The 904 Case: A Last-Minute Decision

In a surprise twist, Jenny, our guest on this episode of System Config, decided to go with the Inwin 904 case instead of the original Bit Phoenix Phenom we had planned for her build. This decision was made at the last minute, just a day before the shoot, and it would prove to be a challenge in the days that followed.

The Exquisite Design of the 904

One glance at the 904's design was enough to transform Jenny into "veroa assault" from Willy Wonka. The case's tempered glass side panel is indeed a stunning feature, but this change meant we had limited time to research and prepare for the build. This could potentially come back to haunt us, as we were unable to do much research on this new case before starting the build.

Parts Selection

Jenny also decided to pick up a key for Windows 8.1, putting her budget over $1,500. With the retail Edge program and sponsored 904 in the mix, the total cost of the build came out to be just over $1,524. Jenny had saved money by choosing this case, but instead of spending it on more components, she put it towards a new camera to take higher quality photos.

Building the System

With all the parts on the table, it was time to start building the system. Unfortunately, things didn't go smoothly. The radiator proved to be a challenge, and we had to find an alternative mounting point after realizing that the 90mm fan mount on the back of the case wasn't suitable for our 120mm radiator. We were initially concerned that this would prevent us from shooting a system config video today.

Miracle Mounting Point

However, Demitri's video from Hardware Connu had given us some insight into the case, including the location of a miracle mounting point at the bottom of the case that could accommodate up to 140mm fans. We were able to find this spot and fit our radiator in, albeit awkwardly.

Temperatures and Performance

Despite the initial challenges, we were happy with the performance of the system. In Sleeping Dogs, we were getting decent frames, and everything was running smoothly. The system is incredibly quiet, with only two Corsair fans making any noise besides the power supply.

