I recently helped a friend build a high-end gaming system -- somewhat of a 'spare no expense' deal with an Intel Extreme Edition CPU, 3-way GTX 780 Ti SLI cards and so much RAM that it could hold an OS and games, though several SSDs were employed for that task. Choosing an equally impressive case wasn't so straightforward, especially if you're looking for something unique such as the In Win D-Frame.
We reviewed the D-Frame last June and it remains one of the coolest cases I've seen. Despite receiving mostly negative feedback from you guys, it was fun to look at, fun to work with and just fun to own. It was expensive for a mid-tower at $400 but not impossible to justify and my friend would have happily paid the price. Unfortunately, the D-Frame wasn't big enough for everything he wanted in the build.
After considering the CM Cosmos II and the Lian Li PC-P80NB, he settled on the Corsair Obsidian 900D despite being a bit boring for his taste. Now months later, he is thinking about swapping to an In Win case that we just recently found: the tòu, an $800 enclosure inspired by glass architecture and named after the Chinese word for "transparent" -- precisely the sort of flair my friend had been looking for.
The tòu uses 3mm tempered glass surrounded by a metal skeleton and is finished with a special coating that turns the outside of the chassis into a mirror when your PC is off. However, when illuminated from the inside with your system on, the tòu's mirror coating becomes transparent, showing off your internal hardware and hopefully reassuring your $800 purchase.
The outer panels are made up of 3mm-thick sheets of tempered glass finished with a semi-transparent reflective coating. This is the first time we have seen an entire case wrapped in this stuff and it's a pretty cool idea.
In the past we have seen cases made entirely of clear acrylic sheets, but they have all looked messy and scratched easily.
The tòu's skeleton has been made from a very thick aluminum cast which holds all sixteen glass panels in place as well as all the hardware inside.
Out of the sixteen panels, just six of them are designed to be removed and they're pretty easy to spot as they are secured using large thumb screws, while the non-removable panels have slimmer screws.
While we admit that the exposed bolts might take away from the otherwise clean design, they are an obvious necessity. Making the case without them would have been extremely difficult for both In Win and the user.
Like the glass buildings from which the tòu draws its inspiration, the chassis features a number of cool angles, making it quite different from the more traditional rectangular box. Combining interesting angles with highly reflective glass gives the tòu a very special look.
Despite its massive 97.3L volume, the tòu only supports ATX motherboards and not the larger E-ATX or bigger boards. This is surprising given the case measures 585mm tall, 258mm wide and 645mm long, making it roughly the same size as the Corsair Obsidian 800D which does support E-ATX boards.
However, we'd expect the tòu to be less space efficient than a more conventional design anyway. We also expected it to be heavier than usual plastic-laden cases so its 20kg weigh-in was no surprise.
Thankfully, despite the fact that glass is heavy, none of the panels are particularly weighty on their own and rubber suction handles help make light work of the panels along with giving you somewhere to grip that won't be affected by fingerprints.
Unfortunately for the tòu, it looks best from behind where there are two sleek glass panels with a small opening in the middle to let cables pass through. When unlit this looks great and when lit up it looks even better. It's a real design win for the tòu and if the top and front were as good it would be flawless from all angles.
The problem is, the front panel just isn't that pretty. Whereas the rear of the case is clean and stylish the front looks a bit tacky, well the bottom half of the front anyway.
For some reason In Win has added in a frosted section with some tacky looking branding and a few touch controls. The touch controls are actually cool, though they could look a lot better, while the huge frosted glass section just looks well out of place. Then at the very bottom there is an opening for an ugly 5.25" optical drive.
If for whatever reason you still need an optical drive in a high-end system, it would be best if it were either hidden behind a glass panel or if it were of the slot loading variety. Had In Win blocked this bay off with a sheet of glass the internal 5.25" bay made for a great hidey to tuck away all those extra cables.
Those touch sensitive buttons that we spoke of control the fan speed, LED light brightness (up and down) as well as the power button. They all work really well despite looking a bit out of place. Below the touch buttons is the I/O panel which is permanently exposed though looks nice enough. The panel features the reset button, drive activity LED, two USB 3.0 ports and a pair of 3.5mm audio jacks.
