In Win 901 Case Review

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

After a rather nice unboxing experience, the first thing that strikes me about the In Win 901 is its weight. Although it’s pretty big for an MITX case measuring in at 173mm(W) x 350mm(H) x 400mm (D), it is also very heavy weighing 6.71kg. Sure in reality that’s no where near as heavy as the likes of the Phanteks Primo Luxe (13.9kg) or the mammoth Cooler Master Cosmos II (22kg), but with it’s size to weight ratio and it’s incredibly sleek appearance, their isn’t really anything to lift it by, making it a little awkward to remove from the packaging. Of course that didn’t dim my excitement one bit after the black fabric bag was removed. The In Win 901 could very possibly be the most beautiful case in the world!

 

 

Ok, so when I say most beautiful case in the world, it is very difficult to see how awesome it looks until viewed from an angle or actually in person (at least you’ll see one of these later in the review). From the front we get to see the part of why I’m liking the 901 so much. The one piece brushed aluminium alloy outer chassis. It is of a stunningly high quality with very nicely curved edges and one of those things, that as soon as you see it, you want to touch it. To the lower left we have in the In Win logo which has a glossy black background and when the 901 is powered up, will illuminate white. Whilst not a huge or innovative feature, it certainly adds to the high quality and sleek appearance of the In Win 901.

To the back we have a case that looks very different to any other. We do of course have one familiar site, that of the typical PSU cut-out at the foot of the chassis. Above this and attached by four sprung loaded thumb-screws, is a removable vented piece of aluminium with cable cut-outs. This isn’t just for show, but it also can be used to mount a 120 or 140mm radiator for an AIO CPU Cooler or perhaps even a fully Custom Loop. As you can see from the curvature of the edges and the mitred edges of the removable plate, it is exactly as In Win describe and of a one piece construction. With the rear panel removed we see two expansion slots, the motherboard cut-out and fan mount.

The very top of the In Win 901 is entirely void of any features, but when something looks this good, could we really care?

Beneath the case is a similar affair, the only difference being two large rectangular rubber anti-slip feet at the front and back. One thing the front, back, top and bottom all show off very well, is the one piece brushed aluminium alloy construct. Which as you can probably tell already, I absolutely love! 🙂

Of course what makes the In Win such a stunning looking case, isn’t just its one piece outer chassis construction, but the high quality tempered glass side panels. Both of which are tinted giving a more mirror-like appearance and both sides are attached via four thumb-screws, whilst to save you losing fingers are also very nicely bevelled and polished around the edges. Looking to the lower right of the left side, we can see the 901 features a rather unusual cut-out, but why the unusual cut-out? Well we’ll be getting to that in a bit. 😉

Whilst the right side is exactly the same, it is obviously void of the case control panel. The tinted glass still looks good though, but I wonder how my incredible (poor) cable management will look through it from the outside?

With the side panels removed the sleek and elegant design gives way to an altogether more industrious appearance. In the upper right cavity we find the storage drive cage, beneath this we find ample space for a Graphics Card with a maximum length of 300mm (almost any GPU at all basically), underneath this is a hidden 120mm fan bay, then to the main cavity we find the motherboard tray, which features a rather large CPU cut-out. As you can see, the motherboard tray is very small, but should provide just enough space for any intended MITX motherboard available. We can also see two cable cut-outs directly above this area, with a further three to the right. Looking to the lower left we see the PSU bay that is compatible with Power Supplies of up to 200mm. This is a little odd for two reasons. Firstly the PSU air intake vent is on the inside of the chassis which means the PSU fan will be drawing air from inside the 901, but even more oddly is something we’ll go into a little later. Above this we have the 120mm/140mm radiator chamber of sorts, towards the lower end we have two PCIe blanking plates.

On the opposite side side of the motherboard tray we can see even more clearly how big the CPU cooler cut-out is (it’s nearly as big as an MITX motherboard!). The cable cut-outs seem well placed enough for all your typical cabling needs with a small cut-out leading into the PSU chamber in which we can feed through any excess cabling to help tidying up, which I’m sure will come in very handy.

 

Getting back to the strange contraption beneath the PSU chamber. This is a housing for a slimline ODD, thus the reason for the odd cut-out in the lower right. Although I don’t actually know anyone who still uses any kind of ODD within their rigs these days, I still find it quite a cool and certainly unique feature. The blanking plate is simply held on with a small plastic push pin. For any slimline ODD users, it’s worth noting that there is no blanking plate to cover up the mounting hole for the blanking plate should you choose to install your slimline ODD.

 

 

To the upper left of the motherboard tray, we can see the 901 features a 92mm fan mount with a cut-out above it, which is specifically there for AIO or Custom Watercooling tubing. To the right of this you can see there are two raised areas around around the motherboard I/O cut-out which means the shield sits ever so slightly inside the case, rather than flush.

