It's not particularly quiet or attractive, but this large case is easy to build and has plenty of cooling
Written By
Published on 18 March 2013
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1 / 4
Our rating
Reviewed price £94 inc VAT
The GRone is In Win’s latest full tower case. It has a bold, industrial design which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but there is room for an E-ATX motherboard inside – useful for certain high-end motherboards. There’s plenty of room in the case to make it easy to add components, and we had no problems fitting a long Radeon HD 6870 X2 graphics card. The motherboard tray has a large cut-out hole to make it easy to fit a processor cooler backplate without removing your motherboard, and there are five holes with rubber grommets to help you route cables from your power supply round the back of the motherboard.
Our optical drive slipped easily into the case’s 5.25in drive bays, of which there are three, and its yellow pop-out pin buttons hold the drives securely in place. We weren’t huge fans of its eight removable 3.5in drive trays, though, as their stiff plastic makes them tricky to fit and they have some sharp edges. The 3.5in trays all double up as 2.5in bays for SSDs, but you’ll need a screwdriver to install 2.5in drives.
The case has plenty of cooling. There’s room for two watercooling radiators as well as ten fans in total. Five are preinstalled, but they’re quite noisy when running all together at their default speed setting. There’s a fan controller on the front panel to adjust the fan speed to quieten things down, but the case’s lack of sound dampening foam make it far from the quietest case we’ve tested. The rest of the front panel contains two USB2 and two USB3 ports, as well as separate headphone and microphone jacks.
The GRone may not be particularly quiet and is borderline ugly, but it feels well made and is easy to build with plenty of room for expansion.
Written by
Katharine Byrne
When Katharine's not glued to her Wii U and 3DS, she's usually found darting between tiny smartphones and huge pieces of home cinema equipment.She’s tested everything from laptops and monitors to motherboards and projectors, but she currently specialises in smartphones, games and AV.
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