Aerocool X1 Devil Red Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review
Peter Donnell / 12 years ago
Now that we have the chassis out of the box you can see that it comes finished in a slightly glossy black paint, with hints of red on the front panel and inside the chassis. The side panel comes pre-cut to house 2 x 120/140mm fans and features some recesses that add a little bit of style to the overall design.
Just like the XPredator and the X3, the X1 features the top mounted retractable fins, these allow for extra airflow to the chassis via the top fan mounting points. The plastics used here do feel a lot cheaper than their other models, but again this edition costs less than half the price of its bigger brother.
The front panel comes with support for 3 x 5.25″ drive and features a full mesh front cover to allow for better airflow within the chassis.
The top panel comes fitted with 2 x USB 3.0 ports, headset and microphone ports and a 25w fan controller. Further up from there is a red rubber padded area which you can use to store USB flash drives, screws, pens or whatever you please.
The rear panel of the chassis keeps the same theme as the front side, with the same recessed shapes but with a 120mm ventilation panel cut into it. There are no options to mount a fan on this area though as space behind the panel is extremely limited.
Around the back of the chassis is where we get our first proper look at the high gloss red paint of the Evil Red edition. It certainly stands out but its not going to be to everyones taste (it does come in other colours though). There are two water/cable routing cutouts at the top, a pre-installed 120mm fan, which could be changed for a 100mm and 80mm fan if required. Further down from there we have 7 expansion slot covers. The top expansion slot has a replaceable cover while the remaining 6 are snap-offs, although I’m not sure why they have chosen to mix the two. The expansion slots also come with a clip over screw guard which is mounted on a hinge to allow access to the external mounting screws.
Flip the chassis over and we can see that the bottom mounted PSU cut-out features support for inverse mounting, providing a clean airflow thanks to the slide out dust filter. There is also support for a further 120mm fan to be mounted on internally on the base of the chassis.