IN-WIN BUC: Just How Much $100 Can Buy
by Dustin Sklavos on May 9, 2011 4:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- In-Win
- mid-tower
Introducing the IN-WIN BUC
When building a new machine, it's often easy to pass by certain manufacturers in favor of old standbys like Antec, Cooler Master, SilverStone, or Thermaltake. Whenever another company becomes a contender it's usually because they made a big splash at the top of the market and let the halo effect strike the way Corsair did. However, there's great engineering going on with smaller firms, and in the case of IN-WIN and their new BUC enclosure, you'd be surprised at just how much actual value can be crammed into what seems at first glance like a mid-range enclosure. If you're the type to tinker religiously with your desktop, the BUC may just be the case for you.
I'll admit I was a bit skeptical when the BUC arrived. Good enclosures can be difficult to find, and my initial perspective was that the BUC was going to be "just another gaming case". Thankfully my job requires more than snap judgments: I have to actually use the case, build a computer with it, and really get a feel for it. In the process, I found a lot of very pleasant surprises.
Keeping things moving with our new set of case reviews, the BUC is our first full-sized ATX case and as such it's the first case to take advantage of our full-sized ATX testbed, which I'll talk more about when we get to the thermal and acoustic testing. Once again I ask that if you have any suggestions for how we handle future case reviews, please feel free to let us know. Now, on with the show!
| IN-WIN BUC Specifications | ||
| Motherboard Form Factor | ATX, Micro ATX, Mini ITX | |
| Drive Bays | External | 3x 5.25", 1x 3.5" |
| Internal | 5x 3.5"/2.5" (three hotswap) | |
| Cooling | Front | 1x 120mm intake fan |
| Rear | 1x 120mm exhaust fan | |
| Top | 1x 120mm fan mount | |
| Side | 2x 120mm fan mount (tested with extra included fan mounted) | |
| Bottom | - | |
| Expansion Slots | 7 | |
| Front I/O Port | 2x USB 2.0, headphone and mic jacks, eSATA | |
| Top I/O Port | 1x USB 3.0 (with routing cable) | |
| Power Supply Size | Standard ATX | |
| Clearance | 250mm (PSU), 12" (Expansion Cards), 170mm (CPU HSF) | |
| Weight | 14.77 lbs. | |
| Dimensions | 19.9" x 8.3" x 19.1" | |
| Price | $99 | |
I whipped out the tape measure to give more exact figures of just what you can expect to fit in this enclosure, but generally speaking just about any standard CPU cooler or power supply should fit. As far as video cards are concerned, fitting anything the size of a Radeon HD 5970/6990 is going to be a tight squeeze, but other than that you should be good to go. Our GeForce GTX 580 was able to fit comfortably and easily with room to breathe.
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ggathagan - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
If you look at the pictures, you'll note that it's not really a SATA backplane.It's hot-swap connectors mounted on 4 of the 5 drive bays.
Belard - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
In-Win has been a rather small company for a very long time. I've built systems with their cases 10 years ago. In general, they do come (and in the past) some very cool designs. But for the most part - in the past 4-6 years, their design have gone towards plain or ugly (IMHO).But I've seen the BUC at a store, and it is a very very nice looking case.
Spivonious - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
My first PC used an In-Win case. It had a Celeron 333A to give you a time frame. :)They've always been a quality, value-oriented case manufacturer.
Belard - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Around that era, I sold some In-Wins. They even had decent PSUs.shamans33 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Nice to see CPU HSF clearance values on the features table.It might be nice to see a list of unusual features onto a table as well (as a summary of key new features)
kmmatney - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
The only thing I don't like about routing the power supply wiring behind the motherboard is that its a pain if you want to swap it out. I spent a long time routing all my power supply wiring in my case, and then my son's computer had trouble. I suspected the power supply, but needed to put mine into his computer to properly troublshoot. So I had to undo my hard work...jrocks84 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
The noise and thermal testing graphs are very helpful for making decisions on cases. Not that many case reviews give this data, so it's nice to see more sites adopting this testing.Ammaross - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Anand, perhaps while you're on full ATX cases with backplanes for the hard drives, could you look over the AzzA Hurrican 2000? (yes, no 'e' in 'Hurrican'). I used it recently for my home rig and I think others might like to see your take on it. :)nightalon - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I don't mean to sound like a snob, but Mr Sklavos needs to clean up his article a bit.Anand's style is much more coherent, uses fewer cliches, and adheres to more conventional and conservative journalistic style.
I'm not implying that reviewers shouldn't be creative with their language, but using the word "popped" about 15 times seems excessive to me.
Also, if there are any questions for readers in an article, they should come at the start or in the conclusion.
I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. Pogue and Mossberg, of NYT and WSJ respectively, also do a good job, although I think their target demographic is slightly different.
Nonetheless, adherence to standard grammar and to Strunk and White would be wonderful! Otherwise, this seemed to me to be a pretty good review.
earle36 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
"I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. "You're kidding right??? Those guys write article full of cliches and more importantly they lack the technical depth found here at Anandtech. After being consistently appalled with the reviews at Engadget, I'm glad that Anandtech ramped up their coverage of Mobile devices too.
Personally, I think Mr. Sklavos did a fine job.