In Win Envisions an Ikea-like Future for PC Cases for Sustainable Shipping with POC and Dubili

[btarunr]

In Win is always a stand-out attraction at PC trade-shows, and at the 2023 International CES, they presented a vision for what PC cases could ship like in the near-future. PC cases, particularly $20-50 ones, are incredibly uneconomical to ship, as they take up vast amount of spatial volume for the market-price. The new In Win POC isn't exactly an entry-level case, but adds a heavy DIY element to it, similar to what you'd find with Ikea furniture.

The In Win POC case comes in completely knocked down kits, with nealy all its metal panels flattened. There are cutouts on the panel, along which you manually bend and fold the sheet-metal to construct 3D shapes, as shown in online instructional videos made by In Win. A few bends and tightening of joints later, your case is ready for the hardware to be installed. The knocked-down case comes in an incredibly compact box that's a fraction of the volume of what would've been for a factory-assembled case, and needs much less protective Styrofoam. The concept carries on to the Dubili, a rather upmarket-looking ATX mid-tower which, although doesn't come with "fold here" sheet-metal, remains in a completely knocked-down state out of the box, with mostly flat bits that you join using a series of thumb-screw joints to give the case its 3-dimensional form.



A video presentation by In Win follows.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[dgianstefani]

Excellent.

 

[ryun]

Sweet. I'd love this.

 

[konga]

Container prices went through the roof during the pandemic, which is why the prices of cases went haywire for a while. Depending on which index you look at though, China - US shipping is either back to pre-pandemic prices or just 33% higher. Europe still has it rough, with China - EU container prices being over double what it was prior to the pandemic according to some indexes.

So in the US at least, you'd expect the price of PC cases go back down, but it's not really happening. Some case manufacturers took a big hit to their margin and maybe they're now seeing this as the time to profit. And now In Win is here to tell us that the future of cases is this flat-packed ikea garbage? Unless they actually manage to hit $20 - $50 price tags with these, I'd like to kindly ask them to screw off.

 

[eidairaman1]

Cases are boring today without drive bays

 

[Rotorama]

That Dubili case looks nice, that brushed aluminium with those big exposed hex bolts give it a nice industrial vibe.
Hope those orange accents will have multiple different color options too at some point.

Almost a shame I just settled in my modded In Win Explorer on the other end of the design spectrum...

 

[trsttte]

Wow this is pretty slick. Some low volume SFF cases already kind of experimented with the concept of having the case in parts and shipping a flat pack that you then have to assemble, but a full size fully reconfigurable one like that I think is a first.

 

[zlobby]

Cases are boring today without drive bays

Right! I dearly 'miss' the S/ATA cable management days! Platters are only suitable for a NAS/SAN nowadays and you can build a decent RAID with NVMe on most decent boards, which is way fater than any platter in such volume.

 

[Wirko]

Container prices went through the roof during the pandemic, which is why the prices of cases went haywire for a while. Depending on which index you look at though, China - US shipping is either back to pre-pandemic prices or just 33% higher. Europe still has it rough, with China - EU container prices being over double what it was prior to the pandemic according to some indexes.

Shipping to Europe was priced similarly as shipping to the US in 2022, but it's cheaper to Los Angeles because it's closer. March 2021 = Suez Canal plugged. Flames = see the article. $14,000 = still too little if we're all still keen to import large empty PC casees from the other end of the globe.

 

[caroline!]

This isn't new. A friend of mine bought a disassembled case like that around 2014 and we built it together, it wasn't made by any "known" brand but it came like that OR pre-assembled, but that was more expensive so he went for the puzzle version. Oh and it came with a power supply, it was pretty bad but enough for his build with a GT 8600 card, it also had a pair of 80mm fans.

That was the only time I saw a case packed like that and always wondered why it wasn't a thing anymore. It even came with a tiny phillips screwdriver I still have and use all the time, that was the only tool required to put it together.

 

[natr0n]

So you got metal versions and plastic versions it seems with other release inwin is doing. I wonder if all parts can be mixed and matched.

 

[Totally]

Container prices went through the roof during the pandemic, which is why the prices of cases went haywire for a while. Depending on which index you look at though, China - US shipping is either back to pre-pandemic prices or just 33% higher. Europe still has it rough, with China - EU container prices being over double what it was prior to the pandemic according to some indexes.

So in the US at least, you'd expect the price of PC cases go back down, but it's not really happening. Some case manufacturers took a big hit to their margin and maybe they're now seeing this as the time to profit. And now In Win is here to tell us that the future of cases is this flat-packed ikea garbage? Unless they actually manage to hit $20 - $50 price tags with these, I'd like to kindly ask them to screw off.

In-win is fairly late to the party, not counting boutique/niche vendors they're just the first big name brand to dip their toes in flat packed cases. Previous well known examples are danger den and another forget the name, they made the big-ass cubes, and teenage.engineering

 

[Yrd]

This isn't new. A friend of mine bought a disassembled case like that around 2014 and we built it together, it wasn't made by any "known" brand but it came like that OR pre-assembled, but that was more expensive so he went for the puzzle version. Oh and it came with a power supply, it was pretty bad but enough for his build with a GT 8600 card, it also had a pair of 80mm fans.

That was the only time I saw a case packed like that and always wondered why it wasn't a thing anymore. It even came with a tiny phillips screwdriver I still have and use all the time, that was the only tool required to put it together.

In-win is fairly late to the party, not counting boutique/niche vendors they're just the first big name brand to dip their toes in flat packed cases. Previous well known examples are danger den and another forget the name, they made the big-ass cubes, and teenage.engineering

This looks to be a little more than just flat packed parts.

Caselabs were shipped flat packed too.

These look like the side panels are made to be folded into a case. Like a metal model kit.