In Win Introduces Its A1 Series of Mini-ITX Enclosures

[Raevenlord]

In Win today introduced the world to its A1 series of PC enclosures, starting with a mini-ITXcase that has the looks, transparency, and RGB goodness the majority of the market is looking for these days. Built from tempered glass and anodized aluminum, the design language for the A1 embodies the modern era, in a small package that can nonetheless hold up to 20 liters of PC hardware components (isn't that an interesting measure for hardware?). What's more telling, maybe, is how the A1 still supports tower coolers up to 160 mm tall and a dual-slot graphics card up to 300 mm in length.





2x front USB 3.0 and HD audio ports are available, alongside 2x 2.5-inch drive bays. The A1 supports 120 mm fans on the side and rear and 2x 120mm fans on the bottom of the case, just above the supplied dust filter. An In Win 600 W, 80 PLUS Bronze power supply is also included with the A1, with preinstalled cables already laid clean in the housing. The power supply is housed in an insulated upper power supply chamber that provides easy access to the interior of the compact system, and separates the heat buildup from this component and the rest of the cases' contents.



Interestingly, the A1 supports an optional Qi Wireless Charger * (IW-W1), which integrates with the top panel and allows the user to wirelessly charge their compatible mobile devices. It supports Qi's most popular wireless Qi charging standard and delivers up to 5 watts of charging power.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TheLostSwede]

Mini-ATX? There's mATX and mini-ITX...

 

[RejZoR]

mATX is microATX. Although I prefer to call those uATX and mATX is for miniATX...

 

[Valantar]

20 liters? Wow, they've done a good job making these look smaller than they really are, then. My NZXT H200i is 26 liters, and is by no means small for an ITX case. Then again, it fits my dual radiator water cooling loop and long ATX PSU (EVGA G2 750W), so that's something.

mATX is microATX. Although I prefer to call those uATX and mATX is for miniATX...

I think there point was that there is no such thing as mini-ATX, but rather mini-ITX.

 

[Fabio Bologna]

mATX is microATX. Although I prefer to call those uATX and mATX is for miniATX...

but miniATX, though it does exist as a standard, it makes no sense for a desktop pc... it's 150x150mm footprint so it's a full 20mm narrower and shorter then mini-ITX (170x170mm) so I would assume that they don't even carry a PCI-e connector onboard...

Mini-ATX standard

Mini-ITX standard

 

[RejZoR]

Since when are we measuring case dimensions in liters? Where are dimensions in millimeters or centimeters?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Since when are we measuring case dimensions in liters? Where are dimensions in millimeters or centimeters?

Since ages ago, when some clever marketing person figured it it would make them sound smaller or something...

PC case, fish tank, bucket, same thing, no?

 

[RejZoR]

20 liters tells me literally nothing about its dimensions.

 

[RH92]

20 liters tells me literally nothing about its dimensions.

It tells me that this is a big f case for an itx system knowing that SFF cases around 7 to 10L do already exist !

 

[Vayra86]

Still not decided what to think of InWin's designs. I keep getting that feeling of 'great try, just shy of looking really good'... every time.

This case: they use rounded edges everywhere and then you look on the side panels and there are hexagon holes in there and straight/hard cornered window panels... no rounding of any other edge in sight. As if they started on some idea and halfway through another designer took over with his own vision.

Crap, it even has a 'notch' in the tower's base... ouch

 

[PowerPC]

20 liters tells me literally nothing about its dimensions.

People have been using liters for this literally for ages. Liters can stand for volume just as for weight, if you didn't know. 1 liter is either a kilogram or 1,000 cubic centimetres (a cube with 10 centimeters per side).

 

[Caring1]

People have been using liters for this literally for ages. Liters can stand for volume just as for weight, if you didn't know. 1 liter is either a kilogram or 1,000 cubic centimetres (a cube with 10 centimeters per side).

Great, now you have to be a mathematician just to buy a case.

 

[dyonoctis]

Liters is nice to a rough idea of the case dimension, but you need to have a referent point for it to work. My Ncase m1 is 12 liters, so I know that inwin case is almost twice as big, even if the pictures make it looks really small.
But granted, without that reference point, it's useless...

 

[PowerPC]

Great, now you have to be a mathematician just to buy a case.

Any child in Europe can tell you what a 10 centimeter sided cube looks like. There is absolutely no math involved in this.

As one post above said, you can use it as a good reference. If you know how many liters your own case can hold, you can pretty accurately gauge the size of any other case. If your case is 40 liters, then a 20 liter case is exactly half the size. And now you just have to hold one number in memory instead of three for the length of each dimension. Liters actually make it much easier!

 

[Valantar]

20 liters tells me literally nothing about its dimensions.

But it does give you an easily comparable ballpark number to compare to other cases, vs. having to compare measurements in three dimensions. Once you're looking at more than one case, that becomes pretty much impossible to keep track of.

People have been using liters for this literally for ages. Liters can stand for volume just as for weight, if you didn't know. 1 liter is either a kilogram or 1,000 cubic centimetres (a cube with 10 centimeters per side).

1 liter=1kg? One liter of what? Water? Yes, absolutely. Oil? No. Milk? Not quite. Steel? Lol. Be specific, please. 1 liter does not in any way indicate weight, but (as is part of the point of the metric system) ease of conversion is built into it, so one liter of water equals one kilogram. Different masses have different densities, so you can't simply invent a measure of volume that also measures the weight of more than a handful of substances. That's not how physics work.

The 1000 cm3/10x10x10cm cube measure is very useful, though, even if you're of the imperial persuasion. One liter is a 4"x4"x4" cube.

