The Raspberry Pi, lovingly called RPi by fans, did for electronics what 3D printing did for design. It allowed almost anyone to come up with interesting, innovative, and sometimes just amusing projects that need a very small and cheap computer to function. The size of a credit card and less than $100 (going as low as $35 even!), the Raspberry Pi is a barebones and naked single-board computer (SBC) that you can insert almost anywhere and add to any design. That said, there are some use cases for the RPi that require a proper enclosure and those are a dime a dozen these days. This one case, in particular, goes over the top and puts the small pocket-sized computer inside a box that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a miniaturized gaming desktop, complete with multiple fans and RGB lighting.
Designer: Sunfounder
Truth be told, this Raspberry Pi 5 case really goes overboard considering the limitations of the computer in terms of performance. You’ll only ever be able to play very light computer games on it, so associating it with a gaming desktop seems out of character, but it definitely gives it some style. Then again, we did see an even more exaggerated liquid cooling system for the Raspberry Pi that makes this case actually look reasonable.
The Pironman 5, as the case is called, is also unlike the majority of Raspberry Pi cases in that it’s actually made of aluminum instead of plastic, just like a typical desktop tower. And like many gaming PCs these days, one side and a part of its back it made of transparent acrylic that lets you take a peek into the computer’s innards, not that there’s that much to see anyway. The RPi, after all, is just a single board that has everything soldered into it, but the case does have a few interesting bits that will make it worth looking into.
There are three fans, which is again overkill, and two of them have RGB lighting. Equally interesting is how the case exposes all the RPi’s ports on the case’s back, just like what you’d expect from a desktop computer, despite the board having those ports on different sides. There’s even a way to access the GPIO pins without opening up the case, making expansion and modification super easy. You can add an NVMe SSD or control the computer with an IR remote control, all of which are not available in the base Raspberry Pi.
The Pironman 5 is cute and eccentric, and few will probably be using the case aside from a few niche situations. It makes the single-board computer look more interesting and more usable as a desktop computer, but you pay the price in terms of space, power consumption, and the literal $80 cost. Then again, that’s the beauty of the culture that the RPi started, allowing anyone and everyone to come up with interesting designs, even if they turn out to be impractical in the end.
