In Win X-Fighter PC Case Review

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Product: X-Fighter
Manufacturer: In Win
Supplied by: In Win
Price: 105USD/RM385
Launch Date: NA

You may heard of In Win Stealth Bomber as it is a fabulous PC case and today we're going to review another great case from In Win; X-Fighter. In Win X-Fighter design is based on star war epic where it has film donning hard steel, geometric lines and brilliant lightning effect. Besides that this case also leverages the interior design of Stealth Bomber where it comes with plenty of great features.

Company Profile

IN-WIN Development Inc., an ISO 9001 manufacturer of professional computer chassis, power supplies and digital storage devices, is the leading provider of enclosure solutions to system integrators worldwide. Founded in 1986, IN-WIN provides high quality chassis that conform to all safety regulations, as well as unsurpassed customer service.

In Win was well trained to become a top-notch manufacturer of core technology to enhance internal core competence to meet what customer and market needs constantly. Top Management has been executed four major elements to reach our growing goal: Innovation, Service, Speed, Value, Safety, Warmth, Faithful, Diligence in order to remain our leading edge position and differentiate with other players.

Features

Star Wars Design
- Inspired by spacecrafts from the Star Wars films, the silver aluminum stripes compliment the hard steel and geometric lines. Stunning lighting effects exhibit an out-of-this-world experience like nothing you've ever seen before.

Triangular Feet
- The base of the chassis is held up with a set of four triangular feet giving your chassis a three-dimensional futuristic look.

Innovative Adjustable Thermal Exhaust Vents
- Exclusively from In Win, the adjustable thermal exhaust vents provide a complete cooling solution that molds them to meet your desired thermal needs.

LED Light Dances to the Beats
- The Power and HDD lights dance to the beat of your power supply usage and hard drive speed.

Easy Access
- The USB, Firewire, and audio interface ports are located at the top of the X-Fighter allowing quick access to headsets, cameras, external HDs, and other connection devices.

Specifications

Package & Contents

In Win X-Fighter comes with similar packaging box with B2 Stealth Bomber but with slightly bigger. The major features of In Win X-Fighter are written on the left side of the packaging box such as dual fan VGA turbo cooling system, patented shock-free railing system, triangular feet, star war design, innovative adjustable thermal exhaust vent, LED light dances, easy access, vibration-free fan holder and tool-free mechanical design.

For the internal protection, In Win has used two thick foams to protect the X-Fighter very well. Besides that the plastic bag and mylar are used to protect the case from being damaged/scratches. The mylar protection is necessary because some panels of the In Win X-Fighter comes with glossy surface at front and left side panels. The accessories bag are located at the foam.

The user's manual of In Win X-Fighter is quite similar with B2 Stealth Bomber; a big piece of black Multilanguage manual. However In Win X-Fighter doesn't come with additional stickers like B2 Stealth Bomber; a bit disappointing since it is a cool sticker. The bag of accessories contains PCI slots, 3-pin to Molex converter, and plus some screws.

In Win X-Fighter Exterior

In Win has total eight PC cases from three case series; OR (elegant, home deco), AL-13 (in between OR & Xtreme) and Xtreme (high end gaming). B2 Stealth Bomber is from Xtreme series while X-Fighter is from AL-13 series. Compare with B2 Stealth Bomber, In Win X-Fighter is targeting for lower end market as X-Fighter doesn't come with auto-sensing door which is expensive. However for the internal structure prospective, they are totally identical; let us go through this together in later section. In short, In Win X-Fighter is designed after spacecrafts with donning hard steel, geometric lines as well as brilliant lightning effect.

In Win X-Fighter is a mid tower PC case where it comes with dimension; 470 x 240 x 570 mm; slight bigger than B2 Stealth Bomber. There are ingle color available at this moment which is black and it is the most common color for PC case. For the front panel of In Win X-Fighter, there is a V-shaped bumper where it contains power on, reset buttons as well as the brilliant lightning effect bar (a row of LED display; detail can be found in testing section). The power button basically is a long bar which is highlighted with "Power" wording while the reset button is hid at the back of the V-shaped bumper.

