In-Win S500

Company: In-Win Development
Product: S500 Mid-Tower ATX Case
Street Price: ~$47.00 + S&H
Date Reviewed: September 21, 2000
Reviewed By: Jason

How Everything Fits:

Mmm.. got to love that Athlon goodness. First thing I swapped out the power supply with a PC Power & Cooling 350w ATX PS (Athlon Approved). I have a 700Mhz Thunderbird mounted on an Alpha P7125, overclocked to 840 (105x8) @ 1.9v. The Video card is a Cardex Geforce 2 MX with some of the VIce memory coolers on it from Millisec.com. The video card is overclocked to 220 core and 175 memory. 256MB of PC133 @ CAS2 SDRAM (running about 135FSB). Right now I have a western digital 20.5GB ATA/66 7200RPM hard drive in it, but I have a Maxtor 30GB ATA/100 7200RPM drive on the way. It's got an old Teac 4x12 SCSI CD burner with an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card. For network connectivity I have an Intel Pro 100 S Management network card, and to finish it off it a Sound Blaster Live Value to crank out the audio. 

Modifications:

Running that Athlon at 1.9v cranks out a lot of heat, so I decided to make a couple blow-holes in the side of the case. Digging around my box of goodies I found a couple 92mm Sunon fans that are rated at about 50CFM each, which I got from some wholesale surplus place online. The first job was to determine where to mount the two fans. Since the Alpha sucks the air thorough the heat sink and blows it up, I knew I needed one to be over the CPU to exhaust the hot air. The other one I mounted below to suck in cold air and blow it over the AGP & PCI cards (mainly concerned with blowing over the AGP). So I took a measuring tape and measured from the edges of the case to the center point of there I wanted my fans to be. Then I measured on the side panel and made center marks with a marker. I then made a template with a hole roughly 3 1/2 inches in diameter. Using the marker I traced the two holes that were to be cut out.

The picture on the right shows the final product. There are many ways to cut holes in cases, I happened to use a dremel since that's the only thing I have here that can do the job. I used a couple cutting disc's for the holes, then used one of the stone bits to smooth out the rough edges. Finally I used my cordless drill to drill out the screw holes. Not terribly complicated, just a little time consuming. Here's a couple tips: Measure twice, cut once... &  Make sure everything is level / perpendicular. Reason I say this is that my top screw holes are slightly crooked to the side of the case. You can tell better in the picture below with the fans mounted.

I used a bit of duct tape to hold the wire down between the fans. The I wrapped some electrical tape & heat shrink tubing for the rest of the wires going to the connector. You can see from the picture on the right that it turned out rather nice. I mounted a standard finger guard on the top fan that exhausts the air, then on the bottom is a wire mesh fan to help keep out dust and pet hair (I have a dog that sheds). The addition of these two fans, along with the two 80mm fans that I previously installed keep my system nice and cool. The CPU now runs on average of about 100F under full load, before it was about 108F-110F... I think I am going to install a couple switches to allow me to manually turn the fans on and off. But alas, that's another day and another article, along with maybe mounting some clips for a shoulder strap or some handles to carry it by.

Conclusion:

Back to my original story, the S500 case...  I like it, it is a very good design layout, sturdy construction, and a good 250w power supply if you are running an Intel system in it. Some places you can order 300w and bigger power supplies. I just got the standard 250w because I already had the 350w power supply for my Athlon. I now have a pretty good machine to take around to LAN parties and kick some ass with. It's not too heavy to lug around, and there is plenty of room for expansion if and when the day comes. Granted I could of gotten a full tower case for about $85 shipped (about $25 more than the cost of the current case shipped), but I didn't want such a huge monster to have to drag around.

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