In-Win Griffin Black Mid Tower PC Case Review

Legit Case Reviews

Manufacturer:	IN-WIN Development Inc.
Product:	In-Win Griffin ATX Mid Tower Case
Date:	Wed, Jun 30, 2010 - 12:00 AM
Written By:	Brian Giacoletti -
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The Build

Thanks for staying with us on the tour! As you can see, we have now arrived at the build. This is where the tour will start to get a bit, shall we say, less favorable? For starters, if you are like me and your wiring needs to be nothing short of superb, this is not the case for you. You may as well stop reading right now because you will be left with nothing but the question, "WHY?" The build went smoothly for the most part. As was mentioned earlier there are no standoffs to install so you can slap the motherboard in, install your adapter cards, and then it gets hard. Actually installing the power supply is not hard at all, but unless you have a modular power supply you are going to have a really, really hard time trying to find a place to hide your wiring. Even if you do have a modular power supply you are still going to find it a tad tricky to hide the wires. In most cases there is space behind the motherboard tray. There is not that much room in the Griffin; I tried and I tried to get them to fit but I just couldn't unless I wanted my side panel to be all bowed out; in my book not cool.

Installing the hard drives can be bit tricky, too, depending on the video card setup you have. I happen to have a crossfire setup with two Radeon 5770's that are fairly short compared to the longer cards like the GTX 260 or Radeon 5870. I also had to mess with my drive placement so that I didn't have to tweak my SATA cables in such a way that it would cause damage or distortion to my SATA connectors on both ends. As you can see, I ended up putting my 3 1/2" hard drive in between the two video cards to avoid the aforementioned tweakage. It's not really where I wanted the drive, but I was left with no other choice, really.

My optical drive was a breeze to install due to the tool-less design. The installation of my SSD was a different story. I know I am probably being really overly critical here, but I had to install the SSD with one screw because there were no bays that had a hole configuration that matched the screw pattern on the SSD. Like I said before, with the Solid State Drive becoming a regular component of most enthusiasts' computers these days, they could have at least added a drive bay with the proper hole placement for a solid state drive.

So, I get done installing all of the components of the system and I go to replace the side panel with the big huge fan on it. Well, guess what? It doesn't fit and it doesn't want to go on. The reason: my CPU heat sink is too high for the case. It is 125 MM high, and in order to get the side panel on I have to bow the side of the case to get it on, and as I said before, not cool. So, I get the side panel on all bowed and looking silly and I think to myself "there is no way that fan is going to spin with side installed like that." Boy was I wrong! It actually spins just fine. Here is a little disclaimer: I am not telling you it is safe to install the side panel of this case on a CPU cooler that it is clearly touching as it is not safe and could damage your system. That is why nut jobs like us do all of the dirty work for you. We are destined to destroy our systems in the name of quality products. I ran the system like this for a bit and removed the side panel because I didn't want to do any damage to my system. So the point is if you have a CPU heat sink and fan that is taller than about 115 MM this case is not for you unless you are willing to remove the 22 CM fan and add your own 120 MM fans, which is an option on the side panel. I did find that with two 120 MM fans installed the side panel went on just fine.

Next Page - Final Thoughts/Conclusion

Review Index

Page 1 - The IN WIN Griffin Black ATX Mid Tower Case
Page 2 - Packaging
Page 3 - External Impressions
Page 4 - Internal Impressions
Page 5 - The Build
Page 6 - Final Thoughts/Conclusion

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