Unlike In Win B2 Stealth Bomber, the front I/O ports of In Win X-Fighter (2 x USB 2.0 ports, 2 x e-SATA ports, 1 x IEEE 1394 port and Mic & Line Out audio jacks) are not located at the side of the case but on top panel. Most of the users will prefer such top panel front I/O panel because these ports can be accessed easily as such heavy case most probably will be placed on the floor. There is a curve on this front I/O panel which is used to keep the components while they are connected with these front I/O panel like digital camera, headset, external HDD enclosure and etc. There is an intake air vent at the bottom of the front panel.

As usual for a mid tower case, it will mostly come with four exposed 5.25" bays and this is same for In Win X-Fighter. All the 5.25" bays have very unique shape/curve but these 5.25" bay fillers are hard to be cleaned up as it comes with mesh filler where the dust will be collected after some period. However if you like In Win X-Fighter very much then it shouldn't a big problem as the dust can be cleaned by air gun or water easily.

Almost every mainstream to high end PC case from In Win also comes with side panel air vent. Side panel air vent is good which is able improve the cooling performance especially for the processor and graphic card. In Win X-Fighter's side panel air vent is quite similar with B2 Stealth Bomber but without the thermal diode sensor to monitor the temperature performance like graphic card, memory and etc.

For the right side panel of In Win X-Fighter, there isn't any air vent which is quite common as most of the air vents will be located at front and rear while top and left panels for extreme cooling case. A right panel latch is included by In Win so that this right panel can be opened up easily. Same with In Win B2 Stealth Bomber, X-Fighter also comes with two user friendly patented side panel clips which are used to lock the panels on the case body.

Here is the back panel of In Win X-Fighter, everything looks standard and come with great quality. Again, In Win uses the same rear fan with B2 Stealth Bomber on X-Fighter; a sharp green color 120mm fan. All the PCI slots are not filled with PCI fillers at default as In Win has packed these PCI fillers in the accessories bag.

Same as In Win B2 Stealth Bomber where X-Fighter also comes with two 1/2" rubber holes for higher end water cooling setup. This is great and water cooling freaks sure like it very much so no additional case modification is required. One of the physical differences between B2 Stealth Bomber and X-Fighter is the case stand where X-Fighter comes with four high case stands; not rubber feet and it is around 2" height. Such case stand idea is should be based on star war epic.

In Win X-Fighter Interior

Now let us focus on In Win X-Fighter interior portion and basically it is totally same with In Win B2 Stealth Bomber although both of them are having different exterior design. In Win X-Fighter is a mid tower which can support ATX, mATX Board and no problem to support high end graphic card even in SLi or CrossFire setup as the interior of it is quite spacious. Overall the interior structure of In Win X-Fighter comes with high and sturdy quality.

One of the highlighted features of In Win X-Fighter is the VGA turbo cooling system where is used to cool down the graphic card especially for those high end graphic which generate greater amount of heat so an advance cooling is necessary in order to keep its life span longer. The VGA turbo cooling system is powered up by two attractive green 80mm fans and the front fan can be adjusted into 90° to cool down the graphic card from different direction.

In Win X-Fighter has a total four exposed 5.25" bays, two FDD bays (1 exposed & 1 hidden) and four hidden 3.5" bays for HDD. This VGA turbo cooling system can be unlocked by release the front and rear locking tabs. The green tab is used to secure the VGA turbo cooling system on the case; move to right to release the lock.

FDD and HDD bays are visible after the VGA turbo cooling system is removed. In Win X-Fighter is designed in such way where the HDD is installed 90° facing the side panel; allow easy installation without blocking with other PC components especially the graphic card. Besides that the HDD cage can be swiveled around 30° to allow user to install the HDD easily.

Besides the two 80mm fans of the VGA turbo cooling system, there is a 120mm fan as the front intake fan to provide the fresh air to cool down the system. This 120mm high quality ceramic fan is long lasting, quiet fan that comes with handle which allows user to install and remove it instantly as most of the other front intake fan requires screw installation. Besides that the handle also comes with an air filter to avoid dusty environment of the inner case.

Same with In Win B2 Stealth Bomber, X-Fighter has total four fans; two 80mm for the VGA turbo cooling system, one 120mm for rear exhaust and one 120mm fan for front intake. The 120mm rear fan is also come with tool-less installation where it comes with a bracket for easily installation and this fan also mounted with rubber holders to minimize the vibration noise.

The PCI slot of In Win X-Fighter is an easy-fit expansion slot; tool-less installation, neither screw nor screw driver is required. As In Win X-Fighter comes with top easy access front I/O panel, there are quite numbers of cable routed from the top so a better cable management is required in order not to impact the inner air flow circulation.

