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Idle Hardware

What Happens When an AI Generates Designs for PC Cases? (tomshardware.com) 94

Posted by EditorDavid from the creating-cases dept.
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.
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What Happens When an AI Generates Designs for PC Cases? More

What Happens When an AI Generates Designs for PC Cases?

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  • So it's like (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @08:46PM (#63231264)

    fitting a square board in a round case?

    • If the board is 16 square inches, why not?
  • The ones that look reasonable and practical are actually very similar to what we have now. So... what to be excited about?
    • This is a paid promotion, and you have been tricked into being part of the "social media buzz" sold by Slashdot's parent company.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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.

      • 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.

        • Shut up, creimer. You're still sore he banned your 6 million UID account.

          • 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.

  • Automating the easy part! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shess ( 31691 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @09:03PM (#63231306) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      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

    • 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)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @11:46PM (#63231604) Homepage Journal
      One of the most perfect tower cases was the Mac from the late 1990s. It opened, upgradable items slid out. Very easy.

      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.

      • My gaming PC sits in a modified coffee table. Was $30.

      • Wait, what! My gaming chair doesn't give me more fps??

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mccalli ( 323026 )
          LC 'pizza box' had the same design (and was same generation I think? Or was that the IIsi?). I had one, first Mac I owned, and although the LC has had a few pot shots on its internal expansion ports over the years, the ease of access for upgrading remains the best I've had on any computer ever. Hard drive, VRAM upgrades, RAM upgrades, ethernet upgrades, CPU accelerators...

          Loved it.

          • 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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mccalli ( 323026 )
              Used to do a lot of work on a IIci. Solid beasts and I remember them as one of the best of the classic era of Macs.

      • You had an SSD in the late 90s?!

    • 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)

        by Visarga ( 1071662 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @04:46AM (#63231946)
        The normal workflow would be to load these diffusion images into 3d modelling software and create your thing in there, where you can do everything you need. With a 3d model you can animate the case opening and even model the airflow. The AI is here just to spark ideas.

        • 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.

    • I dunno man, I'm pretty shit at artsy stuff, can't get a color palette right, forget about designing something that looks visually pleasing. Starting from visual reference and doing the engineering to turn it into reality is pretty straightforward matter in comparison. Generating bunch of visual references at will and having most of them actually look good is pretty powerful starting point for most product designs. I think in years ahead we'll start seeing lots of products that begun as AI generated pics.

    • 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.

  • Spherical cases look nice (Score:3)

    by Kwelstr ( 114389 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @09:04PM (#63231310)
    I don't know if they are practical, but some look very enticing, I would get one if they come to market. '\_(O_o)_/'
    • I remember having a dream about installing a motherboard into a PC case that was designed to look like R2D2. It seemed like something that could have been achievable, even if not practical. This was in 1990, even before the special editions of eps 4-6 became popular. Looks like Lucas missed out on this opportunity.

  • R2 (Score:4, Funny)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @09:19PM (#63231368)

    R2 what did they do to you?

  • 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)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @11:34PM (#63231582)
      Here is a cheaper, more practical idea: Put your motherboard in a beige case, and just set your desktop wallpaper to the image of one of those case designs. That way you can save a ton of money, and continue to enjoy the design of those fancy cases.
      • That's the same reason I tape a picture of Kim Kardashian's face over my girlfriend's face when we have sex!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by leptons ( 891340 )
        Don't put the PC on a pedestal. It's a tool, not an idol. "It's not the thing, it's the thing that gets you to the thing"

        • 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!

    • 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.

  • ... dust magnets.

    • Also damned near impossible to manufacture. AI is good for design, but terrible for engineering.
  • I would buy some of them until I saw the price and decided the extra money was not worth it for something that sat out of sight under my desk.

  • Speakers (Score:4)

    by Vanyle ( 5553318 ) on Sunday January 22, 2023 @10:00PM (#63231432)

    Most of them look like giant speakers to me.

  • Seems the bot has problems with perspective in places. But there's certainly some cool ideas.

  • Because AI knows there is a special neuron in the network reserved for Chuck Norris!

  • Finally, I can get an Okama Gamesphere.

  • Not computer case, just picture (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @12:14AM (#63231650)
    These are not computer cases, they do not have cooling, space for components, wiring, connectors, EMI shiekding, etc. etc, nor are they designed for access, or manufactureability . Its not clear to what extent "cargo cults" ever actually existed in the Pacific, but these are AI built cargo-cult computer cases. They look real, but are not actually what they are pretending to be. They leave out all of the real complexity needed.

    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.

  • 1U, 2U, and 4U. Of course, there's an infinite realm of creativity in depth, so go hog-wild there.

  • Humans can do stupid things without AI...

  • Pfft, hardly revolutionary (Score:3)

    by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @03:55AM (#63231874) Homepage

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @08:34AM (#63232158) Journal
    These look cool, but they also demonstrate the limitations of the content generation AIs (in their present form, anyway).

    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.
  • ...all screamed "Toaster!" at me. I could set one in the kitchen and see if the granddaughters tried to find slots.
  • I like the part where the AI was like "Hmm, there should be some text here according to my training..." and just drops some random CAPTCHA text on the side of the basement cover.

  • One thing I've learned from owning an A-Frame (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:30AM (#63232418)
    It's very difficult to fit rectangular components into a non-rectangular container!

  • The idea of having an open display box full of LEDs, but ZERO RF shielding, makes me cringe.

  • I don't want a case that looks like a childs toy or a toaster.

  • 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".

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