In Win Mana 136 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

When this case came in, I wasn’t totally sure what to make of it to be quite honest looking at the picture on the box and sometimes these images can be a little deceiving, but from the moment I got it out the box to look at, I have to say that I’m rather impressed with the looks. Whilst its not the most conservative design out there, its not totally outrageous and harsh to look at – it fits it rather well with a little bit of style to the front end.

Starting on the outside, the thing that stands out for me is the cable pass through point on the rear of the chassis for the front panel USB3.0 header. You may be thinking, big deal, its a hole; however as I mentioned on the previous page, a vast majority of the time, we see cables being passed through from the inside of the chassis via the two grommets that water cooling pipes would pass through and if you use large pipes through these holes then where are you supposed to pass any cables through? To me it seems like they have had this same thought and a simple hole is all it takes. The only thing that I would say is letting down the outside if the finish to the paint. On the inside the finish is nice and smooth, but with the slightly grainy texture on the outside, I feel that has been left out a little and could would benefit more from having the same finish as the interior.

Moving inside the case, the layout is very easy to work with, the slightly raised cable management tunnel and the huge gap at the base of the motherboard tray, make routing cables to where they need to go to very easy and any excess is easily tucked neatly at the back of the hard drives bays with no fuss. I like the addition of the two EZ-Swap 3.5″ drive bays and I imagine this wasn’t done on all the bays to keep cost down, but for users who often replace the odd drive; say for backup purposes; the convenience is there and only involves taking one side of the case off rather than both.

Sticking with the 3.5″ bays, some may find the particular method of fitting the drives a bit marmite, I’m happy with it and it does the job well. Instead of having plastic brackets or trays that the drive sanps into, some simple screws and rails do the same job. Whilst this keeps the weight of the chassis down, it also keeps the overall manufacturing costs down and thus in turn keeps the price to the consumer down, which is key after all.

On the whole everyone’s tastes, like and dislike are different, and for manufacturers, this means that building a product to suit as many people as they can, is a little bit of a challenge. For a mere £42.43, In Win have really done themselves proud,  yeah the paint finish could be a little better, but with the system all built up, how often am I going to sit there rubbing the top of it? Overall I like it and with the number of features it packs and its slightly alternative way to doing things, I’m happy to give this case our bang for buck award.