We have seen flatpack PC instances emerge within the final yr. So, how about an unfoldable? Assembling your individual PC case from panels and components is perhaps an ideal “additional enjoyable” process if extraordinary PC builds have turn into mundane. This sort of meeting doesn’t require better technical data and is tough to do incorrectly. Enter the $239.99 InWin POC One, an upper-crustier model of its earlier, cheaper POC-case-family effort. Constructing it out is simple; the problem lies in becoming large parts into tiny areas. In the event you’re up for it, the POC One may simply be your cup of (write in your favourite beverage) if you happen to’re after a vertical-orientation case with a singular semi-industrial look.The Design: Two Again EndsAt roughly half the depth and a lot of the peak of a traditional mid-tower, the POC One stands with instances just like the SilverStone Alta G1M and Raijintech Ophion Elite in fundamental format, aside from one main discrepancy: The facility provide mounts on its proper aspect, beneath its exhaust fan mount. The design suggests that you just’ll be shoving the factor right into a nook, to the precise of your keyboard and mouse, which might put its front-panel connectors inside straightforward attain and permit you view of its aspect window.
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(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
These connectors embody two USB 3.x Kind-A ports, a four-pole headset (headphone/microphone combo) jack and a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Kind-C, all lined up behind the ability button. These trying a bit extra carefully on the picture may discover that two of the vent perforations are oval fairly than spherical: That is a mirrored image of the 240mm radiator mount on the other aspect. The vents on this aspect cowl the graphics card chamber.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
Certainly, on this case, what seems to be like the underside is definitely the highest: Whereas upward-facing port I/O panels are comparatively frequent on small-footprint towers, the POC One is the primary we’ve seen to go away that area uncovered, its cable hold-down hooks uncovered. With only one.8 inches of area between the graphics card I/O and the case’s high edge, and an excellent narrower 1.1-inch hole for motherboard I/O, masking these cable ends would have required a reasonably thick 3D panel such because the one seen on the competing Thermaltake The Tower 300. Alternatively, InWin may have flipped the case and made the sides an inch longer. (Or not. Our motherboard and graphics I/O isn’t that ugly.) However know that trying down onto this case from the highest will expose all that grisly cabling.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
We don’t usually cowl the case “unboxing” expertise, and websites that do have a tendency to steer with that side. However we needed to get a normal description of the case in entrance of you earlier than discussing the way it’s put collectively. So right here goes, and this is the field…
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
The POC One’s packaging pretty properly violates the concept delivery the case flat will save on packaging, because it accommodates as a lot packaging as a lot of the large PC instances we’ve examined. We’re speaking about two thick layers of box-engulfing closed-cell foam, sandwiched between high and backside layers of closed-cell foam.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
As you possibly can see, the panels are held collectively and hinged on the lengthy edges with synthetic-material tubes. We’re unsure that looping all of the panels collectively made it any simpler to assemble the POC One, in contrast with the free panels used within the InWin Airforce or Cooler Grasp Qube 500. They do make the machine a bit tougher to service after the very fact, because the window that covers the motherboard compartment (the leftmost panel, beneath) hangs from the screwed-down panel that permits entry above the motherboard, and the identical is true for the door that covers the graphics card (the rightmost panel, beneath). Pay shut consideration to the tabs on the sides of the skinny black (metal) panels, as these match into grooves machined into the thicker matching aluminum panels.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
Parts embody a PCI Specific 4.0 riser cable, an offset ATX-to-SFX power-supply adapter plate, three flat and 6 angled rubber toes, and the front-panel port and button meeting. Then there is a ton of small bits, making for one of the vital complicated accent kits you will see in any PC case: A bag of particular ornamental screws for the aluminum panelsA bag of each different sort of screw wanted to assemble a system throughout the caseFour hook-and-loop (presumably Velcro-brand) cable tiesSeveral zip-style cable tiesFour magnetsTwo handlesTwo flat and one hex-key wrenchesAn adhesive rubber qNe (a stylized “ONE”) badgeTwo sheets of detachable rubber port plugsFour lengthy standoffs for connecting the again panel to the motherboard tray over the motherboard compartmentFour medium standoffs for connecting the entrance panel to the again of the motherboard tray over the graphics card compartmentFour quick standoffs for including handlesA Jupiter AJ120 ARGB cooling fan with its personal screw pack
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
