Aerocool X1 Devil Red Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review

It took me around 20 mins to install our test system in to the chassis, this included the time to remove the rear 120mm fan and install our Antec 920 which quite frankly I’m amazed fitted in here at all as the chassis is a little on the slim side, more on the Antec Kuhler in a moment though. The cable management was a little tight at the side but due to the way the hard drive mounts are orientated, there was just enough room to hide all the cables out of the way and its done a reasonable job of keeping the majority of cables out the way.

I had to leave a lot of the cables to the front, there simply wasn’t room around the cable for the thick USB 3.0 cable, but with a few cable ties and a little forward planning you could easily tidy this up, I don’t really see much point though as they’re not really restricting airflow and the chassis doesn’t come with a side window, out of sight, out of mind as they say. In the base of the chassis you can see our SSD is mounted on one of the included 2.5″ drive brackets that came included in the box.

Going back to the installation of the Antec 920 water cooler, you can see here that is is very close to the CPU block, with literally under 1mm of space between them. This isn’t an issue though, it fit with ease into the chassis, but only just. For a chassis of this size that is quite an achievement that I can fit a cooling block as thick as this one with a pair of 120mm fans attached to it.

With the side panel replaced you can just about see the silver edge of our MSI GTX 560 Ti, of course should you choose to mount some side fans, this view will be all but obstructed.

Around the rear of the chassis everything looks neat and tidy, the GTX 560 gets a little more air space thanks to the ventilation in the expansion slot covers and the Antec 620M PSU is happily mounted inverse making good use of the bottom air filter in the chassis.