The hidden 120mm fan mount is in fact a removable tray which is held in with another spring-loaded thumb-screw, beneath this In Win have included a removable magnetic dust-filter. The filter itself is again of very high quality (so much I’d actually buy these for other rigs!), although there is a downside. It is very tight when installed, to the point of perfection, but the magnets are surprisingly powerful which means you have to tilt the filter to remove it. This isn’t really a bad thing, but the un-brushed inner part of the aluminium chassis marks fairly easily, which to me is not so good.

 

 

The In Win 901 features what In Win calls a SATA EZ-Swap module. Which is both brilliant and if I’m honest a bit rubbish at the same time. Brilliant because I think it’s aesthetically pleasing to the eye and allows you to fit four storage drives in a very small amount of space. We have the main chamber which is accessed via a central gate that is fixed by a sprung loaded thumb-screw. The two drive sleds can then be removed by the two extendible pull-tabs. Both trays are compatible with both 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives. To the left and beneath the module are two further sleds, which are again held in place by sprung loaded thumb-screws, but this these will are only compatible with 2.5″ storage devices. Now for the rubbish part… None of the four drive sleds feature anti-vibration mounts and to fix the drives to the sleds themselves, you’ll have to fix them via four small screws. Not a huge problem I guess, but personally I’d have liked to see at least some rubber anti-vibration mounts for the main drive sleds and for them them to really live up to the ‘EZ’ tag with a tool-free design.

As you may have noticed from the previous reverse side motherboard tray image, the two main chamber features pre-fitted SATA and power cables to the inner drive sleds, with what seems to be pretty heavy duty nylon braiding. This is another good feature to have, but makes the non tool-free design even more of an oddity.

 

 

Taking a closer look behind the motherboard tray, reveals their are no tie-off points behind the tray and the cavity itself measures approximately 19mm (sadly I’m not convinced this will be enough for most PSU cables…). In Win have seen fit to include two stick on cable tidies, which are sure to come in handy.

Here we have a closer look at the side mounted case I/O panel, which consists of the following:

• 2x USB 3.0
• Audio In/Out
• Power On/Off

A pretty basic I/O panel, with a dedicated reset button oddly absent (although this seems to be an increasingly popular choice amongst many manufacturers at the moment),

Generally speaking the In Win 901 is certainly a stunning little case, with an incredibly high build quality and materials to match, then some very unique features. It does however have a few design oddities and no fans included within the box, we best have a look to see how they affect the installation and thermals.

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	In Win 901	Power Supply	Corsair Professional Series AX 760i
Motherboard	MSI Z97I GAMING	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U9S	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition	SSD	HyperX FURY 120GB

*The In Win 901 is an MITX case, therefore our regular ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer ATX Motherboard will not fit. So for the purpose of this review we shall be using the MSI Z97I GAMING MITX motherboard. With a maximum CPU cooler height 130mm, clearly the of 158mm Raijintek Themis wasn’t going to work, so in comes the 125mm Noctua NH-U9S instead. All other Test Rig components are however the same.

 

 

Building within the In Win 901 is rather interesting to say the least, during the course of this review, I think I actually pieced the build together four or five times until it looked and felt right. So the best course of action I guess, is to tell you ‘NOT’ how to install your rig into the 901…

First up for installation into the In Win 901, is the MSI Z97i GAMING Motherboard I/O shield, because of the two raised areas on the two sides of the motherboard cut-out, the shield itself is free (with a little force) to slide up and down, so to finalize its positioning you have to use the motherboard itself. The MSI Z97i GAMING then simply fixes to the stand-offs via the four screws provided. The Intel i5-4690K is then fitted, along with the HyperX Savage memory and the Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler, then the PCIe blanking plates are removed and the XFX R9 290X DD Black Edition installed and fixed into position. All relevant power cables are plugged into the Corsair AX760i Power Supply, which is then fitted into the In Win 901 PSU cavity and fixed using four long screws (supplied in-box) as standard PSU screws aren’t long enough fix through the 4mm external chassis.

 

 

The HyperX Fury SSD is then fixed onto a 2.5″ drive sled and fitted to the case, leaving just the plugging in of all the relevant cables. Dead simple? Well not really… You see the In Win 901 is only the second MITX based case I’ve installed into (the first being the excellent SilverStone Raven RZV01), so I’m not quite used to the confined space or possibly more importantly forward planning. Why is this a problem? Well after installing all the Test Rig hardware, I’ve then gone to plug in the 901 front panel cables only to find my slightly too podgy hands won’t quite fit between the case and the CPU Cooler in order to plug in the front panel connectors. So off comes the Noctua NH-D9S in order to allow the necessary the fitting of the headers, which also where a big issue crops up. The front panel connector on this particular MITX motherboard is situated just above the Northbridge heatsink which is just behind the CPU mount. So you’d automatically try and feed the 901 front panel cable through the cable cut-out immediately above this, but as it turns out the cable is approximately an inch too short, so to remedy this you have the choice of trailing the across the top of the GPU, or to carefully thread it down past the PCIe slot. So now I’ve got over my first conundrum, it’s time to feed through and plug in the 901s HD AUDIO (another cable that’s slightly too short to comfortably reach the top of the MSI Z97i GAMING) and USB 3.0 cables into the motherboard and then the same for the power cables.

