In Win 509 Review

Interior

While the 805 was an all-black affair, the 509 has some striking silver details that look great and help to break up the large E-ATX capable interior. Bits are dotted around everywhere, which is a good thing as one complaint we did have with the 805 is that it was a bit too spacious and spartan, wasting quite a bit of space. Here there's usually something going on wherever you look.


The roof is occupied by the 5.25in bay and two of the five 3.5in/2.5in mounts, all of which are tool-free with 3.5in hard disks. If these are enough for your needs, then you can remove the additional drive cage at the bottom of the case, which reveals a 140mm/120mm fan mount and creates more room in the front for fans and radiators.


The extra-large CPU area cut-out should mean most boards benefit from easy access to backplates for heatsinks and water blocks and while there's no PSU cover, the use of closed rubber grommets with two sat next to the PSU means that routing your cables straight out behind the motherboard tray should allow for a clutter-free system - something that was tricky with the 805.


The dedicated 2.5in mounts are actually made up of large frames with cross pieces doing the job of mounting SSDs. There are four in total - one next to the glass side panel and a further three behind it. Each of these can alternatively play host to a single 120mm fan so there's plenty of scope for adding more cooling potential. However, you're more likely to want to add fans at the front of the case, which sports a pair of 140mm fan mounts or a trio of 120mm fan mounts, with spacing for similarly sized radiators. There's loads of space here too so it's easily possible to house a 60mm thick radiator with two rows of fans.

Behind these are an identical set of internal fan mounts located on the silver frame and by removing the lower drive cage, this too can house either trio of 120mm fans or pair of 140mm fans, along with their corresponding radiator sizes. With ATX motherboards you can fit a 60mm-thick radiator in the mix along with two rows of fans with one component in front of the panel. The base and rear fan mount can house additional fans too but sadly, despite the 509 offering a generous 188mm clearance for CPU coolers and there clearly being scope for a great air-cooled system, no fans are actually included in the box.


The 3.5in drive trays themselves sport anti-vibration tool-free mounts, and this is the same for the two in the roof and three in the base. The front of the case sports another removable dust filter, this time a sideways mounted one that's accessed by removing the front panel. This also gives access to the front fan mounts for easy installation of fans or radiators.