No, it is not something huge because ultimately I am pretty happy with the design and I like to use the case as it is very much. But with that said, in the past few months the 12mm cube joints got harder to source and their price went up significantly making them an unviable option going forward.
You could call this a revision if you will, but — the first gen HUMBLE is not going to be available anymore.—
So I searched for alternative cube joints and after a little looking around I managed to find 10mm counterparts. These ones are made the exact same way from the exact same material, solid brass with nickel plating having the exact same quality to it. The only difference is the size.
Naturally, with the new cubes comes a re-design as the 6mm thread length screws are not going to fit anymore and also the holes for them on the side panels have to move closer to the edges.
This little change though opens up some other QoL improvements that (in some cases) were problematic:
– getting 2 more millimeters for the CPU cooler height making it ~64mm total. This should give a little more breathing room for fans depending on the build itself.
– as the whole bottom plate is now lower by 2mm and the motherboard sits lower and due to this the GPU is lowered by 2mm as well eliminating some PCI power cable clearance issues like with the Gigabyte 1070mini where the card is so tall the PCI power cable just would not fit under the hood without using an adapter or an aftermarket connector.
– if I am already at modifying, the motherboard plate got some as well. The 2,5″ drive cut-outs have been moved a bit back and the opening got bigger to have more room to tuck excessive cables in. I ran into this problem with some PSU brands where connectors were not ideally placed along the wires and also where cables were rather stiff. This mod should help with that.
By the way, the whole middle section cut-out for beefier cpu cooler backplates are still not happening. I rather have the option for 2×2,5″ drive mounts than to be able to mount some out of spec cooler. Interference between some drive screws and the cpu cooler backplate can still happen, just remove said screw. Also thumb screws sitting up on the baseplate like in case of the Cryorig C7 should be no problem. I had multiple builds with that specific cooler and it’s thumb screw always push against the baseplate causing zero problems whatsoever.
– as during ELFIN’s design I used the same 10 mm cubes I decided to create 2 new sets of side panels for the HUMBLE that resembles the ELFIN ones. Calling them the Modern and the Vent. These will be available to order alongside the original Classic HUMBLE side panels.
MODERN
The Modern side panel set is all about covering up the hardware without bottlenecking airflow too much. Of course there has to be some compromise but I feel this is a pretty solid middle ground.
VENT
The Vent set is about exactly the opposite end of the spectrum. The idea is to have as much cut-out as possible without making it weak or ugly. Since the dimensions are exactly the same as the original one, the side panel intake fan can still have tiny turbulence noise depending on fan type and RPM though.
Lastly, the back wing on the top/bottom panel got a tiny bit smaller to match the size of the new cube. I know it is nitpicking but the new designs called for it. The old one just felt off.
So from now on, new HUMBLE orders will come with these changes. The new side panels should make their way to the store soon and will be available to order.
Stay tuned!