We’ve seen countless RGB strips, fans, and even RGB cables here at Computex 2018. But InWin’s 307 ATX chassis instantly drew our attention from across the crowded show floor. In many ways, it’s essentially an InWin 303 with a brand-new face. But oh, what a pixel-happy, animated RGB face it is!
In essence, the entire front face is an easily programmable light show that’s a lot like having a pixelated 8-bit screen strapped to the front of your PC. Pre-programmed settings let you display the time, soothing animated clouds, a flickering candle flame, and much more. And thanks to a built-in microphone at the top (it seems everything has a mic these days), the animation you choose can dance to the beat of your room.
But the real fun comes when you dig into the company’s GLOW software, which lets you easily program each pixel, create animations, and save your creations as presets. You can get a quick sense of the panel’s capabilities from this video from InWin. But some of our favorite examples involved pixel-perfect recreations of retro games, like Pac-Man ghosts, an 8-bit potion, and invader from space.
The bright, flashing animations achievable with the InWin 307 certainly won’t appeal to everyone. But we really like the retro-cool visuals available from the light panel, and the ability to easily change things up to fit your mood or changing interests. This is a case that you’ll really want to spend time fiddling with in the weeks and months after building in it, which is more than we can say for most PC chassis.
All that said, we do think there’s room for improvement. It’s clear from the side that the light display is snapped on the front of the case, and the plastic materials used, while they didn’t exactly feel cheap, don’t evoke the look and feel we’d expect from a case in the $300 price range, which is what an InWin rep told us the 307 case is expected to sell for.
We hope the 307 is a success for the company, because we’d love to see a second-generation model with a better-integrated front light panel (perhaps with more-and-smaller LEDs), and higher-quality materials. We’re sure such a case would be expensive. But InWin has never shied away from pricey chassis before. There’s a lot of potential here, and we hope InWin continues to develop it.
If you’re interested in picking up the InWin 307, the company says it should be available in the fall. And while detailed specs are scarce, we suspect the internal component compatibility and clearances will very similar—if not identical—to the InWin 303 that this case is based around.
There will, though, be an added USB-C Gen 2 port on the side of the 307, along with the typical USB 3.0 ports and light control buttons. So be sure to choose a motherboard with a compatible USB-C header if you’re planning a build inside this eye-catching case.