The case obviously needs some ventilation and glass doesn't offer this well, so In Win implemented an aluminum panel that features a criss-cross kind of design capped off with a thin honeycomb grill.
Compared to the beautiful glass panels, it is a little unsightly, though what really jumps out at us are those white rubber washers around the screws holding the fans in place. Surely some aluminum washers would have been a better aesthetic choice. The rubber does dampen vibrations from fans, but they could have been sandwiched under some larger washers.
Still, if you can look past the top panel and the frosted glass on the front panel, the tòu is beautiful. We even really like the polished aluminum handles at the top of the case, which look nice and work well.
A similar handle design is found at the bottom of the tòu and serve as the feet. There is another criss-cross grill at the bottom which allows the power supply to draw in cool air.
Internal DesignRemoving four thumbscrews on the large left side panel gets you inside the tòu. There is a second smaller panel which also needs to be removed to install the power supply. For a first time installation, you'll also want to remove the two panels on the opposite side as well as the two at the rear.
For all its attention grabbing greatness on the outside there is surprisingly very little to raise your curiosity on the inside.
You get three tabs that are designed to support 3.5" or 2.5" drives along with room to mount a pair of 2.5" drives on the back panel. There is also that 5.25" drive bay at the very bottom which we used to tuck away excess cables.
You won't need a motherboard I/O shield when building in the tòu -- or at least you won't be able to use it as there isn't a mounting spot for one. In this case, not having a motherboard I/O shield isn't necessarily a bad thing as it isn't exactly required with the rear glass panel.
There are seven expansion slots for PCI/PCIe cards and room for an ATX power supply up to 220mm long.
Keeping things cool is a single front mounted 120mm intake fan which is fixed into place using a rubber strap of all things. Then at the top there are three 120mm exhaust fans and room to support a 360mm radiator for liquid cooling, because in this case you know you want to.
As limited as the interior features are, that sand-cast aluminum frame is pretty impressive and measures up to 4mm thick in parts. The motherboard tray, which is also quite solid, has a number of cutouts for cables. Although they are not lined with rubber grommets that doesn't matter as the edges are very smooth.
While there are cutouts for cable management, In Win somehow overlooked the all-important CPU hole in the motherboard tray. This huge oversight can be corrected with a little modding, but for the price we would have expected In Win to do most of the work for you.
In our mind In Win has also let the tòu down a bit with the pre-installed wiring. While much of it is braided and looks great, the ends of the fan cabling aren't and the method that In Win uses to connect all fans up to the controller is extremely messy. Again, for the money this is something that should have come pre-installed all neat like.
The good news however is that behind the motherboard tray there is loads of space to hide cables, though those fan cables we just spoke of cannot be hidden here due to the location of the fan controller.
Given that the tòu is meant to be a show piece we understand why they have taken a very minimalist approach inside and why there is only room for three 3.5" drives. This is not a server style case and cramming it full of hard drives would just detract from the design.
Moreover, three 4TB drives will allow for a system storage capacity of 12TB, which we feel is plenty for gamers and power users. Any more than that and something like a dedicated NAS is a much better option. There is also room for a pair of SSDs as well so keep that in mind.
Installation ImpressionsAn advantage to working with a product as exciting as the tòu is that shortcomings are often overlooked because it's so special that you can make compromises you might not otherwise be willing to make.
Keeping in mind that the tòu lacks a CPU hole in the motherboard tray, we installed a CPU cooler with the motherboard out of the case to avoid any issues. For the photos, we used an LGA2011 setup which doesn't need rear motherboard access due to the nature of the socket design. Still for LGA1155 or AM3+ users there is a good chance the after-market cooler you install will require rear access, so keep that in mind.
The CPU cooler of choice was the Thermalright SilverArrow SB-E Extreme, which stands 165mm tall and tests the limits of most cases. Despite coming in contact with the glass panel it was possible to just fit the SilverArrow SB-E Extreme inside. So realistically we would put the maximum CPU heatsink height at around 164mm if you want to avoid flexing the glass.
