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In Win\'s B2 Stealth Bomber Computer Case
| Author: | Rafael Rios |
| Date: | 2008.05.01 |
| Topic: | Cases |
| Provider: | In Win |
| Manufacturer: | In Win |
| Author: | Rafael Rios |
| Date: | 2008.05.01 |
| Topic: | Cases |
| Provider: | In Win |
| Manufacturer: | In Win |
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Click on thumbnails to see larger images.
Today, TechwareLabs is taking a look at In Win's latest computer case, the B2 Stealth Bomber. The case is an ATX form factor medium tower with very clean lines and some very nice features we will be elaborating on in the next few pages. The first thing that you notice about this case is the effort that In Win went thru to make it look like the latest U.S. Air Force military aircraft of the skunk-works line, with stealth technology. The paint is a matte charcoal gray finish resembling the radar absorbing material and paint finish found on the latest stealth aircraft, and most notably the B2 Stealth Bomber. The light gray pin striping found around the edges of all the panels on the case resembles the look of that found on the actual B2 Stealth or "Spirit" bomber; this coupled with the military aircraft style "Caution" and "Rescue" stickers on the side panels as well as the vented "W-shaped" air intake on the side gives this case an extremely nice stealthy aircraft appearance.
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As we look at the front panel on the case, we find the large black triangular power button in the center, the hard drive LEDs on the right and on the left the people at In Win have put a touch-sensitive button for the front external auto-opening bay door. This is one of the nicest features on the case and adds to that "Stealth Aircraft" styling they put into the system and name. With the computer turned on, one lite swipe of your finger on the red touch-sensitive button and the front bay door opens up and back above the case using a small motor hidden into the case front and 4 sets of arms to angle it parallel with the top of the case. This alone gives the look and feel of a stealth aircrafts hidden internal weapons bay doors opening and closing in the real world, a very nice touch we might add. Inside the top-front auto-bay door cavity, they have placed a bright blue LED light to illuminate the front area of the case should you need to access your optical drives or floppy area in the dark. In the last image below, you can see how the front cover has been neatly stowed in its up-and-back open position.
The designers at In Win have not overlooked the fact that in the event that you would like to open the front bay door while having the system powered off for any reason, that you can do so without breaking the door or its' opening system. To achieve this they have incorporated yet another "stealthy" feature, in the form of a manual gear-release mechanism hidden into the front right side that sits flush with the exterior of the case, with small white text instructions next to the forward pointing "Rescue" arrow. The images below show this emergency manual gear-release mechanism or "Rescue" mechanism in both the normally closed and flush to panel state, as well as in the open state to release the gears allowing you to open the front bay door without the power turned on. Just below the manual gear-release "Rescue" mechanism for the front bay door, you have a hidden "stealthy" access cover that flips open to reveal the front access ports for the case providing you quick-access to two E-SATA ports, two USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire port, and the front headphone and microphone ports.
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In this review, we decided to show you a fully populated case rather than show you an empty case, so that you can see how neatly oriented and functional the designers at In Win have made this case for you. Let us say that In Win provides you with everything you will ever need to mount any motherboard and system features into their case. Along with the embossed and threaded steel motherboard mounts, they also provide the consumer with a bag full of additional hex posts and all the hardware required to mount any ATX motherboard.
First we take the side panel off showing the nice and neat quick-latch system on the back-edge of the side panel that not only provides a tool-less removal system for the side panel, but also dampens the panel preventing any unwanted noise by eliminating vibration. A simple tug on the top and bottom quick-latch and the side panel will slide right off; likewise with a simple push on these latches will securely hold the side panel in place. In the images below, you can also see the "stealthy" W intake duct on the side panel. The W-cut intake duct looks very similar to the shape of the B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber wing shape. Adding to the "stealthy" features found on the case, we also have the grilled internal area of the duct resembling the radar trapping shape of the exhaust diffusers found on both the F-117 and the B2 Spirit stealth aircraft. This duct is used to draw cool air into the case thru a removeable filter mounted to the inside of the side panel and thru the two 80mm fans located inside, as well as provides a cool air passage for air to be drawn in to the CPU cooler via the internal adjustable CPU-Duct feature that mounts to the inside of the side panel, which can be seen in the last image below. If you should choose to run a CPU cooler that can not take advantage of this CPU-Duct feature or that sits very high causing an interference with it, it is quite easily removeable from the side panel via a tool-less clip system.
