Date: December 17th, 2010
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited By: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: In Win
<--CLICK FOR DEALS ON AN IN WIN GRIFFIN CASE IN THE UNITED STATES
<--CLICK FOR DEALS ON A COMPUTER CASE IN CANADA
PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH

The Griffin has a distinctive look from the front panel treatment to the griffin graphic on the side panel. Four mesh bay covers on the front panel resemble louvers and an external 3.5-inch bay is also provided. Just below the floppy bay is the power button (with blue backlighting to indicate power-on,) flanked by an (amber) HDD activity light and the reset button. Pressing inward on the In Win logo on the lower panel…

…releases a catch that allows the panel to swing out. Kinda. On this example, the panel wouldn't swing out all the way until I removed the front panel and rearranged the I/O cabling slightly. I/O consists of a pair of USB 2.0 ports, the customary audio jacks and an eSATA port, a refreshingly full-features I/O panel for a case in this class.

At the rear, we can see that the PSU will live at the top of the case and the trademark green In Win exhaust fan is a 92mm unit. Six of the seven expansion bays have ventilated, break-out covers while the top one is replaceable. Plastic clips secure both side panels allowing easy access to the interior. A large mesh side panel houses the 220mm intake fan and a smaller version of the griffin graphic graces the panel as well.

Expansion card retention is a bit unusual, with the cards being secured on the outside of the case and concealed behind a small bracket, secured by a single screw. It's certainly not tool-free and actually requires an extra screwdriver operation to install/swap cards. I'll reserve comment on this until the installation section of this review.
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