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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stratosrally - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
"Just curious ... how much content do you have to steal to fill six harddrives?"That's a naive and needlessly antagonistic comment.
I have over 217GB in my Steam folder alone and am currently using almost 500GB of a 750GB SATA HD. I have no movies on my pc and the only music I have is purchased online or burnt to MP3 from my own music CD collection.
My new build has a 120GB Corsair SSD and 2 1TB WD Caviar Black drives in RAID 0, with an external 2TB WD backup. I won't need more space than that in the forseeable future, but I will be converting my entire CD collection to MP3 - so the additional space will be useful. Also, I'm sure Steam will have sales on new PC games that I want in the future and they just keep getting bigger!
I'm 46yrs old and don't steal content, thank you very much.
robd420 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I'm 25yrs old and i do, thank you very much.bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
So it sounds like your total need is ~500 GB, plus you anticipate some future need for backing up your CD collection and buying more games. Sounds like a 1 TB drive is all you'll need for some time.You are clearly a person who would be fine with a case that only takes 6 hard drives. My comment was directed at the O.P. who was lamenting not being able to put more than 6 hard drives in a case. Even with cheap 500 GB hard drives, 6 slots gives you ~3 TB. Who exactly is filling up 3 TB of data with legitimate content except people shooting a hell of alot of high definition home video? And how many people actually do that versus people needing the space for warez?
Chalabala - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link
Go read up on raid 60 =DStormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
That was kinda his point, though: you barely fill 500 MB of HD right now, and have big plans to raise that to 2 GBs. That's, as you say, two drives, which most any case will fit. I personnally just bought a Thermaltake Element Q, which is slightly smaller than a shoe box, and will take up to 3 3.5" HDDs. Right now, my single 3TB drive sits barely a third full, though.doubletake - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
0/10 troll. Your comment is beyond moronic. This is a tech enthusiast site. Keyword: enthusiast. As in, not your average Joe with a few pictures, movies and music files. You have no idea how fast you could fill up 300GBs with HD camcorder video files, or uncompressed recorded footage from games used to edit later. Try widening your perspective and thinking a bit more critically before opening that brain-mouth link.$tinkmitt - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Well put. I was sure when he/SHE got his/HER @$$ handed to him/HER after the 1st comment he/SHE would just drift off into obscurity, tail soundly tucked.But nooooo. This "Genius" (and I fully mean the implication), has got an opinion we just missed the 1st go round.
I don't even think he/SHE knows what clearly means.
bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Heh heh you're funny. I fully admitted that my comments were somewhat inflammatory; but if you think that anyone is going to run away from a discussion on an internet forum just because of some flaming (well deserved, probably), then I think you haven't been using the internet long enough.StormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
quick question: are you, parent and grand parent, saying that it's actually your case, or that you can imagine this being someone else's case ? Because I indeed, do not know of anyone one who uses more than 1 GB for legitimate stuff on a personnal PC. And usually, far less.StormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
that's TB, not GB. SOrry.