With the CPU and its cooler installed along with the memory modules, we fitted the motherboard into the tòu without any issues. Next the 3.5" drives were installed and again this is a little different to the norm, though we like the final result.
First, the aluminum tabs that support the drives must be removed and this is done by undoing a pair of thumbscrews -- easy enough. Once removed, the drive can be fitted and then the tab re-installed. There is a small cutout in the back tray that allows the hard drives SATA/power connectors to be accessed from the opposite side of the case. This is quite ingenious and very neat at the same time.
With the hard drives installed, we moved on to the power supply. PC Power & Cooling's Silencer Mk III 1200W provides ample power and looks great inside the tòu.
The tòu has room for graphics cards as long as 380mm, which is more than enough for the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Moreover, it is easily possible to fit two or three of these cards, while depending on the motherboard used you could squeeze four in.
Installing everything neatly into the tòu was relatively easy and the cables behind the motherboard tray go largely unnoticed.
Despite its unusual design, working with the tòu isn't that difficult though you still need to take more care than with a regular case, as evidenced by the panel that cracked upon delivery. The front right panel was damaged during shipping, but thankfully In Win shipped another one out right away. We hope In Win keeps a heap of spare panels.
With the components inside its time to turn the lights on!
Operating Temperatures and Wrap UpTo ensure accurate thermal results, we installed the same hardware in each case in virtually the same way. Components included the Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional, Phenom II X6 1100T, Prolimatech Megahalems in passive mode (i.e. no fan actively dispelling heat), Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 OC, half a dozen Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB hard drives, and OCZ's ZX 1000w power supply.
With the fans set to their maximum speed, the In Win tòu is extremely loud, much louder than we consider tolerable. The only good news here is that the idle temperatures were quite good, keeping the GPU at 37 degrees and the processor at 22 degrees, close to ambient room temperature.
Reducing the fan speed to its minimum value meant that the tòu was now near silent. Despite the drastic reduction in operating volume the CPU/GPU only increased slightly in temperature and that is impressive particularly given the CPU is passively cooled.
Stress testing the In Win tòu using Prime95 and FurMark we again see the fans spinning at full speed and the case does very well. The GPU was kept at just 77 degrees while the CPU was limited to a maximum of 70 degrees.
Lowering the fans to their slowest speed only increased temperatures of the CPU and GPU by 4 to 5 degrees which was great to see. In terms of performance, the tòu was comparable to the Corsair Obsidian 650D and Silverstone Fortress FT04.
Final ThoughtsIf you own a CM Elite because it's a good value or the Rosewill R103A because it comes with a power supply, we understand if you think someone who buys an $800 box has more money than sense. The argument could be made that the tòu is impractical and overpriced, but there are plenty of enthusiasts who will compare it to buying a work of art. It's hard to put a price on something that's one of a kind.
That isn't to say the tòu is perfect -- far from it. Yet it's the only case that has made me want to turn a computer on purely to admire its enclosure. It's one of those rare products that unless you have seen it in person you haven't really seen it at all, kind of like an exotic super car. For all its shortcomings, perhaps most notable of which is the lack of a CPU cutout in the motherboard tray, the tòu is a case unlike any other.
Would I pay $800 for it? Probably not, but I'm not the right customer either. While I appreciate high-end equipment, I wouldn't invest in a 4-way GPU setup nor would I purchase an Intel Extreme Edition CPU. They cross the line into diminishing returns. Spending $800 on the tòu isn't exactly the same as buying an EE processor since there isn't a cheaper option that is virtually the same, so it does stand on its own.
My point is that In Win has made the tòu for the same folks who will drop thousands on a CPU/GPU setup which isn't much faster than a much cheaper alternative. It's for people like my good friend who has money to burn on a budgetless computer. From that point of view, we can't imagine the 200 or so lucky souls who are fortunate enough to have a shiny tòu sitting on their desk will regret their purchase.
