Introduction

Quick Look
Kingwin 436-WM Aluminum	The Good
	+ 1.0mm Aluminum Chasis + Stylish + Tons of modifications + Front Panel USB and Firewire + Front Panel Line In/Out + Thumbscrews galore + Removable motherboard tray + Mod Dream!
	The Bad
	- Expensive - Acrylic damages easily - Non-matching detailing

Kingwin has recently been making some waves in the case industry with the success of its KT-436 case.  The striking Lian Li resemblance and relatively low price have turned a few heads in the case community.  Why has this case become so popular suddenly?

A few weeks ago we took a look at a case based on the Chenming Tower design, the ThermalTake A6000B.  This week we are taking a look at the Kingwin 436-WM model case, which happens to be Kingwin’s first attempt at a case and mod hardware.

Since PC modifications are usually fairly expensive, the KT-436-WM aims to appeal to consumers who want a very attractive case but don’t want to do the work or spend additional aftermarket cash.  Features aside, we will also be taking a good look at the performance of this highly modified case to see if the 436-WM is really about more than just good looks.

Construction

“Wow” we said when the side panel on the Kingwin 436-WM was removed.  The 436 is the first case we have seen on the market to have almost an identical internal structure to the Lian Li 60xx series cases.  Certainly, Kingwin must have borrowed some design elements from other cases.  We have found in almost every review we do, that rarely does a company get everything right on the first try; but it appears the 436-WM does a pretty good job of coming close.

The first thing we noticed about our model is that the case material is not actually aluminum, but an aluminum-magnesium alloy.  This is not necessarily a bad thing though.  We have seen in the past that while aluminum does have thermal benefits, the cost tradeoff is sometimes not quite justifiable.  The Aluminum-Magnesium alloy is tougher and cheaper to manufacture, but still retains most of the thermal properties of aluminum.  The largest advantage we have seen of using aluminum over steel (aside from the cooling advantages) is the tradeoff of weight.  At 13lbs the 436-WM is not one of the lightest aluminum cases on the market, but keep in mind the alloy which it is constructed from is slightly heavier.

A major problem we have with any case is sharp edges.  Almost any enthusiast who opens their machine on a regular basis knows what it feels like to brush a hand on a poor edge or corner.  Even after years of market maturity, some companies still find it acceptable to not care about the customer enough to clean up the corners and edges on a case.  As we have stated before, this is unacceptable.  Kingwin certainly did not violate this basic rule.  Aside from almost every edge we could find being smoothed and painted, Kingwin also adds a plastic guard to several edges on the case.  We have seen this before on Lian Li cases and we think it’s definitely a great feature to have on any case.

Being a modification oriented case; we more or less expected to see a strong amount of acrylic.  The 436 is one of the first cases we have seen with three acrylic window panes which can be found on both sides and the top.  Unfortunately, acrylic doesn’t actually add any performance boost to the case, it just looks really good!  We will get more into the clear panels on the case later on.

Breakdown

We were really surprised to see the amount of drive bays on this case.  With 12 drive bays, the 436 packs more space than a much taller Chenming tower.  The secret is in the 436’s vertical mounted 3.5” drive bay.  The bay is a 5 x 3.5” drive bay turned on its side and laid down on the bottom of the case over the speaker.  The bay is cooled by 2 80mm fans that blow directly over the bay acting as the intake for the entire case.

Features

The 436 is simply loaded with features, some of which, Kingwin hardly makes an effort to market at all.  The case relies heavily on thumbscrews. Side panels, the drive bay, all PCI expansion slots and the acrylic front bezel can be removed without any tools.  It certainly was enjoyable to plug a new SoundBlaster Audigy in the case and not have to look for a screwdriver.  Again, this was another excellent feature found for this case.

Cooling was provided by 2 ball bearing 80mm Intake fans in the front of the case, and 2 ball bearing 80mm exhaust fans in the rear. Like we mentioned before, these fans are located directly in front of the hard drive bay.  Unfortunately, we could not find product specifications on these fans anywhere.  From equipment in the lab, we were able to rate the fans at around 2000RPM.  While not exactly Vantec Stealth fans, they are fairly quiet, and should be able to provide at least 30 cubic feet per minute of airflow.  Another neat feature of this case was the foam filter over the front grate on the intake.  Removing the cover reveals this foam which can be removed and cleaned if necessary.  An unusual and unexpected bonus was the LED fan on the top of the case, which we will talk more about later.

While still on the subject of fans, we also have to commend the 436 for minimizing its wiring by daisy-chaining both of the paired fans together.  This could be a problem if you eventually plan on upgrading your fans, but the solid performance and low noise doesn’t immediately give us any reason to replace the fans.

In today’s case market, it has become a real sin to not have a removable motherboard tray. Our previously review ThermalTake A6000B, which was based on the Chenming tower design, did not have a removable tray.  However, the A6000B is an enormous case, with lots of room to work with.  Most other cases are not as roomy.  Taking a page from Lian Li’s cases, the 436’s motherboard tray pulls out the rear of the case with all the components still attached to the motherboard.  Anyone who has ever worked on a Mac G3/G4 knows what a nice feature this is!

A trend we are seeing in the high end case market is the lack of an included power supply unit.  Rather than locking the potential buyer into a particular power supply, case resellers have been leaving them out and letting buyers decide for themselves.  The 436 takes this approach to case configuration, shipping without any power supply.

