
The AI didn't seem to get how a PC is constructed, the equivalent of earlier AI that used to make people with 3 arms and 5 legs. I guess there are more people than PCs in the training dataset (obviously). Only the one on page 6, lower left looks correct in terms of components, still weird, but it has what I expect a PC to have.
What Happens when Slashdot jumps the shark? (Score:2)
There has been a whole series of case designs on the faceboot group AI Art Universe [facebook.com] which is a million times better than this garbage. The case interiors look like poop, you can trivially find superior examples (at least you can if your internet is working, Suddenstink/Optimum has been failing me hard since the quake. I wonder if I have wiring damage.)
Looks cool, but demonstrates the limitations (Score:3)
Have a close look at the ones where there are visible fans: you'll see they are merely fan-like. Sure, they've got radial patterns, maybe with a bit of curvature, or perhaps some blur to indicate spinning. But a close look will show that the blades have weird, almost random curvatures - in some cases reversing which direction they twist along their length. In other cases, one or more blades will just randomly go missing
Or take a look at what I think are supposed to be heat pipes. They've far more organic and bendy than any production heat pipe I've ever seen. And most of them terminate in weird random blocks that would do fuck-all for heat dissipation. (Maybe their sheathed cable bundles, maybe they're coolant tubing, but my point it largely the same.)
These all demonstrate to me that the AI can certain mash together some neat concept art that vaguely has associations with computer case design. But it doesn't know what a "fan" actually is, what its purpose is, how it's constructed to accomplish that purpose, or why you often see them in computers.
Reminds me of a phase I went through in middle school. I had a fascination with the Voyager probes (still do), Star Wars (comes and goes), Apollo and the space race (still there), and sci fi in general. So I'd sketch my own space probes or spacecraft. I didn't know a damn thing about how one actually designs such things: what are the necessary components, why they are there, how they function. I knew they often had a big parabolic dish (I got good at free-handing ellipses), and a box of...stuff...behind it (I now know that's the satellite bus), and usually some long antenna thingies sticking off at different angles. The sketches looked pretty cool to my adolescent eyes, but let's not pretend they should be used to build anything real.
The ones on the last page... (Score:2)
AI is fun (Score:2)
One thing I've learned from owning an A-Frame (Score:3)
Remember RF shielding? (Score:2)
The idea of having an open display box full of LEDs, but ZERO RF shielding, makes me cringe.
Oh hell no (Score:2)
Totally impractical (Score:2)
Random copper pipes going *into the motherboard* aside, these cases are practically useless.
The design parameters are apparently to "look cool", while there is no mention of ease of access, proper cooling (yep), I/O ports, storage, or anything else really.
Though, I am sure a better AI can be programmed for good designs that take care of airflow, and component placement, while staying under 8L. But those would definitely be "boring".