Over the last few years In Win has really stepped up their game. They have been introducing limited edition case designs that are extremely unique and nothing like anything else on the market. After the first few designs I assumed they would run out of ideas but they have continued to innovate by incorporating tempered glass into some of the case designs. As most of you know I am a big fan of Mini-ITX builds so when In Win asked me if I wanted to check out their 901, a Mini-ITX case that incorporates some of the unique features of their concept chassis.

Product Name: In Win 901

Review Sample Provided by: In Win

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Specifications

Material

4mm/1.6mm Aluminum

Tempered Glass

External Drive Bay

Slim ODD x 1 (Includes SATA EZ-Swap Module)

Internal Drive Bay

3.5” / 2.5” x 2 (Includes SATA EZ-Swap Module)

2.5” x 2

M/B Form Factor

Mini-ITX

Power Supply

ATX12V, PSII and EPS (Up to 200mm)

I/O Port

USB 3.0 x 2, HD Audio

I/O Expansion Slot

Full Height PCI-E Slot x 2 (Up to 300mm)

Thermal Solution

Supports

- 90mm Rear Fan x 1

- 120mm Bottom Fan x 1

- 120mm Liquid Cooling Radiator

- CPU heatsink up to 130mm

Dimension (HxWxD)

350 x 173 x 400mm

13.8” x 6.8” x 15.7”

 

 


Packaging

The box for the 901 isn’t anything all that eye catching. You get a white box with black trim and the 901 logo up in the top corner. Along the side a few of the cases features are highlighted with icons, much like we see on a lot of video card boxes. In Win did however include a full specification listing around on the side to make sure you know exactly what will fit before taking the 901 home.

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Inside the padding is a little better than with a standard case. Typically we would get Styrofoam but this is a more resilient plastic foam that did a great job keeping the 901 safe on its way to me.

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All of the 901’s parts, documentation, and accessories come in a resalable bag that was tucked into the packaging. This is a lot better than the cardboard boxes that most manufactures use. Not only can you see what is inside, but with the seal on the top you know you won’t have a small screw slip out in the future.

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In win included a hand full of black zip ties to help keep your wiring clean. Along with that you get a few sticky clips for you to use to hold your wiring down. They also include a black rag to keep the tempered glass and aluminum design free from finger prints.

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The documentation is actually a fold out poster, something I’m not a big fan of. When trying to find a step during a build I would rather flip through pages than open up a large poster.

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In Win really went above and beyond when it comes to the screws. Each type of screw has been bagged and tagged with a small label. Each label lets you know the screws use and even more impressive to me is they included all of the dimensions and thread of the screw, so if you need another you could find an exact match.

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The last step in keeping the 901 safe is the soft black bag that they wrapped it up in. I would suggest keeping this around after building your PC for when you pack things up and go to a LAN event.

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Outside

The 901 is one of the most unique cases to ever come into the LanOC offices yet the overall design from the exterior is one of the simplest. In Win designed the 901 to have an uninterrupted aluminum panel that goes all the way around the case. To complement that aluminum both of the side panels are a tinted tempered glass. This is a lot different than other cases because typically side panel windows are made of a Lexan plastic that would bend and break if not attached to the metal side panel. The solid glass panel gives you full view of the interior of the 901 from both sides. The black tinting helps keep your bad wiring job from being broadcast to the world. This means you can see inside when you look closely or when there is lighting inside, but not as much day to day.

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As I mentioned the side panels are made of tempered glass. Just as a warning the case does ship with a sticker warning you of this. Of course if you bought the case you will most likely know about it considering this is the case’s most prominent feature.

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Once you get past the glass side panels and the aluminum frame you will notice that there is one section of the case that is completely open. This is a little odd at first glance but after a close look you will notice that there is actually a slim DVD drive slot down in this gap. This allows you to still have a disc drive without interrupting the clean lines of the case. I personally don’t have a use for this, for the past few years I have just been using a USB DVD drive when I need to use a disc. Because of that I would love to see an even smaller version of this case that drops this feature and saves a little more precious space.

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The only thing that disrupts the aluminum finish on the front of the 901 is the small glossy black pad with the In Win logo on it. This actually lights up white when your PC is powered on and it also helps point you in the right direction to the cases semi-hidden front(ish) I/O panel. On the left side of the case, next to the In Win logo, you have a thin panel with two USB 3.0 plugs as well as your microphone and headphone jacks. The two audio jacks aren’t labeled or color coded like I would normally see, I suspect In Win did this to keep the clean look, but It would have been nice if there was something to help distinguish the two. In Win also included the power button over near the front of the case. This button only requires a light touch and just barely has a click to it if you pay close attention to it.

