This stealthy new Gigabyte PC case might be extra sneaky with an unlicensed design

(Image credit: Gigabyte)

A tweet from the Gigabyte Aorus France Twitter account has revealed 3D renders of the company’s new project stealth case. It’s a nice matt black looking offering where the cabling is all orientated to the back of the motherboard. The idea is it will greatly improve cable management and also airflow, by not having a mess of cables coming out the front dangling all over your components.

👀 pic.twitter.com/4jR1BQvTbQDecember 13, 2021

But this isn’t where the stealth ends for this motherboard. GinjFo (spotted by Hot Hardware) has posted what look like legit product shots of an actual case. It shows how the wires would be contained as well as the orientation of the parts inside. It’s a nice clean, stealthy looking build.

Oh my, dear readers, but it could get even sneakier. According to Hot Hardware, this case is suspiciously similar to a patent held by Maingear since back in 2011. The patent designs and explanation reveal a very similar case design. While the extent to which this case borrows concepts from the Maingear patent cannot be confirmed, Maingear CEO, Wallace Santos appears to agree there are some similarities.

“While I’m not happy to see Gigabyte productized something based on my patent without proper licensing, especially since we reviewed our new design approach with them directly years ago, I’m more concerned with making sure we continue to take the industry forward with this new design innovation and its obvious advantages," Santos told Hot Hardware.

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"Our motherboard and case with hidden connectors design offers far superior cable routing and management, with better airflow across the front of the motherboard area. We would love to see the industry get on board with the design, so all PC OEMs can benefit, as well as DIY enthusiast PC builders."

Santos even revealed that he had even pitched the design to Gigabyte, along with several other companies back in the day. Despite interest from the companies, due to the nice clean design, the overall disruption in case design wasn’t desirable at the time. Nowadays, cases are in all sorts of cool and crazy configurations, so it does make sense that a company was more willing to adapt. Though if it is an unlicensed design, perhaps that’s not quite the best way to go about it.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.