The front panel of In Win X-Fighter can be removed easily by just unlocking two clips of the left panel from internally. As you can see the fourth ODD bay is occupied with the double-decked shock-free rails storage box for better and easy management; at least no need spend time to get back those unused rails which may be stored at somewhere else. The double-decked shock-free rails storage box contains 2 set ODD, 4 set HDD and two set FDD rails. All these rails are used for tool-less drive installation which simplifies the drive installation besides the shock free protection on the sensitive device like HDD.

The front I/O panel cables can be disconnected easily between the front panel and the case body for maintenance purpose. If the fourth ODD bay is required then it can be removed out anytime from the case or move to other 5.25" bay slot. Here is the front panel of In Win X-Fighter and there are four dust filters for each of the 5.25" panel since reduce the mesh from being dusty.

The left side panel of In Win X-Fighter comes with two air vents and one of them even comes with an air guide. The top air vent with air guide is used to provide fresh air to cool down the CPU while the bottom air vent for the VGA turbo cooling system to cool down the graphic card. Both of these air vents come with air filter to prevent the inner case from being dusty. The top air guide can be removable if it is blocking with the giant CPU cooler.

Installation, Testing & Performance

Since In Win X-Fighter has the same interior design with B2 Stealth Bomber, so we will just briefly go through it again. For the installation, we start with motherboard, PSU, drives (HDD, ODD) and PCI cards where all these installation are straightforward and nothing much different with other PC cases. Overall we didn't encounter any issue so we would like to skip it here.

The shock-free rails are located on the double-decked shock-free rails storage box and all these rails are bidirectional which is good as most of such tool-less rail of other PC case is just unidirectional. These drive rail installation is quite simple where the drive can be slotted into the cage instantly once the rails are installed on it. However we hope In Win could include another set of ODD rails as two sets are just merely sufficient.

Here are the complete setup with In Win X-Fighter which is exactly same with B2 Stealth Bomber. Everything perfect and simple especially the tool-less and hassle-less installation where we would like to stress here as this is one of the most user friendly cases that we have ever seen besides its brother; B2 Stealth Bomber.

Here are another couple of pictures of In Win X-Fighter during operation. The front row of LED will be lighted up during power on state and these LED are very eye catching lightning; good for Lan Party.

In order for better understanding, we have captured a video file and upload to YouTube for your better understanding purpose about In Win X-Fighter Dancing LED.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33GHz
Motherboard: Asus P5K SE/EPU
Heatsink: CoolerMaster X Dream P775+
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM Fujitsu
Hard Drive: 80GB 7200RPM Western Digital
Graphic Card: OEM Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
PSU: Seasonic M12D 850W
Chassis: In Win Stealth Bomber B2
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Operating System: Microsoft Vista Home Premium
Benchmark Software: Prime 95
Ambient Temperature: 28 Degree Celsius

In Win X-Fighter has the same cooling performance with B2 Stealth Bomber since they are basically same case with different exterior design only. Anyway we have attached the cooling performance between In Win B2/X-Fighter with other case that we have tested. The great performance of In Win B2/X-Fighter is fabulous which is mainly contributed by its case structure, four integrated fans (two 120mm, two 80mm fans), air guide and VGA turbo cooling system.

Conclusion

In Win X-Fighter is another real tool-less PC case again besides B2 Stealth Bomber as the installation methods are simplified very well by In Win which is not only convenience but also reduce setup time especially for newbie. Besides that In Win X-Fighter also comes with other unique and great features which are quite similar with B2 Stealth Bomber such as VGA turbo cooling system, shock-free railing system, front eSATA I/O ports, dancing LED and etc. Basically In Win X-Fighter is quite similar with In Win Stealth Bomber B2 and the difference between them is the exterior design. Hence if you like B2 Stealth Bomber then most probably you will like X-Fighter as well. Besides that In Win X-Fighter also comes with cheaper price; USD105 (around 10USD cheaper than B2 Stealth Bomber) since auto-sensing door is removed. Overall In Win X-Fighter is another great choice besides B2 Stealth Bomber.

Pros:

* Cool design with great cooling performance
* VGA turbo cooling system
* Patented shock-free railing system
* Air filters
* Water cooling holes
* Comes with front eSATA ports
* Tool-less installation

Cons:

* None

Thanks to In Win for providing this sample for us to review.