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I called the aluminum frame that goes around the 901 uninterrupted but in reality there has to be an area where the two ends meet. To keep the clean look, In Win did something unique here as well. As you can see below, there isn’t a traditional rear I/O area. You do still get a normal power supply location down at the bottom, but beyond that you have a back panel that is removable by unscrewing the four thumbscrews on each corner. You route your cables through that back panel and plug them into your motherboard farther into the case. This keeps the clean look without (hopefully) losing to much in functionality. Speaking of functionality, the thumbscrews used on the back panel stay attached after unscrewing, a simple but very nice touch.

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Before digging inside of the 901 I did have to take a peak under the case. In Win kept things simple with two rubber feet, one on each end of the case, to keep it secure to your desk. This design still leaves room for modders who might want to add actual feet or wheels to give the 901 an even more one off style.

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Inside

The interior of the 901 is truly just as unique as the exterior. Once I dug into the case by removing the four thumbscrews that hold each side panel on I took the overall design in. First things first, the layout isn’t too far off from what I have seen from other Mini-ITX towers. What is unique is the very open design. I can actually see through a good portion of the case because the motherboard tray has large openings all over it. In Win included a very large access hole for reaching the back of the CPU and installing a heatsink, in fact It hardly leaves room for the motherboard standoffs. All of the interior is made of a thick gauge steel and has a very heavy duty rough black powder coat that lives up to the quality of the rest of the 901.

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Up in the top right corner are all of your storage mounting locations. You get two 3.5 inch drive trays that also support 2.5 inch drives. Both trays are held in place with a crossbeam that locks into place with a thumbscrew to keep your drives from sliding out and touching the glass side panel. There is also a third drive mount on the side of the drive cage. This mount is exclusively for 2.5 inch drives. This mount is held in place with a single thumbscrew as well as two tabs on the back. I really like this mounting location as a way to show off an SSD that matches your build.

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For your power supply you have a bottom mounted location that houses up to a 200mm power supply although I would recommend going with the shortest power supply that you can to make your wiring easier. Unlike most modern cases, the bottom mounted power supply does not support a bottom vent for the power supply to pull in cool air. This means it will pull air in from just under your video card and will most likely run a little warmer than if it had a fresh air intake.

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So how much room do you get on the 901 for wire management behind the motherboard tray? Well thee opening from the power supply area to the wire management side of the motherboard tray is 5/8ths or in between a half inch and ¾ of an inch. This is a little less than I have seen on most other modern cases but this is more than what we would have seen on a case just a few years ago. It should be enough room for someone who spends time making sure their wiring is perfect to do a good wiring job but I have a feeling that rushing through the job will make putting the side panel back on a task. To help with the wire management In Win did build in two hot swap panels for the two 3.5 inch drive bays. Both connections have power and SATA run to them. The SATA power is just a short lead that prevents you from having to fight with fitting your power cables in such a tight space, the SATA data cables do the same with their right angled design. Both cables are sleeved in a black sleeving to keep things looking slick as well.

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The rear of the 901 has a large open area between the real rear I/O panel and the rear of the case. This design is in place to hide as much of the wiring as possible and to keep the all-aluminum design flowing around the back of the case. Once you remove the back panel you get a better view of the rear I/O, dual PCI slots, and the rear exhaust fan. Due to the side of the case, you only have room for a 92mm fan, so there is a good chance you won’t have one sitting around. So when ordering your 901 you might as well include one with your order. Just above the fan there is a small T shaped slot where you can run your water cooling should you want to go that route. The only way to install water cooling in the 901 is to route it out the back and mount it to the exterior of the case. Personally I think this would kill the styling of the case, especially after In Win went to great lengths to keep the back of the case as clean as the front.

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Just above the side I/O panel, In Win slipped in a slide out fan mount for a 120mm fan. This is actually one of only two fan locations on the 901. Interestingly enough they didn’t provide a fan, but with a build of this quality I would rather get to select the perfect fan rather than getting a poor quality fan just because they felt obligated to include one. The hidden location means you can focus less on the fan’s styling and go with a fan that fits your airflow and noise requirements. Because this is the main intake fan, In Win did include a magnetic fan filter up under the I/O panel where you can slide it off to quickly clean it. Ironically the magnets did such a good job on our sample that removing the filter required a little force, but I would prefer that over the filter falling off while moving my case around any day.

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Here is the inside view of the fan opening mentioned above.

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I mentioned the slim DVD slot in the opening at the bottom of the 901. In Win filled in the slot with a panel and a pushpin for those who don’t plan on using the slot. The drive itself actually fits in the small gap under the power supply mount. This is obviously a very tight area to work in, in order to make the wiring possible In Win pre-wired the slim drive mount. The SATA cable is sleeved and runs up into the case while the power is a small cable coming out right behind the power supply. The power connector choice was an interesting one though. Rather than going with anything we normally see, In Win used a floppy disc power connection. This is a little odd to me considering floppy power connections are always at the end of a Molex power cable. I would have preferred it just be a SATA power plug, but Molex would have still been a better option than what they went with. The only benefit really is the floppy disc power connections small size, but considering most will have to run a whole cable just for this connection, it doesn’t seem like it will save much space in the end for those who use it.