Conclusion

In conclusion, building a PC in the 904 case presented some unique challenges, but ultimately, it was a great build experience for us. We learned to be flexible and adapt to unexpected situations, which can happen even with thorough research. Thank you to Jenny for being on the show and to our audience for watching. If you're interested in being on the next episode of System Config, send an email to letters@awom Sauce gmail.com. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and comment below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlaptops are great devices they're light portable and have the potential to be powerful workstations Unfortunately they also overheat have limited functionality compared to full desktop PCS and can often be overpriced today we examine a client in search of a better solution for all of her multitasking needs on this episode of system config my name is Jennifer I live here and I need a high-end gaming piece I plan to be using the Adobe Master Suite as well as some really Graphics intensive games currently I do not have a desktop PC I have a laptop that I had to purchase in a rush it's really underpowered and I've never really been happy with it I didn't really have a budget going into this build instead I've just kind of been collecting Parts over time and I decided to cap it off at about $1,500 the goal that I have in mind for this new system is to have a really solid high-end gaming PC that's also a workstation and is aesthetically pleasing to have in my room so I turned to KY for his advice and system config for the build all right guys so I have cordially invited Jenny to well our house cuz for those of you who didn't know we're actually roommates and co-workers as well but I also asked her to keep her laptop at home and not and not take it out anywhere so that we can take a look at it uh so we know kind of where we're coming from and where we're going to uh so this is a a nus laptop it's actually a very Sleek laptop I think it's about a year or two old uh the specs on it it's got a core i5 processor it's a mobile processor of course it's an i5 3230 M and it's got 6 gigs of RAM it's running 8.1 currently Windows 8.1 uh why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got this laptop and kind of why you got it well I had to make a really quick decision about purchasing this laptop my previous laptop was getting pixel cancer in the screen it was just spreading and getting worse and worse and eventually became unusable terminal uh that happened while I was in the middle of researching my Master's thesis and so I literally had to make a snap decision I had about $600 to spend and this was the best best laptop I could afford at the time gotcha so it was kind of like spur the moment really impulsive buy didn't have much time to research exactly I knew I wanted something with an SSD so it would have the quick boot up time which my previous laptop was really lacking and then I also wanted it to have a lot of features like USB 3.0 ports I needed HDMI also it has SD card reader in the bottom which are all must haves for me plus an optical drive because at the time I didn't have a TV and this was my entertainment center exactly it was every But as time has gone on um I'm becoming less and less happy with it there's a few things about the form factor I don't really like particularly where the touchpad is located in relation to the space bar on the keypad has been very annoying and also it just can't keep up with the types of things I want to do now with a computer I think there have been a couple times when we've just been sitting here in the living room like I'll be watching TV or something and you all of a sudden in the corner I'll hear you like ah what's wrong with this thing just like I'll look over it's just you with a laptop and it's just like oh God she needs a new computer really badly I think you you were telling me earlier that you do some photography and um and you usually upload the pictures to your computer and put them online and you kind of want to do some more editing with them as well and have that bandwidth to actually pump out some some cool pictures right and so I have tried to run Adobe on this laptop and it just it was a dog it couldn't handle it and then also when we did your live stream it couldn't even run the simplest games and so I had to run back to work to actually pick up a gaming laptop so that day and was it I started with you building a PC when we couldn't run Hotline Miami we knew something had to change because we're we're clearly we're working with Intel HD graphics so it's integrated there's nothing fancy about it um so it's uh it's it's it's very limiting for you right now so keep it for portability I mean it's still a good good laptop you know for everything it is but um I think you need something a little bit more powerful and I think we have something in store for you uh today here on system config so you are you ready to take a look at the hardware that we're going to be using for your build let's look at the hardware Kyle all right let's do it all right so at the Forefront of this build we have the core i7 4770k from Intel choosing this part was a no-brainer since Jenny was able to participate in Intel's retail Edge program which lets people like Jenny who work in the tech industry take quizzes about Intel trivia in order to get killer deals on Intel products after passing enough quizzes about Intel processors and Ultrabooks Jenny was able to score this Flagship Haswell CPU for just over a hundred bucks which I'm sure is turning many of you Green With Envy right about now speaking of green the motherboard of choice is the gigabyte G1 sniper Z87 among all the advantages of the Z87 chipset it also features a creative sound core 3D quad core processor and a Qualcomm atheros killer land chipset for automatic packet prioritization while gaming throw in gigabytes easytune overclocking software and a striking aesthetic and you've got a board with enough Nifty gaming features that will make Jenny's transition into PC gaming an enjoyable experience for memory we turned to Kingston for one of their hyperx black dual Channel kits there are reliable they've got cool lowprofile heat sinks what more could you want well I suppose a lot of things but for Jenny's needs these should have no problem getting the job done rated at 1600 MHz these two 8 gig modules give us a combined total of 16 gigs now when Jenny mentioned to me that she would