Hi all and welcome to my review of the In Win 901 ITX case. The case I am reviewing I purchased pre-owned so please bear this in mind when reading this review:
In win started out some time ago in 1986 producing cases, power supplies and servers for the corporate, government and education industries, but it was in 2009 that they ventured into the gaming and retail industry.
In the last few years In Win have created some rather unique cases to show off your build, the In Win 901 being one of the more elegant cases in my opinion.
The 901 is the mini ITX version, of its older and bigger brother the 904, and is made in the main from one piece of brushed sculptured aluminium, with tinted full glass panels either side.
It is a thing of beauty, but is it a case (pardon the pun) of style over substance or can it shake off the competition in this ever expanding ITX market?
Lets take a look.
Other than its looks the first thing you notice is its compact size which belies its rather hefty weight, giving a sense of quality.
On closer inspection this is verified, the smooth sculptured lines of the 4mm thick aluminium just oozes quality with no wavering folds, creases or out of line bends. The millimetre perfect tempered glass is made to the same precision matching every line of the chassis with no mis-matched edges or overhangs.
Closer look outside the case:
The glass panels are a rather dark tint, so internal lighting may be required if you wish to show off your hardware.
Although tempered and of substantial thickness, care is advised when handling the glass panels.
During my time so far with this case I have not felt that the glass panels have been in any danger of damage, but none the less I did have a little search to see if replacement panels were easily available in the event of such a disaster. Alas I could not find any other than acrylic replacements, though it may be possible to contact In Win direct if the need arose, but could not guarantee this.
The panels themselves are held by four large black screws either side. These screw into four rubberised threads that the glass sits on as can be seen in the photo below:
At the rear of the case is a removable section to allow access to the I/O shield.
The screws for this are retained within the panel when removed.
The underside of the case shows two rubber feet stretching across the width of the aluminium chassis:
Flipping the case back over, at the front on the right hand side you find the on/off switch, two USB3 ports and two audio sockets, no reset switch is present.
Just above front I/O is a space for a 120mm fan. This can be accessed when the LHS pannel is removed which we will come to later.
Just below this is a magnetic dust filter for the fan.
Below the front I/O is a cut out space that goes all the way through to the other side. This has three functions, firstly it allows airflow into the fan when one is installed, secondly there is an optical drive bay inside this area so this allows access to loading and unloading disks, and finally serves as a place to put your phone etc if required when plugged into the USB port.
A view of the optical drive bay area with the panel removed:
Finally at the front of the case is an In Win logo that lights up white when powered up.
So lets see what it has to offer on the inside.
Taking the LHS glass panel off reveals your first real look at the inside and how it is set out.
In the middle you have your motherboard tray with large cutout.
Just to the left of this is where the rear I/O shield fits and behind this is gap before you reach the rear removable plate.
This is to allow cables to be fed from the I/O panel through the hole in the removable plate, but there may be an issue with this that I shall come to later.
The gap between the rear of the internal chassis and rear of the case may just fit a 120mm AIO watercooling unit, though I have seen more mounted on the rear of the case, unfortunately I did not have one to try.
Bottom left is where your power supply bay sits, which is fairly substantial for such a small case. Below this is the floor of the case where a slimline optical drive can be fitted, In Win have pre-installed a PCB with Sata cables for ease of mounting your O/D if required.
Top right is your hard drive bays, two are hot swap varieties that enable 2.5 or 3.5inch HDD and there is a further mounting position for a 2.5inch drive on the LHS of the bay.
To the bottom right you can now gain access to the fan bay.
This can be opened by loosening the sprung thumbscrew and sliding open the drawer.
The case when purchased new does not come with any fans fitted so would highly recommend fitting both 120mm intake and 92mm exhaust fans to aid cooling.
Spinning the case around and removing the other panel and rear plate, we can see the naked case and the form of the aluninium sculptured chassis.
You can now see the Hot swap bays with their connectors and the large motherboard cutout and psu bay.
All case wiring is of top quality with lovely black braided wiring.
So, to the build.
My current watercooled gaming rig is due for an overhaul, with this in mind I intended to transfer the majority of my hardware from my Bitfenix Prodigy into the 901 as a temporary home.
Here is the Prodigy next to the 901 for size comparison:
Firstly I installed a Corsair CX500M, being of a semi-modular design was a plus, although if using a non-modular PSU you may still be able to fit most of the un-wanted wiring in the PSU bay if using a standard ATX sized PSU, anything longer and I would definitely recommend a Modular design.
The PSU bay has a sticker on it to warn you to have the fan facing up, this would of course be due to no ventilation if faced down.
I fitted the ugly standard Intel fan and heatsink to the motherboard as I did not have another heatsink that would fit, the clearance for CPU heatsinks is stated as 130mm for this case.
The fitting of the I/O shield I found a little fiddly but nothing to awkward, and the motherboard went in easy.
I then attempted to fit the front I/O connectors and found my first problem.
I routed the cable behind the motherboard tray and up through one of the cut outs nearest the motherboard connectors. The cable could have done with being 10mms longer. It was a real struggle to attach the connectors onto the pins and was quite weary of possibly bending the pins in the process. I did however manage it eventually. This could of course be as much down to the positioning of the pins on the motherboard as to the length of the cable, but I thought it needed a mention.