 

 

The storage drive and GPU are both easy to plug in and to do so tidily, but the 8pin CPU and 24pin Motherboard cable do not fit through the most sensible cable cut-outs when the motherboard is installed (the top two cut-outs are very small as you can see in the above two images). So I pull everything out and start again, but this time by feeding through all of the power cables first…

 

 

The above three images form a little story of what I personally see as the third big problem for the In Win 901 (the prior two being the short front panel cables and top two cut-outs being too small). This being something I’ve never encountered before, being external cable management. You see the recessed nature of the motherboard I/O shield, makes in very awkward to use any of its ports with the side panels installed unless you have direct access, made even worse by the rear radiator bracket, which when installed makes these ports pretty much unusable. These of course leads onto another potential problem, what degree of access to the motherboard I/O panel would you actually have when a 120mm or 140mm radiator is installed? I for one do not want to find out…

 

Casualties of war… At least that’s how it felt installing into the In Win 901 at times. Because of the slightly too small cable cut-outs and front panel cable not being long enough for where the MSI Z97i GAMING front panel header is situated (you may of course not have this same problem on other MITX motherboards), I’ve sadly pulled the heat-shrunk collar away from the cable braiding on the Corsair AX760i 24pin motherboard power cables, the very same has happened to the 901s front panel cables, made worse by the braiding splitting and fraying…

 

 

Despite the issues (even though in my mind they are pretty big), once the build is finished you do get a feeling of accomplishment, then with the side panels replaced you’ll end up with an even bigger smile on your face because the In Win 901 looks so damn good! The prior worry about visible cables through the right side glass panel disappear as you find it’s just dark enough to hide the contents, then looking at the left panel shows the tinting is just about light enough to show off the inner hardware. Imagine how good the 901 would look with some LED lighting inside it too! 🙂

There is of course one further downside with the In Win 901 and that’s due to the very high quality materials used, both of which are very big fingerprint magnets.

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

At pcGameware we use Prime95 and CoreTemp to evaluate CPU temperatures and we use MSI Afterburner to evaluate the GPU temperatures. Of course Prime95 being a CPU stress test also helps to generate heat for us to check the case thermals. We also use UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for GPU temperature testing.

CPU performance testing is carried out using Prime95 to stress the CPU. Each run is timed for 15 mins and the maximum temperature is recorded for all cores and then the average core heat is taken. Testing was carried out with a small overclock on the i5-4690K of 4.0GHz via MSI OC Genie

GPU performance testing is carried out by running UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for 15 minutes and then by recording the maximum GPU temperature.

* All case fans (the In Win 901 features no fans out of the box, so we’ve recorded them as such, then thrown in a 92mm Noctua and 120mm BitFenix Spectre Pro into the mix for comparison and curiosity. Once the case fans are installed, both are run at 100%) and the CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-U9S) are run at 100% throughout testing. To find out the case noise levels, the GPU fans are set to their lowest setting and the CPU Cooler fan is unplugged, whilst the dB is recorded from 1m away.

 

Hardware Performance

 

CPU RESULTS – Fractal Design Core 1100 with Noctua NH-U9S and Intel i5-4690K @ 4.0GHz

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature
In Win 901 (with fans)	23.00	65.25	42.25
In Win 901 (stock)	23.00	79.50	56.50
Fractal Design Core 1100	22.50	79.25	56.75

 

I’ll admit I hadn’t got high hopes for the cooling abilities of the In Win 901 with our i5-4690K and its minor 4.0GHz overclock. This wasn’t just due to the case featuring no fans of any kind out of the box, but further pushed by the fact any reasonably large Graphics Card is pretty much going to cover the front 120mm air vent. This leads to a maximum average core temperature of 79.50C (56.50C Delta) at stock, Vs 65.25C (42.25C Delta) with two fans installed, which is a pretty hefty 14.25C (14.25C Delta) difference. In short I certainly wouldn’t be doing any substantial overclocking within the 901 straight out of the box, but throw in a couple of fans and decent supply of cool air feeding the CPU, then the In Win 901 turns into a very capable case indeed.