definitely be doing some overclocking with this system I wanted to make sure she had an adequate cooling solution so here we have corsair's h75 liquid cooler successor to the popular h60 it features a 12 mm radiator at 25 mm thick and comes with a pair of their awesome SP pwm fans now I they usually avoid anything that stands for malevolent evil and destruction but the powercolor devil r9270x may be the only exception this card uses the same chip as its last gen counterpart the Radeon hd7870 but Sports a slightly higher clock speed and a much improved memory clock frequency power color's cooler design on this card is simply Wicked and has been said to do a nice job at keeping thermals down which is absolutely crucial given the chassis we'll be building in as you'll soon see here we revisit Kingston with their 120 gig hyperx 3K SSD these days I think it's safe to say there's little little to no excuse not to have an SSD in your system if you have a budget close to Jenny's with a drive of this size she'll be able to install her OS and frequently used applications like Chrome and Photoshop to speed up her day-to-day tasks but until she upgrades the capacity of her trusty nand she'll probably have to store the humble beginnings of her steam Library onto a mechanical drive for this we've chosen a wd Black 2 tab hard drive besides all of her games Jenny will need Ample Storage for all of her highres images from her photo shoot escapades and since she'll be frequently transferring data to the drive the snappy seek times and read write speeds of the WD black should be a good fit powering this system is the eco-friendly in-win green meeries 650 W power supply now in today's day and age anything with eco-friendly branding tends to carry a rather wimpy connotation thanks Prius but this unit is just as capable as any in its class it's got Japanese bolt capacitors 80 plus bronze certification and also came in a 100% recyclable package which made for one very happy Jenny okay I'll give you guys a second to laugh or throw your hands in the air and yell at the screen whatever you got to do upon seeing the case choice for the for this build but rest assured when I tell you that I can explain why we decided to go with a $280 case for a $1,500 rig after seeing the last episode of system config inwin wanted to participate in a future episode so they set Jenny up with their own Flagship case the 904 originally we had picked out the bit Phoenix Phenom for this build but one glance at the Exquisite design of the 904 and Jenny transformed into veroa assault from Willy Wonka and I can't blame her it does look pretty incredible but since this was a last minute change to our plan we didn't have a chance to do much research on this case which might come back to haunt us during the build I can only hope that we manag to fit all the components inside without shattering that beautiful tempered glass side panel and that ladies and gentlemen is the collection of Parts we'll be using for Jenny's system it's worth noting that she also picked up a key for Windows 8.1 putting the total cost for this build just over her $1,500 budget now throw the retail Edge program and the sponsored 904 in the mix and we're looking at a $1,524 build that she was able to get for just over a grand in an admirable attempt to be economical she decided to put the money she saved towards a new camera to take higher quality photos but now that we have all the parts on the table it's time to put this robust yet questionably unbalanced rig together a he he he down all right ladies and gentlemen we have just finished the build in the inwin 904 computer chassis and my first instinct is to say went smoothly but it clearly did not um there were a lot of issues I think maybe Jenny choosing to go with the 904 at the last minute the day before the shoot may have had something to do with some of the complications we encountered during the build I don't know what do you think Jenny I think that it probably would have been a wiser decision to research the case a little bit more before I made the snap judgment to bring it home instead of the bit Phoenix Phenom which I had originally chosen for the build and that created problems in that moment one of which was the radiator which we thought was going to go in effortless ly because we saw the the fan mounting points actually I just I was watching Demitri's video from Hardware connu he did a beautiful video on this case oh yeah that was in the 5 minutes before we started this right before we press record I was like I should probably find out something about this case cuz I have no no idea what it's about and uh so I didn't really have time to watch the entire video I'm sorry Demitri it was a great video though from what I saw so I was kind of skimming through it I missed the part where he said it's a 90mm fan mount on the back of the case so I'm just assuming well every case these days has a 120 mm no no it doesn't so we pulled out the radiator the h75 and I was like we're not going to be able to shoot system config today it's not going to fit and then by the grace of God we found the miracle mounting point at the bottom of the case that does uh house a 120 mm fan but can accommodate up to 140 mm fan she did do her research 10 minutes before the shoot guys that just proves it um so luckily we were able to get the radiator in there somehow um it's it's pretty miraculous this does look a little bit awkward but honestly it's it's pinching just barely I don't think it's really impeding any uh current so I think uh the temperature should be just fine for reference we've got Sleeping Dogs here uh we are running a game and uh we're getting pretty decent frames here we're also going to throw those up and uh everything's running really smooth I did want to say one thing about this build is that it is incredibly quiet you can barely hear it um I don't know if it's picking up on the mics at all probably not um if you do hear it's probably my system in the background that that you're hearing but really the only thing that I can hear are like the two Corsair fans cuz that's those are really the only fans in there besides the power supply but the power supply is eco-friendly it spins a really low RPM um everything is is really really silent honestly I think this has been um a really great build for us all and I think that's going to wrap it up for this episode of SST config guys so if you guys are interested in being on the show send me an email to letters to awom