Aerocool X1 Devil Red Edition Mid-Tower Chassis Review

So overall then a fairly competent chassis, while its nothing groundbreaking it does offer steady set of features that falls neatly in line with what the competition are offering for around the same price. There is dial adjustable 25w fan controller on the front panel that is a more than welcome addition, especially given the number of fan mounting points on this chassis, things could get a bit noisy (fan quality dependant) if you didn’t have some way of keeping them in check. The fact that I was able to fit a massive Antec 920 water cooling block is another big win here too.

I’m a big fan of the Aerocool fins in the top of the chassis, this is a design feature we have seen in both the X3 and the XPredator Full Tower chassis, combine this with the fan controller and you have a system that allows you to disable any top fans entirely and close the fins to minimise noise from your system. But when the need arises you could open the fins and turn your fans up, giving you a seriously hefty boost to your airflow and cooling performance within the chassis.

Some of the materials here are not fantastic, the main body of the chassis is cut from steel but the back of the system and the grill for the top fan mounts is cut quite thin and does flex a little when installing components. This isn’t a big issue but if you were to combine the chassis with a set of cheap fans there is a chance that it could cause the chassis to rattle or vibrate. A little extra care to install components properly and with rubber washers should help resolve this though.

I’m not a fan of the paint job either, while I’m sure some people will love the red design, its a little too extensive and the tone of the paint really doesn’t agree with my personal tastes. Of course this is a matter of preference, but I think black or white edition look sleeker as the red paint cheapens the overall feel and look of the design.

While of course there are better chassis on the market, you can expect to pay at least 50% more for the privilege. Aerocool themselves sell a better version of this design (Aerocool X3) but not everyone has £70-80 to put towards a chassis.

If you need to watch your budget but still need something that will hold a multi GPU setup, offer you great airflow management, that is capable of handling a decent amount of storage devices then the X1 is certainly worth your consideration. While many other chassis in this price range offer something similar, the X1 does offer a solid feature set of its own. So long as you’re happy with its capabilities, you may end up choosing the X1 over a competitors brand simply based on its style.