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In Win Alpha360 Mini-Tower Case
Inside the Case
The side panel and front bezel pop off with latches, but hold on tightly even without screws. At a glance, it looks like there's nothing special about the design, but all the in-terior aspects of the case are tweaked to the point at which it's a surprisingly innovative little chassis. There's a very large, very swirly cooling duct for standard-location processors. It's easy to remove and does a precise job of funneling air from the side panel vents to the CPU. There's enough ventilation below the duct for expansion slots, and the duct itself doesn't interfere with them at all; you should have no problems with crazy video card coolers. Just about everything that can be tool-free is, but not to the case's detriment. The mechanisms are all sturdy and, for being inanimate plastic, pretty confident. I would trust the expansion slot latch to hold any video card but, just the same, there are screw holes if you want to use metal additionally. Motherboard Tray Common to In Win cases, the motherboard tray (not removable) doesn't use brass stand-offs. Instead, the tray has raised feet that meet the motherboard, stamped out of the steel. This, back in the day, wasn't necessarily a good thing, but I haven't seen a Micro-ATX motherboard with non-standard screw mounts in years. Not having separate stand-offs, then, is not having one more step to take when installing the board. It's a little tight, even with the hard drive cage swung out, but not frustratingly so. There are foam feet at the bottom edge of the motherboard tray to lend a little vibration-dampening support, as well as on the front edge. In fact, there are no screw mounts for any of the front motherboard screws. But they're not exactly missed; besides, the drive cages kind of block screwdrivers. Power Supply The layout is standard Micro-ATX, and the PSU's at the top. There's a small foot that sticks out of the motherboard tray for support, but nothing else exciting. Long non-standard power supplies will come very close to any optical drives, but being that this is a compact case, kilowatt PSUs would be absurd anyway. (As if they're not absurd oth-erwise.) Drive Bays The drive bays hang out real close to the motherboard and power supply, but not so close that installing a DVD drive would raise your blood pressure. They're on the good side of the line between "compact" and "pain in the ass". The external drive bays use pushpin-style tool-free clips, but the hard drives use regular screws. The hard drive cage swivels out and makes installation a cinch, but there's nothing by way of vibration management.
Related Reviews Mini-Tower February 26, 2008
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