Sauce gmail.com and you could be on the next episode of system config thank you all for watching guys subscribe to the channel if you haven't already give me a like and uh Jenny would you like to sign us off and say say goodbye goodbye everybody thanks for watching bye bye bye helaptops are great devices they're light portable and have the potential to be powerful workstations Unfortunately they also overheat have limited functionality compared to full desktop PCS and can often be overpriced today we examine a client in search of a better solution for all of her multitasking needs on this episode of system config my name is Jennifer I live here and I need a high-end gaming piece I plan to be using the Adobe Master Suite as well as some really Graphics intensive games currently I do not have a desktop PC I have a laptop that I had to purchase in a rush it's really underpowered and I've never really been happy with it I didn't really have a budget going into this build instead I've just kind of been collecting Parts over time and I decided to cap it off at about $1,500 the goal that I have in mind for this new system is to have a really solid high-end gaming PC that's also a workstation and is aesthetically pleasing to have in my room so I turned to KY for his advice and system config for the build all right guys so I have cordially invited Jenny to well our house cuz for those of you who didn't know we're actually roommates and co-workers as well but I also asked her to keep her laptop at home and not and not take it out anywhere so that we can take a look at it uh so we know kind of where we're coming from and where we're going to uh so this is a a nus laptop it's actually a very Sleek laptop I think it's about a year or two old uh the specs on it it's got a core i5 processor it's a mobile processor of course it's an i5 3230 M and it's got 6 gigs of RAM it's running 8.1 currently Windows 8.1 uh why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got this laptop and kind of why you got it well I had to make a really quick decision about purchasing this laptop my previous laptop was getting pixel cancer in the screen it was just spreading and getting worse and worse and eventually became unusable terminal uh that happened while I was in the middle of researching my Master's thesis and so I literally had to make a snap decision I had about $600 to spend and this was the best best laptop I could afford at the time gotcha so it was kind of like spur the moment really impulsive buy didn't have much time to research exactly I knew I wanted something with an SSD so it would have the quick boot up time which my previous laptop was really lacking and then I also wanted it to have a lot of features like USB 3.0 ports I needed HDMI also it has SD card reader in the bottom which are all must haves for me plus an optical drive because at the time I didn't have a TV and this was my entertainment center exactly it was every But as time has gone on um I'm becoming less and less happy with it there's a few things about the form factor I don't really like particularly where the touchpad is located in relation to the space bar on the keypad has been very annoying and also it just can't keep up with the types of things I want to do now with a computer I think there have been a couple times when we've just been sitting here in the living room like I'll be watching TV or something and you all of a sudden in the corner I'll hear you like ah what's wrong with this thing just like I'll look over it's just you with a laptop and it's just like oh God she needs a new computer really badly I think you you were telling me earlier that you do some photography and um and you usually upload the pictures to your computer and put them online and you kind of want to do some more editing with them as well and have that bandwidth to actually pump out some some cool pictures right and so I have tried to run Adobe on this laptop and it just it was a dog it couldn't handle it and then also when we did your live stream it couldn't even run the simplest games and so I had to run back to work to actually pick up a gaming laptop so that day and was it I started with you building a PC when we couldn't run Hotline Miami we knew something had to change because we're we're clearly we're working with Intel HD graphics so it's integrated there's nothing fancy about it um so it's uh it's it's it's very limiting for you right now so keep it for portability I mean it's still a good good laptop you know for everything it is but um I think you need something a little bit more powerful and I think we have something in store for you uh today here on system config so you are you ready to take a look at the hardware that we're going to be using for your build let's look at the hardware Kyle all right let's do it all right so at the Forefront of this build we have the core i7 4770k from Intel choosing this part was a no-brainer since Jenny was able to participate in Intel's retail Edge program which lets people like Jenny who work in the tech industry take quizzes about Intel trivia in order to get killer deals on Intel products after passing enough quizzes about Intel processors and Ultrabooks Jenny was able to score this Flagship Haswell CPU for just over a hundred bucks which I'm sure is turning many of you Green With Envy right about now speaking of green the motherboard of choice is the gigabyte G1 sniper Z87 among all the advantages of the Z87 chipset it also features a creative sound core 3D quad core processor and a Qualcomm atheros killer land chipset for automatic packet prioritization while gaming throw in gigabytes easytune overclocking software and a striking aesthetic and you've got a board with enough Nifty gaming features that will make Jenny's transition into PC gaming an enjoyable experience for memory we turned to Kingston for one of their hyperx black dual Channel kits there are reliable they've got cool lowprofile heat sinks what more could you want well I suppose a lot of things but for Jenny's needs these should have no problem getting the job done rated at 1600 MHz these two 8 gig modules give us a combined total of 16 gigs now when Jenny mentioned to me that she would definitely be doing some overclocking with this system I wanted to make sure she had an adequate cooling solution so here we have corsair's h75 liquid cooler successor to the popular h60 it features a 12 mm radiator at 25 mm thick and comes with a pair of their awesome SP pwm fans now I