Modification

The 436 includes minor modifications all over the case producing a nice final product.  This case has a little bit of everything to give a well rounded sleek look.  One of the hottest materials in the mod world to work with right now is acrylic, which there is plenty of on the 436-WM.  To find out a little bit more about the acrylic on the case, we performed a simple test by holding the clear bezel up to a UV light to reveal any imperfections.  We were somewhat disappointed to see small hairline cracks throughout the material.  Even though not normally visible, it does go to show that the acrylic pieces on the unit are somewhat stressed, and will crack easily.  Tightening the thumbscrews too much WILL crack the bezel.  After three rotations past finger tight we were able to crack our bezel.  Another problem we have with acrylic is that dust shows up very quickly on the surface.  Keep a cloth nearby your case, you are going to want to brush it off every once in a while to clear the dust off it.

We had a couple issues with the case, but mostly just personal taste.  Our particular model, the 436BK-WM is advertised to come with gold painted thumbscrews, fan grilles, and trim.  Much to our shock, when we opened the case almost all of these components were silver, with the exception of the gold fan plates.  Obviously this is not the end of the world, but we were just a little miffed to not get the same product as the one of the webpage. 

The multi-color LED fan was a nice accent to the case, although it did not seem to accent the case in the right manner.  This exhaust fan seems to barely push air through the top grate.  Since the case has two intake and two exhaust fans already, we are not too concerned about the airflow of this fan.  We really would have like to have seen Kingwin try a little harder with lighting and put a laser LED or a cold cathode tube on the inside and keep a nice uniformed color on the case.  However, since Kingwin does not advertise that the case comes with a LED fan, we gave a little smirk when we saw it came with one.  With a few extra dollars or laser LEDs, one can really put the case’s 3 acrylic windows to use.

Front Panel

We have seen a strong number of cases add front panel features to their cases.  The KW 436-WM is no exception.  The convenience payoff is obvious, no more needing to reach around the case and plug/unplug that digital camera.  While most cases with front panel portals have USB 2.0 and Firewire connections, the 436 goes the extra mile again and provides a line in and a line out adaptor.

Obviously, you could plug the end of the audio cords wherever you want!  If your sound card supports it, perhaps you would prefer to have two line-in connections feeding from the front panel instead.  The case supports 4 USB 2.0 connections, 2 which plug into the back of the case, and two more which can plug directly into the motherboard.

The USB cables feed along the inside of the case, cleverly held out of sight by clips that run through the bottom panel of the case.  This keeps the cables out of sight and tidy. 

Benchmark

We have a few heat and sound intensive tests lined up for the Kingwin 436-WM.  The Heatsink reading is actually the temperature inside the heatsink.  CPU temperature is also recorded.  All temperature is recorded in degrees Celsius.  The heat tests were each performed inside the closed case with the external temperature of 23.0 degrees Celsius, during a full system load.  Our testbed consists of:

The thermal readings for the different components during operation were as followed:

Kingwin KT-436-WM

ThermalTake A6000B

While the Kingwin case generally performed a few degrees cooler than the Chenming chassis variation we reviewed a few weeks ago, the real pay off seemed to be in the hard drive bay.  Unlike the A6000B, the Kingwin has both intake fans flowing over the main 5 x 3.5” drive bay. The cooling advantage speaks for itself.

From our thermal tests, we see two temperatures of importance.  First of all the hard drive temp is extremely low.  We can directly credit this to the ~60 cubic feet of air per minute passing directly over the one hard drive we had in the bay.  Placing more drives in the bay would slow airflow to the rest of the components in the case.  We also noticed a low video card temperature.  By looking at the orientation of the fans in the case, we see that both fans are at exactly the same height as the AGP slot.  Clearly, the video card is getting optimal airflow.

Sound is recorded in decibels from 12” away from the closed case to most accurately replicate a production system.

The KW 436 clearly has an audible advantage over the Xaser II we reviewed a few weeks ago.  It appears as though the nameless included fans have a low noise level but perform well enough in the configuration to provide adequate cooling. 

Conclusion

There was a lot of say about the Kingwin 436-WM case.  The cooling performance was definitely better than expected for 4 no-name fans.  The fifth LED fan did not seem to contribute much to the exhaust of the unit, but may have contributed to circulation inside the case. Even with a mess of untied wires we were able to get plenty of airflow through the case and not have to sacrifice performance for noise.

The market that the Kingwin 436-WM shoots for are users who want a Lian Li case but can not justify spending the additional 50–60 USD for it.  As we mentioned earlier, the Kingwin 436 is remarkably similar to the Lian Li 60xx series cases but retails between 150-180USD.  Modified Lian Li’s sell for over 220USD.  Kingwin did a good job of combining elements of already proven designs and incorporating them into their new case. 

We mentioned earlier that certain case manufacturers often rely on other companies to fabricate their products.  For example, the Antec/Cheiftec/Directron/ThermalTake/Alienware design all look familiar because they all use Chenming as their manufacturer. Apparently, the stakes in the aftermarket PC case industry have become fairly cutthroat.

Update 2002/11/12: Special Thanks to those of you who emailed us! Although Lian Li has still not responded to our inquiries, we just received an email from Kingwin claiming they are the exclusive manufacturer of their design.

Overall, we rate this case a good buy for anyone in the modification market.  We know this is a very limited audience, and certainly don’t expect to see any of these cases in your company’s server room anytime soon.  However, for the enthusiast, the 436-WM provides solid cooling to back up its good looks.  This case certainly isn’t for everyone, but it proves itself worthy of all the hype it has been creating.

A special thanks goes out to Case-Mod.com for providing us with a review sample of the KT-436-WM.