Love the look of Apple’s latest Mac Pro but don’t want to spend that much money (or deal with macOS)? Dune Case has the chassis for you. System builders can grab this Mac Pro look-alike, called the Dune Pro, on October 21 through Kickstarter.
The Dune Pro is a mid-tower chassis measuring 8.58 x 17.7 x 20.8 inches. It’s made of 3mm aluminum sandblasted with fine beads to create an anodized surface. The frame itself is stainless steel with handles and feet that extend outward.
The Dune Pro supports Mini ITX, ATX, mATX, EATX, and EEB motherboards. It provides 380mm of space for graphics card(s) after removing the hard drive enclosure; it has a 250mm clearance with the enclosure intact. The CPU fan clearance is 160mm, meaning it can handle a 32-core processor.
This chassis includes seven PCI slots, five SSD brackets, three hard drive enclosures supporting up to 11 drives, and a motherboard extender. The top panel features one USB-C port supporting 10Gbps data transfers (Type-E male), and a second USB-C port supporting 5Gbps (20-pin).
Based on the specifications, this chassis doesn’t ship with fans. Instead, system builders can install their two 80mm fans of choice in the back. The front supports three fans at 120mm or two fans at 140mm. It also handles a 120mm, 240mm, or 360mm all-in-one radiator with fans.
While the Mac Pro provides a handle to easily lift the shell up and access its components, the Dune Pro relies on the typical side panel access. However, like the Mac Pro design, the Dune Pro’s front panel sports a cheese grater design. The company provides a similar grated design with a sound-dampening accessory that’s aimed at helping with acoustics.
“This panel has been machined at the front with large holes for air intake,” the company says. “At the back of the front panel, we’ve drawn a different pattern. This pattern is an array of dices that intersects at the ‘Y’ formation. The dice pattern is raised from the surface, which allows for sound to be dampened. We call this the Dice Y cover.”
The Kickstarter campaign begins on October 21. Pricing tiers and shipping dates are currently unknown.
Apple introduced its redesigned Mac Pro in June starting at $6,000. It’s still not available to purchase, but you can expect processor support up to a 28-core Intel Xeon W chip, up to a massive 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC memory, and up to four discrete GPUs, including the Radeon Pro Vega II and the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo.
