Open Benchtable Takes Place of Honor in Red Dot Award Yearbook

So far, 2017 has proved to be a big year for the Open Benchtable project. After coming to market in September of 2016, we have since seen some great looking red and black models added to the product stack, the development of some real cool Min-ITX form factor offerings, plus prestigious awards from both iF Award and Red Dot. The Red Dot award happened back in April of this year when the Open Benchtable was chosen as the winning product in the category of Product Design, impressing the panel of judges with its utterly unique design approach. Today we’re really pleased to see that Red Dot have added the BC1 Open Benchtable to its Yearbook for 2017 / 2018.

The Red Dot Award Yearbook, apart from a being about as heavy and large you would expect any Yearbook to ever be, is very much produced to inspire awe. Its four hundred plus pages are filled with product designs that Red Dot have deemed worthy as examples of world class design and innovation. The Open Benchtable now rubs shoulders with world-leading product designs from companies such as Apple, Bosch, Samsung, Carl Zeiss, Dell, Daimler and Google to name but a few. Prestigious company indeed. Expect to see the Red Dot Yearbook adorning coffee tables in boardrooms and design labs around the world.

You can read the full announcement that we put out back in April of this year when the Red Dot Award first became official.

OBT-Mini – Live Feedback Streaming Session with OC-TV

The Open Benchtable project has been around for almost two years now and in that time we’ve seen so many overclockers and enthusiasts really take a shine to the product. The OBT was designed to be as lightweight portable as possible, while also supporting a full range of ATX motherboards. One side project that has taken shape in the last few months is the creation of an Open Benchtable that is designed specifically for smaller Mini-ITX boards.

The new OBT-Mini was the topic of a live feedback session on the OverClocking-TV Twitch channel a few days ago with Trouffman (one of the lead members of the OBT team) and guest Toolius leading an open discussion about the new product. The video has now been posted on the OC-TV YouTube channel and is well worth watching.

The OBT-Mini in a Mini-ITX version of the classic Open Benchtable. First unveiled just over month ago, it’s currently at the prototype stage of production and in not yet available on the market. Here are a few shots of the latest OBT-Mini prototype, just to whet your appetite:

The live video stream involves an introduction to the OBT project, the BC1 table that Streacom and ourselves have been selling and the recent success of the updated red and black versions. Trouff also reminds us about the Open Source nature of the project and how anyone can get hold of the design documentation in order to develop and make your own accessories for example. He then goes on talk about the Mini-ITX version, the OBT-Mini, comparing it to its larger brother side by side. Check out the video below which recounts the entire feedback session in full.

In the video Trouff discusses some of the design decisions that were made when developing the OBT-Mini, many of which are simply compromises that were needed to implement the design strategy of the original product into a much smaller form factor. One notable decision for example that was taken, is that the OBT-Mini will support only smaller form factor SFX power supplies, not full ATX power supplies. There is also mention of what colors will be available for the OBT-Mini, plus several other questions regarding availability and pricing.

The OBT-Mini is a prototype at the moment, but in the near future we hope it will become available here on the OBT website. Watch this space!

Don’t forget that you can also make your valued contribution to the design procedure by posting your opinions on this forum thread.

Want the Open Benchtable for your Micro-ATX, Full-size ATX and big motherboard ? The new batch in red, silver and black are shipping right now (while supply last)!