As we take the side panel completely off and away from the case we get a look at all the work towards cooling that In Win took to keep this case and its' internal components as cool as possible by providing plenty of silent, vibration-free fans to move air in-to and out-of the B2 Stealth case. In the images below we can see the two 80mm air-intake fans in the side drop-down panel that located over the expansion slots at the bottom and a rear 120mm exhaust fan just under the power supply unit. This side drop-down panel has a quick release latch in the front and a pressure lever in the rear that when both are activated, the door quickly and effortlessly hinges down and away allowing plenty of access room for even people with large hands to get in. There is also a fan in the lower front quadrant of the case, a single 120mm front intake fan drawing air into the case. This front 120mm fan is easily removeable via a latch and rotating cage mechanism that allows you to extract the fan and filter for cleaning or replacement. All of the filters in the this case can all be washable to maintain the internal area of the case clean.
In the images above you can see that after lowering the internal side-panel housing the two 80mm fans, we can see that we found the front panel cables are more than long enough to reach all of the critical motherboard connectors regardless of where your chosen motherboard maker may have decided to place these connectors. The motherboard we are using in this case review is MSI's K9A2 Platinum. This was a very welcome feature as we have sometimes encountered some computer cases where the wires sometimes fall just shy of being able to reach certain motherboard connectors comfortably. Inside but at the back inside edge of the case, you can see the tool-less expansion slot hold down device (black and yellow) that is used for the PCI and PCIe slots. We found that this tool-less device is easily removeable in the event you should want to remove this and use standard screws to hold your graphics card(s) and other PCI and PCIe cards in place. In the images above, you are also able to see the lower hard drive bay that is cross-cooled via the front 120mm fan. Although we only show one SATA hard drive in place, this lower hard drive bay is tool-less and has room for a total of 5 drives.
This case comes with many tool-less straps for any combination of hard drives, optical drives, and even floppy drive straps. Each strap is made of a silicon flexible yellow rubber with the black hard plastic borders that give each of these straps the rigidity and vibration dampening needed to eliminate noise. Each strap securely holds the device in place via two stainless steel metal posts that locate into the device where you would normally attach screws, and stainless steel pressure clips then lock the device securely into the drive bay you choose. The straps are each individually embossed with molded-in lettering identifying for which device each strap is designed for. You will find anti-vibration tool-less straps for 4-Hard Drives, 2-Optical Drives and 2-Floppy Disk Drives, all housed within a removeable anti-vibration tool-less caddy that can be left within the case in the bottom-most forward facing drive bay so that you do not lose these fantastic straps. In the image below, we would also like to point out that there are four feet located on each corner of the bottom, that are also designed in a way to enhance the silent and vibration free environment of the B2 Stealth Bomber case by being constructed of a tough plastic and metallic outer housing ring with a soft neoprene rubber internal pad that protrudes above the tough plastic outer ring providing what is known in the industry as an anti-vibration mount for the computer. At the back of the case, you can clearly see yet another feature In Win added for those looking to cool their systems using water. Next to the power supply unit, you see two ports surrounded by rubberized thru-grommets for water tube lines, allowing the user the flexibilty to have an external radiator source with the tubes feeding internally thru these two ports without having to do any modifications to the case.
The In Win B2 Stealth case is a very affordable, and nicely modded "stealth" case. We found that even with all of the case fans on, that the case was extremely quiet, yet it moved plenty of device cooling air from both the front and side and exhausting the warm air using the 120mm back fan and the fan built into the power supply, this latter being common in most cases. The case has plenty of room for most normal devices and had no problems installing the ATX motherboard, power supply, hard drive, optical drives and an EVGA 8800 KO GT video card; but we found it to be a little tight when trying to put in the nVidia 8800 GTX video card as seen in the images above and felt that it would have been nice to have more room front-to-back to allow for the largest video cards currently available to sit in comfortably, not to mention that the extra room would be required with the larger cards to be able to hinge the front 120mm intake fan housed in the front of the lower-most drive bay. We would have had to remove the 8800GTX video card from the case, to be able to access the front 120mm fan and filter for cleaning. Everything else about the case we loved, finding that the B2 Stealth case had plenty of areas to install hard drives and optical drives. We found the touch-sensitive button to open and close the case to fit perfectly along with the stealth aircraft theme, and loved the manual-release lever a thankful sight when we were first installing the components into the system, particulary for the optical drive. We also loved the look, feel and theme of the STEALTH genre befitting of a case that when in normal operating mode, was found to be very "stealthy" by having very quiet fans. At approximately $115 to $150 price range, we feel the In Win B2 Stealth Bomber case to be a great buy and fantastic for the user looking to have a very quiet, high air volume flow case for their next system build.
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