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In Win Metal Suit - GunDam Case
Cooling
As mentioned in the introduction, In Win's Gundam comes with a dual VGA cooling system. In Win found a way to attach two 80 mm fans to the case without actually consuming as significant amount of space or complicating the installation. As you can see in the pictures below, the fans are attached to the inside of the case and open down to reveal the motherboard. This design provided me with plenty of space to work on the motherboard.
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Also as can be noted from the pictures the fans are removable and adjustable. If you are not using a large graphics card and are more focused on storage, the right fan can be flipped up 90 degrees to provided extra cooling for your hard drive. While the left fan can not be flipped up, it can be removed to provided you with even more space.
The easiness of this case is further demonstrated in the front fan construction. Usually to install the fron fan the user has to remove the front pannel. In Win took this annoyance into consideration and designed the fron fan system to be attached to the hard drive cage. To remove the fan, all the user has to do is flip open the hard drvie cage and unhook the fan. At that point the fan will just slide out. With this design cleaning the filter was extremely easy and convinient.
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Testing
The entire case, other than the motherboard tray, is quick release. One thing to note about the quick release though, is that if you are using a dual card slot design graphics card odds are that the quick release would be completely incompatible with the design of the card. As I experienced with the 7800 GTX the quick release was unable to clamp down the graphics card and I was forced to revert back to screws.
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Another thing to be noted is the case's "power" or "PW" wire that plugs into the motherboard. Unlike in most computer cases where it comes in either 2 pin or 3 pin design, the folks at In Win included both. This way there was no need to mutilate the case to install the power plug also making the installation that much easier.
Conclusion
In Win has created a case worthy of a second look and cosideration. The GunDam was extremely easy to work with and came with plenty of features. Although the price for this case is a bit on the premium side for $130.99 at xpcgear.com, you do get what you pay for. I give this product the Approved Hardware Award.