 

GPU RESULTS – Fractal Design Core 1100 with XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition – STOCK (Core: 1050MHz/ Mem: 5000MHz)

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temperature	Delta Temperature
In Win 901	23.00	76.00	53.00
Cooler Master HAF XB	24.00	80.00	56.00
NZXT S340	22.00	80.00	58.00
Xigmatek Aquila	23.50	84.00	60.50
In Win 901 (stock)	22.50	89.00	66.50
Fractal Design Core 1100	24.00	94.00	70.00

 

Again the In Win 901s out-of-the-box cooling for GPUs is a little lack lustre, with our XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition test card reaching 89.00C (66.50C Delta), but given the GPUs 94.00C throttle limit, it isn’t the end of the world. Yet the cooling potential for Graphics Cards is sorely missed. By adding in a 120mm fan at the front to pull in cool air, the XFX R9 290X DD Black Edition temperature drops to just 76.00C (53.00C Delta), which might only be 4.00C (3.00C Delta) cooler than the HAF XB, but still pretty cool (ha!) all the same.

 

Acoustic Performance

The In Win 901 at stock does not register acoustically over the sound any background noise. Don’t get two excited though, this is because my sound meter doesn’t go below 20dB and the 901 features no fans out of the box. Throw in a couple of fans running at 100% though and the noise raises to 42dB, which still isn’t uncomfortable at all. One thing that is certainly worth bearing in mind, because the 901 features no ant-vibration mounts for HDDs, you can both hear and feel the vibration as they are accessed.

 

Final Thoughts

 

The In Win 901 is a bit of a mixed bag. Whilst on one hand I’d happily say out loud it’s the most beautiful and desirable case I’ve ever laid eyes on, then on the other, it offers some pretty below average out of the box performance. I’ve definitely got a love/hate relationship with the 901…

The In Win 901 arrived at pcG within a fairly plain looking white cardboard box, whilst the case itself was very well protected within. Once out of the box though, ‘plain’ would be the very last word on your mind as the 901 looks stunning! Measuring in at a reasonably small 173mm(W) x 350mm(H) x 400mm (D), the 901s dimensions hide its 6.71kg weight very well. Why so heavy? Well In Win haven’t decided to leave a few bricks inside the case, but instead made the outer chassis from a one piece, brushed hairline textured 4mm aluminium alloy and used smokey tinted tempered glass for both side panels, which whilst heavy, do add an extremely high quality that very few (if any!) cases posses. Aesthetically the 901 is both beautiful and desirable (possibly even more so than any other case I’ve ever seen!).

Sadly the very same level of desirability isn’t quite the same once you get inside In Win 901. I’ll take nothing away from the incredible high build quality of the outer chassis, or the inner chassis either for that matter. Yet some odd design choices have let the case down in a big way in my eyes. Yes I like the storage drive mounting system by way of the very compact SATA EZ-Swap Module, but I don’t really understand why In Win hadn’t opted to make the two main trays tool-free to make them more easily hot-swappable!? For someone with nimble hands or with a little forward planning (that wouldn’t be me then…) the case is also fairly straight forward to build within, but the front panel cables aren’t long enough at all for sensible cable management (at least for our test MITX motherboard). More importantly the actual top cable cut-outs aren’t quite big enough for easy cable placement either and the edges aren’t bevelled which potentially could cause cable damage (and in fact has!). Yet oddly when you do finish the build you feel a smug sense of accomplishment and pride that very few cases give (a bit like getting through ‘that’ section of a challenging Game).

In the area of performance the In Win 901 is somewhat lacklustre (at least out of the box). With no fans installed our i5-4690K with its moderate 4.0GHz overclock hit a maximum average core temperature of 79.50C (56.50C Delta), whilst our test GPU hit a maximum temperature of 89.00 (66.50C Delta). Neither are hugely problematic, but throw in a couple of out-the-box case fans and the thermal performance jumps up and the temperatures drop considerably, with a CPU maximum average core temperature of 65.25C (42.25C Delta) and the temperature of the XFX R9 290X DD Black Edition recorded at just 76.00C (53.00C Delta), both of which are great results. Which begs the question as to why didn’t In Win choose to include case fans with the 901 in the first place?

Then we have the question of price. With an approximate price of £133, the In Win 901 is undeniably expensive, then when you consider the lack of fans and not quite stellar out of the box performance, you have to ask if it represents value for money? Throw in a couple of aftermarket fans and you’ve suddenly got a case that tames the often wildly hot R9 290X, then also goes on to do a damn good job of cooling a moderately overclocked i5 4690K as well. All this while looking good too! I like the In Win 901 a lot and I’ve not seen a case that offers quite the same amount of quality, but sadly our scores must reflect the total package. Which means a pcG Bronze Award goes to the stock 901, yet if In Win threw in a couple of fans and reduced the price, this could very easily be higher.

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to In Win for providing this sample for review