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Installation and Performance

When I started the build in the 901 I knew it wouldn’t be a quick build, building Mini-ITX builds are always a challenge. Even so In Windid their best to make the installation easy with the easy to use thumbscrews on the drive bays as well as the fan tray.

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I started by installing our MSI ITX Gaming motherboard, because the 901 only supports Mini-ITX motherboards I didn’t have to worry at all about the standoffs. I did however run into an issue when trying to install the rear I/O panel. The way the case is designed doesn’t allow for the I/O panel to be installed at all. This was a little odd and I really wish there was a note about it in the instructions. After looking at a few builds online I was able to confirm that this was an issue and move on though.

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Surprisingly our GTX 780 didn’t have any clearance issues due to its length. In fact, there was a little more room left should I need it. This amount of space isn’t normally found in Mini-ITX builds.

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Installing the power supply wasn’t too bad of an installation with it being a modular power supply. Routing all of the cables however did take up most of my time. Not only did I want the build to match the overall clean look that In Win worked so hard on. However, having to worry about people seeing your wiring from both the front and the back means you can’t just shove wires behind the motherboard tray without giving it some thought. Plugging in the modular cables was really tight, a little help from my wife with her smaller hands made a big difference in getting them hooked up. As for routing the cables, there is just one single hole on the back that you can route cables up and through, getting the 24 pin through this hole would have been impossible had I done it last. Even running the 8 pin CPU power near being finished was a challenge with the cable split into two four pin connections.

The hard drive and SSD installed in their trays easily but pushing them into the hot swap connection required a little more force than I expected. The only other issue I ran into with the hard drive bays was the backplane wiring. The left bay’s wires, when directly to the right like they want too, ended up being too thick with the side panel on. I had to work with the wiring a little to get them to route around without putting too much strain on the connection. 

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In the end all of the work wiring everything was well worth it. The 901 looks amazing when booted up, especially with the GTX Geforce logo glowing through the tinted window. Even with an i7-4770K and a GTX 780 installed the single 120mm Noctua fan that I installed was more than enough to keep things running cool enough. Don’t get me wrong, a larger build would run cooler but for a Mini-ITX build this ran well. Part of that is due to the clean wiring job that I put together. I can’t stress enough how important clean wiring is on any build, especially a small form factor build. To put the build to the test I took it out to a weekend LAN and gamed all weekend without any performance issues.

I did have a few comments on the case after the LAN though. First, I used the top hole on the back of the case as a way to carry it around. The 4mm aluminum design going all the way around the case gave this hole great support for carrying the rig. With that though the edge of the metal was a little sharp when holding it for an extended period of time, especially with the weight of the fully built rig. That is my second complaint, the tempered glass side panels do add to the overall weight of the 901. When you include a hard drive, large video card, and power supply that weight jumps up considerably. The last issue I ran into was with the thumb screws holding on the glass side panels. When you get close to tightening them down the back side of the thumb screws scrap on the glass side panel. I wish the thumb screws had a rubber or felt backing to prevent this. I seriously considered putting liquid electrical tape on the back of mine to avoid the issue in the future.

 


Overall and Final Verdict

The 901 is one of those special cases where after using the case I had a fairly long list of small issues that I ran into yet I couldn’t be happier using the case. The only thing that would make the experience better would be if they fixed the rear I/O issue and labeled the front panel audio connections. The case is a little heavy due to the glass side panels but I wouldn’t give them up for anything. It would be really cool to see an even smaller model that drops the open area behind the rear I/O panel as well as the open area for the DVD drive.

With that being said, it was all worth it. The build looks amazing and really catches the attention of people as they walk by. This is one of the best looking builds I have put together, putting the 901 up close to the Fridge build, some of our custom painted builds, and the lunchbox builds. It might not be as easy as one of the lunchbox builds when it comes to transportation. If you didn’t plan on going to LANs or if you were willing to compromise on the weight.

The price of the case isn’t cheap, but keeping in mind the materials used to build the case and the limited quantity that they will most likely sell I really think they hit the price spot on. There is something special about cases like the 901 that really catch everyone’s attention. It is similar to seeing an expensive supercar on the highway, sure the semi next to it might cost more, but are you more likely to snap a picture of the supercar or the semi to share with your friends. I hope In Win continues innovating with designs like this, and hopefully it continues to trickle down into their everyday case designs as well.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #34656 21 Apr 2014 11:30
Some of you might have seen it out at FortLAN. Here is my review of the In Win 901. Hope you all had a good weekend
Arxon's Avatar
Arxon replied the topic: #34657 21 Apr 2014 23:51
I might pick one up to replace the storm trooper.

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