We discovered the POC One’s guide helpful just for documenting parts, and this folding case demo video the one instructive media for its precise meeting.Constructing Contained in the InWin POC One: Flip Out and MountWith this chassis, we get to unveil the ultimate new part of our 2024 case-testing configuration, Asus’ ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi, noting that the case’s use of a vertically mounted graphics card by way of a riser cable might be the one factor that retains this mainboard not ideally suited to this goal.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
We are going to attain a degree within the construct the place we determine that our liquid cooling radiator gained’t clear the full-size energy provide that we’ve been utilizing on bigger instances. That is the place InWin’s offset SFX PSU adapter comes into play: It offers us an additional inch of area. Cooler Grasp supplied the more-compact energy provide we finally used and listed beneath. This is a abstract of the components we utilized in our check config…
We discovered that the right-angle 12VHPWR cable included with our energy provide didn’t work with the place of our RTX 4070 Ti card throughout the POC One as a consequence of its proximity to the again of the motherboard tray. The 450W cable of our full-size 850W pattern featured the identical 90-degree connector, and flipping that cable to position its right-angle finish on the PSU aspect wouldn’t work as a result of it ended up dealing with the ability provide’s predominant (24-pin) energy connections. Digging by means of different {hardware} we had, we discovered a wanted 12VHPWR cable with a straight-through connector; if you happen to get equally caught, standardized 12VHPWR cables can be found for lower than $20.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
Even with the cable hassle sorted, we nonetheless ended up rebuilding our POC One check configuration a number of occasions earlier than we bought previous the black screens. With the panel that covers the motherboard bolted down and our radiator bolted to that, easy diagnostics aren’t so easy.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
We stated that there wasn’t sufficient cable area to make use of the POC One the wrong way up, however we discovered a short-connector HDMI cable and tried it anyway, by plugging our keyboard and mouse into front-panel ports. Discover that on the inverted case (beneath, at proper), the farthest aspect panel is marked for foot alignment: We simply peeled these toes and caught them to the highest edges earlier than inverting the case.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
The POC One can also be designed for horizontal orientation; right here, you would be utilizing its handles as raised toes, as you possibly can see beneath, and as airflow-space creators for the radiator mount’s vents, with the repositioned deal with decreasing the case’s horizontal configuration from InWin’s specified 11.9-inch thickness to 11.1 inches. Our best concern is that our closed-loop cooler’s pump is now on the loop’s highest level: Most liquid coolers have at the very least a small air bubble inside that tends to rise to the highest of the loop, and pumps can’t pump air. Our graphics card followers are additionally blowing downward, however resisting convection appears a far much less troublesome matter than coping with a paused pump.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
You might ask why we didn’t merely flip the horizontal config? It’s as a result of laying the case down put its energy button and front-panel ports on high: Placing these issues beneath the case could be, let’s consider, very inconvenient.As the one different Mini-ITX case we’ve examined of late to make use of a PCIe 4.0 riser cable, we dragged Lian Li’s growing old A4-H2O from mothballs to check. By coincidence, our particular graphics card matches the precise limits of this older, smaller case, pictured beneath.
(Credit score: Thomas Soderstrom)
Testing the InWin POC One: All of the OrientationsThe POC One performs finest whereas standing up. The POC One’s CPU temperatures matched the Lian Li A4-H2O when laying horizontally. GPU temperatures are the bitter discovering, as the warmth pipe cooler of our specific check graphics card seems to be gravity-fed: The graphics card’s heat-pipe risers level downward from the warmth supply when the POC One is positioned vertically, and GPU temperatures climb by 23 levels. Inverting the case fixes the difficulty. (We’ve seen this earlier than.) That’s the primary motive we needed to check this case vertically, vertically inverted, and horizontally.
Then there’s our acoustic testing…
It’s not quiet, however the POC One could also be quiet sufficient, relying in your cooling resolution and software program load. It actually beats the Lian Li A4-H2O, however that’s principally as a result of our graphics card’s followers have been shut sufficient to the A4-H2O’s aspect panel to trigger windage noise.Verdict: Bringing Your PC Into the FoldWhile the POC One seems to be nice, its efficiency is unremarkable. That makes us really feel just a little unhappy, because it carries such a premium value. Even so, you possibly can’t discover a PC case that appears very like this one at any value. Extra so than most PC instances, the POC One can be an emotional resolution greater than a sensible one. In the event you worth the distinctive look, the foldout enjoyable issue, or maybe the power to show this right into a household mission, the few additional $20 payments can be a mere middling hurdle to leaping in with InWin’s quirky effort. If nothing else, it’ll reward this chance-taking case maker in the identical sense that one could reward a Kickstarter even when they don’t seem to be all-in for the ultimate product; few different PC-case makers carry as many cool moonshots to market as InWin does.
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