Kingwin KT-436-WM Case: The Mod Dream

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.