I think the new Mac Pro looks quite nice (yes, even if it does look like a giant cheese grater), but I don’t want (or need) to pay $5,999 just to have it sitting on my desk. But if you, like me, dream of having a Mac Pro at your desk at a potentially cheaper price, PC casemaker Dune is launching a Kickstarter for the Dune Pro, a Mac Pro-like PC case.

A note on crowdfunding: Crowdfunding is a chaotic field by nature: companies looking for funding tend to make big promises. According to a study run by Kickstarter in 2015, roughly 1 in 10 “successful” products that reach their funding goals fail to actually deliver rewards. Of the ones that do deliver, delays, missed deadlines, or overpromised ideas mean that there’s often disappointment in store for those products that do get done. The best defense is to use your best judgment. Ask yourself: does the product look legitimate? Is the company making outlandish claims? Is there a working prototype? Does the company mention existing plans to manufacture and ship finished products? Has it completed a Kickstarter before? And remember: you’re not necessarily buying a product when you back it on a crowdfunding site.

It looks remarkably similar to the new Mac Pro, with a large stainless steel frame, simple holes for ventilation in the front and back panels, two USB-C ports on top of the case, and an aluminum enclosure for all your components.

However, the Dune Pro is missing the Mac Pro’s cool swiveling handle that lets you slide off the entire shell to get to the computer’s internals — instead, it seems you’ll have to gently pry off the aluminum sides to get inside the computer. The Dune Pro is also missing the Mac Pro’s custom motherboard, of course, with its special Thunderbolt 3 backbone that lets it fit proprietary “MPX Module” expansion cards.

If you really want the full-on Mac Pro cheese grater look, Dune is apparently going to sell a “sound dampening accessory” that’s an entirely new front panel with latticed holes.

Grid View







PCWorld seems to have gotten their hands on the case early, and you can see it from every angle in this video as they build a PC inside the chassis.

If you want to know just how many components you can throw into the Dune Pro, check out its overview page and its specs page. Dune says you can pre-order the Dune Pro on Kickstarter starting on October 21st.