The Deskpi Pro is a desktop case with hardware designed to contain a Raspberry Pi 4, a cooling tower, and SSD storage in a NUC-style case, complete with a power switch and standard-size HDMI connectors.
The Deskpi Pro also moves all of the I/O and power connections to the rear of the case.
The main body is aluminum, while the front and back panels are smoked, laser-cut acrylic.
The overall appearance is sleek and pleasant.
I ordered this unit that I planned to use as either a server or workstation using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB board and some type of USB/SATA drive, either internally or externally.
The kit comes with everything necessary to mount the cooler, fan, and an internal 2.5-inch SATA hard drive or an M.2 SATA stick. I happened to have several 2.5-inch drives laying about, so I opted for one of those.
Installation is fairly straightforward, as the instruction manual included is illustrated and concise. The one caveat, at least in my case, is that most of the parts are tiny, such as m2.5 screws and brass posts, which can be tedious to install and hard to find if inadvertently dropped.
I had planned to use one of my pre-loaded Debian 10 Mate USB thumb drives to copy the operating system from the thumb drive to the internally mounted 2.5-inch SSD, but the system refused to boot.
Apparently, the bridge that connects one of the two USB-3 ports to the internally-mounted SSD somehow interferes with the other USB-3 port.
I finally disassembled the unit, took out the SSD, flashed the SSD with the appropriate OS, reassembled the system and it came to life.
My only other tribulation was with the smoked-acrylic panels.
When they were laser-cut, the panel didn’t allow for any “wiggle-room” variations in height or component location.
As a result, I had to use a set of small files to carefully file away some of the acrylics in order to properly seat the panels.
While the finished product looks good, I’m not sure if I would get another unit, simply because I’m willing to give up a little “style” in order to have a more easy-to-maintain, functional unit.