IN WIN – Dragon Rider Full Tower Case

Let sleeping dragons lie:

From IN WIN one the backs of dragons comes to us the Dragon rider case. The Dragon Rider is part of IN WIN’s ‘Destiny extreme series’ case line filling in the gap of E-ATX support with a full size tower. The Dragon Rider has a number of cooling options designed to keep your components cool and quiet which I will elaborate on later in the review. Best of all with the Dragon Rider you don’t appear to have to give up function for style, a trait that is rare with the large size case lines. This case is obviously targeted at enthusiast PC builders or gamers both would be very happy with its distinctive design and nice features. The price of this case at the time of the article is around $150 read further to see if its truly worth it though.

The subtle armor of this dragon is deceiving.

Testing a case is much like testing any other piece of hardware, you load it up chock full of components and see how it runs.

Manufacturers take:

With elegance, power and control firmly in its grasp, the Dragon Rider is designed to protect and cool even the most demanding of components. Enveloped totally in black, the dark design is only punctuated with bolts of striking yellow to create a subtle but distinct appearance. The unique side panel shield design creates the necessary space for tidy cable routing and multiple fan mounting points for up to 11x 120mm fans make it the ultimate chassis for cooling customization. Pre-fitted with a large 220mm side fan for effective graphics card cooling, the Dragon Rider also features additional front, top and rear fans for fantastic cooling potential. With the latest eSATA and USB 3.0 front panel ports, a back-supported CPU cooler removal hole, anti-vibration hard drive rails and tool-free installation, the large E-ATX Dragon Rider is packed with the latest enthusiast-class case features.

Initial impressions

Front of the packaging

Rear of the packaging

The packaging evokes dramatic images of the subject of the cases name. IN WIN does its best to make a case exciting, and while I applaud the effort I would probably have taken a look at this case even without the dragon just from the overall design apparent in the images on the box.

Left sid

Right side

The feature list of the Dragon Rider is rather nice, with some of the highlights being a plethora of top ports ( USB2,3 Esata, Firewire, and audio) Other than that you can see under ‘ Thermal Solution ‘ that this case is ready to roll with support for a ton of fans or water cooling.

A closer look:

Specs

Case Size	Full tower chassis
Material	1.0 – .08mm SECC Steel
Dimensions HxWxD	556 x 239 x 578mm ( 21.9″ x 9.4″ x 22.8″)
Power supply	ATX 12v PS II size and EPS
I?O Expansion slots	PCI-E/PCI/AGP SlotX8
Thermal Solutions	1. Rear 12cm Fan x 1 2. Front:12cm Fan x 1 3. Top:12cm Fan x 1 (Maximum Supports 12cm Fan x 2) 4. Side:22cm LED Fan with switch x 1 (Maximum Supports 12cm Fan x 6) 5. Water-Cooling Hole Ready 6. 12cm LED Side Fan
M/B Form factor	1. E-ATX(12″X13″) 2. ATX 3. Micro-ATX
Drive bays	1. External 5.25” x 5 2. Includes FDD Cage x1(5.25” converted into 3.5”) 3. Internal 3.5”x6 4. 2.5” x 1
Front I/O(Ports):	1. e-SATA×2 2. IEEE 1394A×1(FireWire) 3. USB 2.0 x 2 4. HD/AC’97 Audio 5. USB 3.0 x 2

Front facing

With most case placement you primarily see the front of the case so its important that it looks presentable at least. Fortunately the Dragon Rider has a fairly attractive front bezel even offering some light LED aesthetics when the case is fully powered in the form of the IN WIN logo lighting up, fortunately the logo is not super bright but merely a highlight that was done in tasteful method. Other than the tasteful lighting the front bezel has five easily removed front plates that accommodate all sorts of 5.25 inch drives.

Rear panel of the case.

In the rear is where all the action is, you have a non lit colored fan that is meant to be the exhaust for your CPU. The I/O panel goes where you would expect it for a case of this type. other than that you have bottom mounted power supply which I personally despise in a case because you always seem to draw more dust into the power supply which can cause significant issues down the road. One of the features I like about this case is actually the filtering on the power supply air intake, this is something you don’t see enough of in the market especially with the prevalence of bottom mounted power supplies. The other nice feature about this case is the tool less shock absorbing PCI brackets, these brackets are awesome for holding a graphics card or other heavy PCI card very firmly and quietly.