Indeed some ITX motherboards may have a more difficult time fitting dependant on pin placement. This may be a deciding factor upon hardware choice if you are torn between a number of mobos and really want to use this case.
The motherboard used for this build MSI Z77IA - E53
The hard drives I used were both 2.5inch, one SSD and one HDD, both were fitted into the hot swap mounts easily.
The HDD cage has a brace across the front which is held by a thumb screw, this releases the brace like a door to allow access to the caddys. Theses are just pulled free using the angelled metal handle, the hard drive can then be mounted with screws and pushed back into the bay.
The graphics card I installed was a Palit GTX 970 which fitted with plenty of room to spare. The length of graphic card is not a problem with 300mm of space. The width of some may be though as this particular graphics card is not the thickest but only has about an inch of clearance from the very bottom of the chassis.
Another note on gpus for this build is that I believe due to the lack of clearance for fans and small internal space a single blower type fan would work best, giving greater airflow from the one fan positioned over the case fan and chucking the heat outside the case.
For this build I also did not have a slim O/D to try out so can not comment on the ease of this.
Cable management I knew was not going to be that easy in such a small case, but there is quite a lot of room behind the motherboard and also some space if needed in front of the PSU. The fact that the hard drives had connections fitted also helped.
However, with the side panels being made completely of tempered glass there is no lee way or give like steel panels.
For this reason you have to be meticulous in ensuring all cables are inside the boundaries of the case, the most difficult part for this build was the GPU cables.
This is another area where choice of hardware may need to be made due to the constraints of the case. Luckily the Corsair power supply I was using has flat flexible cables, though this was difficult enough bending them to comply with the cases dimensions to get the panel back on, PSUs with thicker cables may find it even more troublesome. My recommendation would be to go with some aftermarket individually braided cables which would most likely be a better fit.
So, after many hours tweaking and squashing cables, I was able to put both panels back on and fire her up.
Looks great but who turned the vacuum on?
What a noise, I think the person who sold me the case must have wanted to get rid of the fan that was in it.
I decided to change the fan for a quieter one.
This proved more difficult than it should have been. The screws for the fan were not fitted properly so caused a problem releasing the drawer. Though this is not a fault as such of the case, it is worth noting that when fitting a fan the screws need to be flush with the draw as there is little space for them.
Once prised open I changed the fan and screws and proceeded to thread the wire through the back of the case where the front I/O cables were, this was a bit of a challenge as you cant get your fingers inside from the back and have to do your best to hold the other cables a couple of mms to the side to enable you to thread the fan cable through.
For this reason I would recommend fitting the case fan before anything, this should give you more freedom to pass the cable through, and best to make the right fan choice to avoid changing once built.
Well at least now it was a lot quieter
Ah there was one more issue that I touched on earlier - the rear panel. This may not effect many peoples builds depending upon the monitors they use.
I tend to run two screens, one using HDMI and an older one which happens to be a VGA monitor. The issue with this is that plugging the VGA monitor with the DVI adapter means that it will protrude further than the back plate so can not be fitted. In fact I think even with a DVI monitor without an adapter you may struggle with this. If using HDMI or mini display port however im sure this would not be a problem, but like myself, you may have relegated your old monitor to become your second display panel and as such may not be able to fit the back panel on.
So onto cooling performance - As I was using a stock cooler I returned my I5 to stock settings, the GPU was also set at stock settings.
I ran Heaven Benchmark to get an idea of GPU temps which hovered around the 64 - 65c mark which I thought was quite acceptable with CPU temps peaking at 54C.
I then tried 3d mark 11
and got GPU temps peaking at 63c
and CPU temps peaking at 60c
So although not the most challenging tests I think the case performed pretty well considering its lack of ventilation and use of stock intel cooler.
As for water cooling options, as mentioned earlier a 120mm aio should fit ok though mounting may require the use of some large metal washers as there are no mounting points as such but large square holes on the back plate which a 120mm fan will line up with, a 140mm will not.
I do not believe that a custom water cooled loop would fit, Im sure there are some people out there who could prove me wrong but I would not be able to do this myself.
Then again I dont think that is the point of this case, it has already been styled without compromise and modding the case in any form may just take some of that style away in my opinion.
So Conclusion:
I did have a fun but at times frustrating time with this build. Everything is measured precisely and down to the last millimetre to make this compact case look so pretty and stylilsh, yet this is also its biggest fault.
No compromise on style has led to a beautiful case but that is just so tight for space everywhere, a couple of mms too short on the front cables, if your fan screws are a mm too long your not getting that drawer out again, and if you have the wrong PSU, you will never get the side panel on.
Having said that, with a bit of research and some cunning hardware choices this case could house a fantastic build that would not cause too many headaches to fit.
And finally to price and my verdict.
Presently you can pick a new In Win 901 from overclockers for just under £120, from Amazon its yours for £133. So not the cheapest of cases but not too bad considering the materials and craftsmanship involved.
So all things considered my personal verdict would be a Silver award.
I do like my custom water cooling and this has no option for that, the build wasnt all difficult but it certainly challenged me, but you have to praise it for its looks.
So style over substance? Perhaps a little, but thats not a bad thing, it never hurt the likes of Apple.
Thanks for reading, any comments appreciated.
Pete