Great, now you have to be a mathematician just to buy a case.

No. This is excruciatingly simple, really. As PowerPC said above, this can be eyeballed within reason by pretty much any child in the metric-using world, and as explained above, the conversion to imperial is dead simple too. It's also reasonably easy to imagine, say, that cube cut in half and stacked, for things that aren't quite that cube-like.

It tells me that this is a big f case for an itx system knowing that SFF cases around 7 to 10L do already exist !

That's turning things on their head a bit. 7-10l cases are TINY, even for ITX systems, as long as they include space for a GPU. For ITX without a GPU, 7l is rather large. But for fitting standard components (i.e. not requiring 1u server PSUs or FlexATX), 7-10l is absolutely frickin' tiny. 20l is perfectly normal. You're talking as if 7-10l is normal, which it really isn't. Your mental image of 'normal' needs adjusting. Are there a few options in the ~10l space? Sure. But it's definitely not normal.

 

[dyonoctis]

That's turning things on their head a bit. 7-10l cases are TINY, even for ITX systems, as long as they include space for a GPU. For ITX without a GPU, 7l is rather large. But for fitting standard components (i.e. not requiring 1u server PSUs or FlexATX), 7-10l is absolutely frickin' tiny. 20l is perfectly normal. You're talking as if 7-10l is normal, which it really isn't. Your mental image of 'normal' needs adjusting. Are there a few options in the ~10l space? Sure. But it's definitely not normal.

I won't deny that 7-10 liters case have their share of drawback, but I think that people are seeing 20 liters as "big" because footprint wise they getting are awfully close to some matx case while the motherboard are more expensive, defeating a little the point of such system.

But now sfx is getting really good, and itx gpu are performing reasonably well, which is making it easier to have option really making use of the small size of the motherboard.
I still remember back when the node 202 (19 liters) launched people were in wonder because it could fit in a large backpack even with all the constraints of being compatible with atx powersupply (limited in length, modular were harder to work with). A new version using a sfx psu would actually be more optimized.

 

[PowerPC]

1 liter=1kg? One liter of what? Water? Yes, absolutely. Oil? No. Milk? Not quite. Steel? Lol. Be specific, please. 1 liter does not in any way indicate weight, but (as is part of the point of the metric system) ease of conversion is built into it, so one liter of water equals one kilogram. Different masses have different densities, so you can't simply invent a measure of volume that also measures the weight of more than a handful of substances. That's not how physics work.

lolol, that was so autistic. Yesyes, it's just water, I'm sorry! I just assumed people didn't need to know how a liter is actually defined besides the dimensions part here. I didn't even need to mention that it can also give you weight (yes, of water! I'm so sorry! I'll go perform Harakiri on myself now because of all the shame I'm experiencing).

 

[RH92]

That's turning things on their head a bit. 7-10l cases are TINY, even for ITX systems, as long as they include space for a GPU. For ITX without a GPU, 7l is rather large. But for fitting standard components (i.e. not requiring 1u server PSUs or FlexATX), 7-10l is absolutely frickin' tiny. 20l is perfectly normal. You're talking as if 7-10l is normal, which it really isn't. Your mental image of 'normal' needs adjusting. Are there a few options in the ~10l space? Sure. But it's definitely not normal.

Yes cases at 7l to 10l are small ( i would call tiny something sub 5l ) indeed but can still accomodate standard components ( full length GPU's etc ) non the less . Beside that "tiny" is the word you looking for when go for small form factor ! At 7l you have cases like Dan A4 SFX wich is a bit of a niche market but around 10l cases like Node 202 can definitely be called mainstream .

 

[phanbuey]

Still not decided what to think of InWin's designs. I keep getting that feeling of 'great try, just shy of looking really good'... every time.

This case: they use rounded edges everywhere and then you look on the side panels and there are hexagon holes in there and straight/hard cornered window panels... no rounding of any other edge in sight. As if they started on some idea and halfway through another designer took over with his own vision.

Crap, it even has a 'notch' in the tower's base... ouch

You just verbalized the exact thought I have every time I see an InWin mainstream case.

 

[Valantar]

You just verbalized the exact thought I have every time I see an InWin mainstream case.

Thirded. Every time I see a new design from them, the impression is along the lines of "Oh, this looks quite... oh, wait, why did they do that weird thing, and why is that so over the top? Nah, this is kinda weird, actually. Never mind."

 

[Xajel]

People have been using liters for this literally for ages. Liters can stand for volume just as for weight, if you didn't know. 1 liter is either a kilogram or 1,000 cubic centimetres (a cube with 10 centimeters per side).

Liter is a volume unit not a weight which equals to 1000cm^3, but it happens that 1 Liter of water equals to 1KG coz water density is 1 gram per 1cm^3. but other liquids have different density, for example 1 liter of Mercury will weight 13.5KG.

Having a case with 20L volume means it's WxDxH will equal to 20000cm^3, meaning if the case was a perfect cube it will measure about 27.14cm per side.

 

[MasterACC]

Airflow looks suck and i don't want that 600W PSU.

Why not just give us a normal side panel for 12mm or 14mm fan instead of that stupid tempered glass panel?

 

[Caring1]

That's what it just reminded me of, a Toaster Oven with a glass door.

 

[jateruy]

Airflow looks suck and i don't want that 600W PSU.

Why not just give us a normal side panel for 12mm or 14mm fan instead of that stupid tempered glass panel?

Look at elsewhere maybe Silverstone SFFs. Why are you even commenting?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Any more insults in this thread and holiday passes will be issued, move back on topic please............. enough.