Left side of the case and the one you will be removing most often to change components. The fan on this door is my biggest complaint with this case as it doesn’t fit with large CPU coolers. I ended up moving it an remounting it lower using only a few of the screws that would fit. Normal mounting of this fan uses 4 screws to keep the fan stable and quiet unfortunately with my Gigabyte cooler  ( 160 mm tall ) I could not use the stock location and had to remount it lower. There looks to be other mounting locations on the door but in practice they only modify the position of the fan by about and inch which isn’t enough to accommodate a large cooler.

Right side panel (behind motherboard) this panel is usually only removed for cable management. The case actually has a 1/4 inch space that is designed for better cable management in practice it still requires careful lay out of your cables or the this panel has issues going back on. I would have liked a little more room back there to properly hide all my cables.

A close up view of the mesh covering the air intake of the rubberized power supply mount. While the mesh isn’t significant its a nice step that can help keep pet hair or other large particles from getting into your power supply and killing your awesome rig. You can also see on the top left the clips that allow you secure your PCI cards, I like how IN WIN isn’t playing around with build comforts.

Top I/O panel with its plethora of ports. I like that IN WIN color coded the USB 2 and 3 ports, sadly we have seen both motherboard manufactures and case manufacturers fail to do this. All of the ports are nicely spaced and a solid feel when inserting drives and cables. This solidness extends to both the power and reset buttons.

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One of the nice features that is not readily apparent from looking at the outside of the case is a nice foam lining on the removable side door. This foam both in design and practice greatly dampens the sound that wound normally leave the case. My only wish is for more of it as the large fan and surrounding mesh still lets out a bit more noise than it would if it had been covered

As you can see in the picture this is the motherboard base area, IN WIN decided to put a fan pointing out the back of the case that is set up to cool the rear of the motherboard… In practice this fan doesn’t seem to do much especially compared to the top and rear fans.on the right hand side you can see the small tray that houses all y our rails for your drives. Personally I love when manufacturers supply tool less drive mounting like this, its even better when they provide you with a way of storing extra unused rails. Way to go IN WIN!

The Dragon Rider also comes with a sealed manual and extra cables just in case your power supply doesn’t reach. The case also comes with extra screws and cable routing assistance.

Overall building this case went over  pretty well, except when it came to cable management. It looks like you have a lot of room in the back panel so you have the urge to route all your cables this way. I can tell you that will lead to an exercise in frustration when both panels don’t close well. Once you realize that the back panel is more for design then for routing cables you will find the case to be much easier to work with. Another pet peeve that this cause is guilty for is that the liquid cooling ports in the rear panel of the case become USB3 out cables because the top mounted USB ports require a cable to be put in the rear I/O panel. Once the hurdle of cable management was passed this case went together VERY easily and I love how well everything went together and how much room was left for all my components. Drives as is usual with the rail method were simple to install and would be very easy to switch out should the need arise.

For this case I loaded it with the following hardware.

• AMD Phenom 970 black edition @ 3.5GHz
• Jetway HA12-LF motherboard
• 4Gb Crucial ballistix RAM
• Gigabyte X-power cooler
• Zotac GTX560 TI OC
• Thortec Thunderbolt 800w power supply

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Summary and Conclusion:

The Dragon Rider by IN WIN has turned out to be 98% of what the hype says it is. This case is easy to build and looks awesome. I really like the size and air flow in the case and in practice I found that it did live up to the expectation and it kept my components both cool and quiet, not silent but definitely quieter than most mid/ full towers. Although I gave the Dragon Rider the awesome hardware award it is not completely without flaws, the fan on the side panel that I needed to reposition in order for the door to close was disappointing but definitely not a game changer as it was relatively easy to relocate the fan to a place where it didn’t interrupt the CPU cooler. With that minor setback in mind I feel that the pros greatly out weigh any cons. I would recommend this case for anyone who is in the market for a slick case that isn’t too flashy with lights ( this case only comes with a mildly lit fan and the muted front logo ) and ideally has some serious hardware that they want to keep cool without sounding like they are next to a lawnmower. For a future revision of this case I would recommend either a smaller or more mobile fan on the door, and a way of changing out the IN WIN logo on the front as I can see that not being very popular with some audiences other than that the case is awesome.