Final Thoughts
This case is sort of a mixed bag for me. When InWin reached out for us to review the 309 I was pretty excited, but after installing a system in it I definitely have some concerns. While some of these might not be an issue to you, they definitely need to be pointed out. The biggest thing for me is that there is barely any room at the bottom of the case. Our motherboard sat almost flush with the bottom of the case. This made connecting cables to the bottom headers on our board a little difficult and if you planned on installing any fans or radiators on the bottom of the case you will block those connections.
On top of that issue we found that if we routed our PCI-Express power cables through the bottom routing hole they would not reach our graphics card. Not to mention none of the cable routing holes have rubber grommets installed on them. I also feel that there is a lot of wasted space in the front of the case. Again these are not major issues, but they could be a pain when you are doing your installation.
Like most InWin cases the 309 has solid construction. InWin always uses quality materials with their cases and none of the panels had any flex in them and all of the hard drive mounts were made of metal as well. The main side panel design is one I just love as you can fully remove the side panel without even touching the tempered glass. Even though the main compartment was tight for our motherboard there is a lot of room inside for long graphics cards and CPU coolers up to 160mm.
Of course the big draw to this case is the front panel display, which is pretty impressive. Since all of the 144 RGB LEDs on the front panel are aRGB you can control them to be any color and display anything you would like. InWin’s Glow 2 software worked pretty well and easily helped us customize the front panel. The four included aRGB fans with the case sort of get overlooked because of the front panel, but they are definitely a plus as well. They are all pre-wired to each other and also are controlled by the Glow 2 software.
This case is currently selling for $249.99 at our favorite online retailer. Now you definitely can find cases out there with a better internal design for that price, but you are not going to find a case with a front panel like this one. Also the inclusion of the four aRGB fans makes the $249.99 price more reasonable. Overall ThinkComputers gives the InWin 309 case an 8 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– 144 LED aRGB panel
– Four included 120 mm aRGB fans that are pre-wired
– Glow 2 software works well
– Solid construction
– Awesome side panel design
Cons:
– Tight fit for ATX motherboards
– Will block bottom headers on your motherboard if you install any cooling in the bottom of the case
– No grommets on the cable routing holes
– aRGB header not labelled
