Introduction
In the eTeknix office this week we have something a little different, ok a lot different! We have the super rare, expensive and exclusive In Win Tou PC chassis and we feel very lucky indeed.
The In Win Tou is part of the premium range that In Win have been building, this means it sits alongside unique products such as the H-Frame and the D-Frame, both of which are pretty insane in their own right, but it looks like In Win are pushing the boundaries of what we think of as a PC chassis even further than before.
“tòu in Chinese means transparent. The design concept comes from glass building, we use 3mm tempered glass together with aluminium structure. With special glass coating if you switch on the LED you can see the components inside. When the internal lights are off, the chassis is pretty much just a mirror.” – In Win
The Tou, which I’m told is pronounced “toe or tow”, is made from glass and lots of it! Set upon an aluminium frame and at first glance it resembles more of a display case than a pc case. The concept behind the Tou is based around modern architecture, much like we see on fancy glass faced office blocks and as you can see from their concept design are work there are some unique inspirations that you don’t really see in PC chassis designs… until now at least.
The chassis is fairly well equipped and supports a single 5.25″ drive, 2 x 2.5″ drives, 3 x 3.5″ drives, a PSU of up to 220mm. There is also full USB 3.0 support, room for 7 expansion cards and there are four 120mm fans included (pre-installed), with room for water cooling radiators of up to 360mm.
As you can see from the specifications above, the Tou isn’t a small chassis and is about on par with other premium full-tower chassis, although I suspect this product wasn’t really intended to be tucked away under a desk where it can not be seen, it should still fit into most under desk spaces.
We normally fire on with a look at the packaging here, but since we had a non retail box I shall pass over that bit. In the box you can expect to find a few extras, these including the usual booklet and screws you will find some screw down cable ties, these are great for keeping things tidy and cable management will be extremely vital in a build of this type.
Glass is a fingerprint magnet, so when you have a nearly all glass exterior on your chassis you are going to need to keep it clean, fortunately In Win provide a good quality microfibre cloth to help with maintenance.
Finally we have these squeezable suction cups, these can be joined onto the side panel windows and will assist you in lifting the glass panel away from the frame. You can use your hands, but it’s obviously good to keep finger prints away from the shiny PC case.
That’s the accessories out of the way, now let’s get right into the cool stuff and take a look at the chassis up close.
This is amazing. Kudos….
FANTASTIC PRIZE
No tray cut out for access to the cpu back plane. Not a deal killer, but still a feature that I would expect from a case with this price tag. As well as filters.
Beautiful case, but not as well thought out as it should be for the price.
Looks like a Jawa Sandcrawler!
LOL Is this guy call this as “review” in media? If this is Newegg review or any review in Blog, I understand this quality, but not in this case. This article quality is terrible as a case review.
The review simply misses too much crucial elements of decent case review.
No such thermal performance test, no such noise performance test, and worst of all, not much talk about how much functionality it gives as a case.
He said “The chassis is fairly well equipped and supports a single 5.25″ drive, 2 x 2.5″ drives, 3 x 3.5″ drives, a PSU of up to 220mm.” Kidding me? Is fairly well equipped? Most of current $100 mid tower cases afford more than that. I know it should be enough for most people, but most people WILL NOT buy this shit.
Do you think fitting in $500 rig (except case price) in this case make sense? NO!
At least we should expect +$1500~2000 price rig for this case. For those guys, this is not enough. For example, just 3 of HDD? Not enough. 1 of 5.25inch bay? You might think many people do not use 5.25 inch bay, so it should be enough, but NOT for enthusiasts. 5.25 inch bay is most versatile bay. Having more 5.25 inch bays means a LOT. One of most common one is fan controller, and You can add HDD cage, or hot swapable HDD cage, or add 3.5inch bay adapter and add extra SD/CF card reader+@.
Also, There are many elements of case, now become almost industry standard. As Ron mentioned, fan filter, cut out for CPU backplate are some of those. Other things are anti-vibration mechanic, which is usually simply rubber ring on HDD screw, but it reduce vibration, which is important issue for noise hater. Also, rubber grommet on cable management hole is common. Or hole for cable tie is something. Only stuff I see for this case, I see cable management and few cable managing clips, which is arguably not enough for some people.
There are MORE elements this review misses, but I will stop here. This review is terrible.