Introduction

In-Win has been in the enclosure business for many years now, but it has only been a couple since they first from OEM to retail products. Since our first In-Win review back in 2004 they have expanded their enthusiast line-up, today we have a close look at a small size “cute” case, aimed at the market.

The Allure design team gave the case a definte female touch, the classic white with flower pattern and small decorative stones on the side panels. The case is shipped in a compact box which matches the case design:



The case is wrapped in a protective foam bag to prevent damage to the side panels, it’s best to keep that foam bag around when you are installing the system, as it’s a good protection layer.

Specifications

You can take a quick look here at the specifications, or wait for the flash animation below to load:



This case is for micro-ATX motherboards, don’t expect to build a high end system in here, it’s meant for low-midrange systems as its diminutive size prevents large cooling fans to be installed. There’s still room inside for up to 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives though.

Let’s take a closer look ->

Outside Look

This case is not marketed at guys, period. The external design choices made by In-Win leave no doubt about that :-)

So what input can a male reviewer give about this case made for woman? How easy is to install a system inside for your girlfriend/wife. Accessibility features and overall cooling will be discussed.

Without further ado, here’s the Allure:



The flower design at the front is quite invasive, on the left side panel however there’s only a small logo and you can see ventilation holes.



The right side panel is decorated more heavily, with different colored flowers and also small diamond-like insets. A close-up of those below:



The front of the case has all the controls for power/reset, 2xUSB ports, 1xFirewire, IR receiver and Mic/Headphone connectors. The DVD bays are hidden by a door which flips open upwards;



A simple push on the marked area will flip the door upwards and allow you access to the 5.25” devices.



More on the next page ->

Outside Look Continued

To help integrate the case inside your living room, it’s best to keep the cable mess to a minimum, the Allure features a handful feature for this, the rear panel is completely covered by default:



By removing the plastic grill you have access to the rear I/O ports as well as the PSU area. In the photo below you can see the rear exhaust fan which is installed by default.



Details on the exhaust fan are sparse, it’s a 92x92x25mm fan from DRX model FD1290-S2033E, all we know is that at 12v it’s way too loud and should be replaced immediately with a more silent fan, you won’t regret it.



Inside Look

The left side panel is removed tool less by pushing the black button at the rear.



A shot from the inside reveals a custom air duct which is designed to work with stock Intel/AMD CPU coolers, it will help draw cool air from the side panel to the CPU. All the yellow plastic buttons and clips you see are tool less features of the Allure case, they are easy to spot and work as designed.



The custom air duct can be removed easily (it snaps in place after install), since we plan on using a 3rd party heatsink we had to remove the air duct as it did not fit afterwards.

Installation next ->

Outside Look Continued

After removing the air duct you have enough room to start the installation of your hardware. In-Win provides an installation manual with detailed pictures, a baggy of spare “diamonds” and screws.



The motherboard is installed without stand offs onto the rear panel directly, as you can see in the photo below, the motherboard panel has integrated stand offs



PCI devices are installed tool less by use of this plastic clip, it works well, but with many PCI devices it might get tricky, alternatively you can screw them in too.



The hard drive bay can be swiveled out to ease installation:



This grey clip holds the HDD bay in place, the yellow push buttons you are to secure the devices in the 5.25” bays. To install a DVD drive you remove the front panel you pushing this yellow clip:



Then you can slide in the 5.25” device from the front and fix it into place with the yellow buttons:



To prevent damage to the nicely decorated right side panel, you can use the foam packing material and lay it under the case.



After first system boot we decided to swap out the standard 92mm rear exhaust fan with a more silent fan, the Scythe 100x100 @ 1000rpm fan fit perfectly and offered a much better performance/noise balance.



Onto our test setup details ->

Test Setup

We used the following components from the Dollarshops Budget PC and transferred them inside the In-Win Allure:

- AMD Athlon 3800+ AM2 CPU
- Evercool Buffalo CPU Cooler
- Jetway M26GTM with onboard 6150 VGA Motherboard
- 2Gb DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory
- 320GB Sata HDD
- VGA NVIDIA 8600 GT 256Mb (With Arctic Cooling Silencer S1)
- Casetek V.Pandora ATX Mid Tower Case
- Sirtek 310W Power Supply
- LiteOn HH Lightscribe 20X DVD Writer

With the multitude of tool less features installation went very smooth, no sharp edges inside to cut yourself on either, so going from an empty case to this was a matter of minutes, not hours:



Last but not least we experimented with the rear panel, in order to remove visible cable clutter as much as possible, unfortunately the monitor’s DVI connector was a bit too long to use that section of the rear panel, and still overall it’s a clean look. Don’t you think?


Power, Keyboard/Mouse, Sound, VGA, UTP Network hooked up

Onto the stress tests ->

Stress Testing

We have not much to compare the performance of the Allure with, so we ended up doing a single system stress test and see if the system overheats or not, we undervolted the Evercool Buffalo’s fan to 5v, the rear 100mm fan is quite silent at ~1000rpm, the VGA is cooled passively with Arctic Cooling Silencer S1. The setup is fast enough to decode HD content at 1080p and can serve as HTPC without issue, as office PC it’s definitely fast enough, MSN and Firefox run quickly with AntiVirus in the background.



Yes the noise level is the same as ambient; at ~60cm distance measured from the front the dBA meter could not detect the system running, impressive! Temperature wise everything is still within safe margins, the video card is running very cool below 60°C and this completely passive! The CPU is cool at 55°C. The hard drive area has no direct cool airflow; this explains the rather high temperature, with multiple HDDs we would suggest looking into adding a small very slow spinning fan near the HDD bay.


Lights On & Moving the Front Panel <> Lights Off, Power LED on

Conclusive Thoughts

With the Allure In-Win is focusing on a mostly neglected audience when it comes down to PC enclosures, there are not a lot of lady-friendly PC cases out there. The Allure does a good job seducing the ladies, as my girlfriend has asked me multiple times now if I can build her system into this case (which is currently inside NZXT Lexa). I hooked the system up to my TV and placed it next to the TV furniture, visiting friends (who are not into PCs) did not immediately figure out the white box with flowers was a PC, job well done In-Win for creating a PC case which integrates well and remains under the radar for most.

One online retailer lists the In-Win Allure at $110, which is quite a steep price for a mATX case without power supply; for the same price one can have a Lian-Li Mid Tower, of course the Lian-Li case will look much more like a PC case, this can be a negative for some.

While we know this case will not please the large masses of enthusiasts, it’s a product which certainly has its niche, and it succeeds in attracting attention from its target audience which ultimately means that it’s successful. Now the challenge remains to find a PC builders who will use this case to his clients as option;

In-Win Allure Recommended for



We like to thank Cherry from In-Win for the opportunity to try out the Allure.