they usually avoid anything that stands for malevolent evil and destruction but the powercolor devil r9270x may be the only exception this card uses the same chip as its last gen counterpart the Radeon hd7870 but Sports a slightly higher clock speed and a much improved memory clock frequency power color's cooler design on this card is simply Wicked and has been said to do a nice job at keeping thermals down which is absolutely crucial given the chassis we'll be building in as you'll soon see here we revisit Kingston with their 120 gig hyperx 3K SSD these days I think it's safe to say there's little little to no excuse not to have an SSD in your system if you have a budget close to Jenny's with a drive of this size she'll be able to install her OS and frequently used applications like Chrome and Photoshop to speed up her day-to-day tasks but until she upgrades the capacity of her trusty nand she'll probably have to store the humble beginnings of her steam Library onto a mechanical drive for this we've chosen a wd Black 2 tab hard drive besides all of her games Jenny will need Ample Storage for all of her highres images from her photo shoot escapades and since she'll be frequently transferring data to the drive the snappy seek times and read write speeds of the WD black should be a good fit powering this system is the eco-friendly in-win green meeries 650 W power supply now in today's day and age anything with eco-friendly branding tends to carry a rather wimpy connotation thanks Prius but this unit is just as capable as any in its class it's got Japanese bolt capacitors 80 plus bronze certification and also came in a 100% recyclable package which made for one very happy Jenny okay I'll give you guys a second to laugh or throw your hands in the air and yell at the screen whatever you got to do upon seeing the case choice for the for this build but rest assured when I tell you that I can explain why we decided to go with a $280 case for a $1,500 rig after seeing the last episode of system config inwin wanted to participate in a future episode so they set Jenny up with their own Flagship case the 904 originally we had picked out the bit Phoenix Phenom for this build but one glance at the Exquisite design of the 904 and Jenny transformed into veroa assault from Willy Wonka and I can't blame her it does look pretty incredible but since this was a last minute change to our plan we didn't have a chance to do much research on this case which might come back to haunt us during the build I can only hope that we manag to fit all the components inside without shattering that beautiful tempered glass side panel and that ladies and gentlemen is the collection of Parts we'll be using for Jenny's system it's worth noting that she also picked up a key for Windows 8.1 putting the total cost for this build just over her $1,500 budget now throw the retail Edge program and the sponsored 904 in the mix and we're looking at a $1,524 build that she was able to get for just over a grand in an admirable attempt to be economical she decided to put the money she saved towards a new camera to take higher quality photos but now that we have all the parts on the table it's time to put this robust yet questionably unbalanced rig together a he he he down all right ladies and gentlemen we have just finished the build in the inwin 904 computer chassis and my first instinct is to say went smoothly but it clearly did not um there were a lot of issues I think maybe Jenny choosing to go with the 904 at the last minute the day before the shoot may have had something to do with some of the complications we encountered during the build I don't know what do you think Jenny I think that it probably would have been a wiser decision to research the case a little bit more before I made the snap judgment to bring it home instead of the bit Phoenix Phenom which I had originally chosen for the build and that created problems in that moment one of which was the radiator which we thought was going to go in effortless ly because we saw the the fan mounting points actually I just I was watching Demitri's video from Hardware connu he did a beautiful video on this case oh yeah that was in the 5 minutes before we started this right before we press record I was like I should probably find out something about this case cuz I have no no idea what it's about and uh so I didn't really have time to watch the entire video I'm sorry Demitri it was a great video though from what I saw so I was kind of skimming through it I missed the part where he said it's a 90mm fan mount on the back of the case so I'm just assuming well every case these days has a 120 mm no no it doesn't so we pulled out the radiator the h75 and I was like we're not going to be able to shoot system config today it's not going to fit and then by the grace of God we found the miracle mounting point at the bottom of the case that does uh house a 120 mm fan but can accommodate up to 140 mm fan she did do her research 10 minutes before the shoot guys that just proves it um so luckily we were able to get the radiator in there somehow um it's it's pretty miraculous this does look a little bit awkward but honestly it's it's pinching just barely I don't think it's really impeding any uh current so I think uh the temperature should be just fine for reference we've got Sleeping Dogs here uh we are running a game and uh we're getting pretty decent frames here we're also going to throw those up and uh everything's running really smooth I did want to say one thing about this build is that it is incredibly quiet you can barely hear it um I don't know if it's picking up on the mics at all probably not um if you do hear it's probably my system in the background that that you're hearing but really the only thing that I can hear are like the two Corsair fans cuz that's those are really the only fans in there besides the power supply but the power supply is eco-friendly it spins a really low RPM um everything is is really really silent honestly I think this has been um a really great build for us all and I think that's going to wrap it up for this episode of SST config guys so if you guys are interested in being on the show send me an email to letters to awom Sauce gmail.com and you could be on the next episode of system config thank you all for watching guys subscribe to the channel if you haven't already give me a like and uh Jenny would you like to sign us off and say say goodbye goodbye everybody thanks for watching bye bye bye he\n"