Early Beginnings & Our Vision

From the day we started, our mission was to create minimalistic — but not boring — PC Tech. We feel that too many companies these days focus solely on minimalism and budget, i.e. designing products that don't stand out. For us, the real challenge is designing something that looks clean, memorable and like something from the future — it's not always easy, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

While our products are among the most expensive in the industry, this allows us to focus on something we value deeply — using only the highest quality materials. We love the robustness of freshly milled aluminum, the mirrory look of nickel-plated stainless steel, and the ultra-smooth feel of a bead-blasted, anodized surface. While it's hard to make a product completely indestructible — it doesn't mean that we won't try.

MJOLNIR

While technically not our first attempt at a product (that being the THOR eGPU), MJOLNIR was the first time we successfully shipped a product to thousands of people worldwide. Our goal was to make a small form factor case that fit full-sized PC hardware at a volume of just below 10 liters. The main inspiration for the design came from jet engines — our goal being to make it look sleek yet aggressive. However, none of us had any prior PC building knowledge, nor did we know which aspects of case design that were important to focus on.

Luckily, we found the SFF.Network forum, where all our questions were answered and the MJOLNIR project developed into a serious contender for the SFF crown. The only thing left was to launch the Kickstarter campaign and make it reality.

Kickstarter

Our launch went off with a BANG, fully funding the campaign in less than 6 minutes and unlocking all stretch goals in the first few days. We were all set on starting production until the news of a global pandemic started circulating the news — it was the start of covid-19. Not long after, pretty much all our suppliers closed shop and told us they'd be back once the pandemic situation improved. With production stuck in limbo, we used the following 6 months to carefully go over each part of MJOLNIR and try to improve everything we could.

Once production resumed, things went pretty smoothly, especially since this was our first attempt running mass production and worldwide shipping. The MJOLNIRs turned out better than we'd anticipated — and while it had it's flaws (more on this in the next section) — we were very proud of what we were able to achieve. Last but not least, MJOLNIR wouldn't have been possible without you guys believing in us, sticking around during the pandemic, and pushing us to complete the project.

Making Mistakes

The biggest mistake we made during the MJOLNIR project was not making the necessary adjustments as the project grew and got bigger. Even at its peak, when we were shipping thousands of MJOLNIRs worldwide, our core business was still handled like a DIY project. As a results, order fulfillment was often much delayed, our customer support suffered and replacement parts took way too long. It became clear that in order to continue with our mission of creating minimalistic — but not boring — PC tech, we had to tear everything down and rebuild it stronger from the ground up.

Making Improvements

The first thing we did was to adopt a new mindset — building a great product is simply not enough. The supporting framework around the product has to be equally great, otherwise you'll inevitably run into problems further down the line. Secondly, we had to directly improve two critical aspects of our business, delivery times and customer support.

Let's start with delivery times. Improving this begins all the way down in the design phase, where we go over every aspect of the product and eliminate everything that can cause trouble during manufacturing and assembly. We call it designing with robustness in mind.

Now onto customer support. The first thing we did was rewrite our sales and refunds policy to allow anyone to cancel their pre-order at any time, meaning if you think the wait is too long, you can get a full refund — no questions asked. We also created comprehensive compatibility lists to help you choose the best hardware for your build. Finally, after placing a pre-order, you'll be able to log in and access the latest news about your order, update your address, and check tracking information.

We also completely overhauled our warranty management; starting with NANOQ, we'll make sure to create replacement parts in advance. For MJOLNIR, we only did this after reports of damage came in, meaning the affected customers had to wait a long time for us to re-manufacture and send out their replacement parts.

We believe that these changes will not only dramatically decrease the number of delays, but also create a much better customer experience.

NANOQ

For our next big project we wanted to design something that had everything we liked about the MJOLNIR, as well as everything we thought it was missing. Our goal was to make a product that was unfathomably robust, beautiful and versatile — and in our humble opinion, the NANOQ is precisely that and more.

To start, we removed all panels and replaced them with a beautiful concave unibody shell that can withstand anything. The ventilation pattern was redesigned and expanded to allow for a larger open-area over the hardware, then CNC:d directly into the unibody shell, meaning NANOQ is vastly more breathable than MJOLNIR. Our Handles addon enables you to set it down in any orientation you like, be it horizontal or vertical, as well as easily carry it around. In addition to being able to fit pretty much any GPU on the market, NANOQ has up to 4x the cooling capacity of MJOLNIR for the CPU. It also features a standalone core; however, this time with vastly superior design built on top of a reinforced stainless-steel structure. Last but definitely not least, we're releasing this project in two small form factor sizes — 11 and 16 liters — meaning we have something for everyone, regardless if you're trying to build something tiny and portable or just plain powerful.

Now we could talk about it all day, but here's a much better way to experience the NANOQ.

TETRA

Continuing on the design language of the NANOQ, next we're venturing into the exciting world of console-style PC cases. Our aim was to create something that seamlessly fit in both your living room and backpack, without sacrificing compatibility, aesthetics, or performance. In short, the perfect home theatre PC (HTPC) — the TETRA.

Similar to NANOQ, TETRA features a robust unibody shell and comes in two sizes — 8.8 and 12.3 liters — with four stunning finishes and two layout options: horizontal and vertical. The 360° ventilation pattern ensures unbeatable and ultra-quiet cooling performance, all while supporting some of the largest GPUs on the market.

We're excited to see TETRA become a part of your home setup. Check out the official TETRA page!