How does the D-Frame Mini fit in today’s market?

Honestly, I wasn’t really sure if the case had the same flash and wow factor as it had four years ago. Our original build caught a lot of attention at events and did so even more as I put in the loop, the custom cables, and all of the custom acrylic work to hide all of the cabling. But after a few years, you get fewer and fewer people stopping by to comment specifically on the build. But after just putting this build together without any of the extra hardware that the original build had and posting up pictures on social media. I can say for sure that the case still has it. The bright orange helps get some attention, but even when posting both builds up on twitter and FB and asking which people would prefer the black and red was still the go-to. Now the new colors, especially that bright green and the white, would do even better in my opinion. The orange is my favorite of course, but orange, in general, is polarizing. Even Gigabyte has mentioned to me in the past how much flak they get each time one of their orange OC models comes out. Ironically people complain about black and red and complain about RGB but when they get a unique option like the orange boards they are still upset.

Anyhow, so the D-Frame is still an eye-catcher. What about everything else? Well, I think the biggest difference between it and modern cases the room in the back for wiring. Even with the original, it was much harder to fit all of your wiring in the back not to mention keep it looking good. Most new cases have really gone overboard with wire management, to the point where anyone can do it now. It used to be a way for people who really cared to put in a little time and effort could get their PC looking better than their buddies, even with the same hardware. Well don’t worry, the D-Frame Mini has you covered, all of the wiring is visible through the back glass and other than a few clips you don’t have any wire management. Nor do you have very much room. PLUS all of the wiring coming out of the PSU is exposed. This is why I made the covers for our old D-Frame Mini build.

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You still get all of the room you need for water cooling, especially if you remove all of the hard drive mounts like I did. If In Win redesigned this case, just stepping up to 140mm for the bottom fans would help and maybe hiding a single 2.5-inch mount in the back as well as having a flat mounted option rather than the ugly shelf mounts. I suspect a new version would also use more glass around the inside of the frame to enclose it all a little more now that tempered glass has been used a lot and companies have gotten better with making unique shapes and mounts. I would also just go crazy with the accent color as well. Right now, like on the orange model, we have the blue feet. But imagine if the entire motherboard backplate that is visible from the front and back was that same blue. The same on the black model with the red, the rest all use black so it wouldn’t be a change. But it would really make everything pop!

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I think the biggest thing though is at least right now this In Win D-Frame Mini can be picked up for just $199. I don’t know if they are just clearing them out or if the costs have gone down. But when I did our first review four years ago, the case ran $349. At that time this was priced as a crazy custom case but at $199 it really isn’t a stretch for people to use them in more down to earth builds. Given these aren’t listed on the In Win website anymore and the price, I would seriously not wait to pick one up. Also while you are at it, use our affiliate code, I want to eat this week and this no ads format doesn’t exactly make the best financial sense! Lol

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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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