Antec Eleven Hundred Mid Tower Chassis Review

With such a wide range of gaming towers to choose from Antec have chosen to create something with a little more elegance and design flair than that of other manufacturers. The angular design and clean lines make the Eleven Hundred stand out from the competition. The flexibility of the case allows you to design your own ultimate gaming machine with ample room for GPU installations and Multiple Fans. Water cooling solutions may still be limited by the size of the tower but as a Mid-chassis case the Eleven Hundred offers you a lot for your money.

Inside the case is a no frills look where a clean, crisp design allows your components to do the talking while the case steps back and does what it knows best without drawing too much attention to itself. With a really high quality feel to the finish of the tower, Antec have achieved a premium look to the case. Using lightweight materials helps to keep the Eleven Hundred well balanced, making it easy to work on when installing the various components and performing basic maintenance. Through building our test system into the Antec Eleven Hundred we have found that the case has a really sturdy feel about it. Even when the side panels are removed the chassis feels well-built, we can tell this case will be durable and have a good life expectancy off the shelf.

The location of the grommets on the Eleven Hundred allowed easy access for PSU cable management. However with enough room afforded for larger power supplies the location of these rear access holes makes it a stretch to reach the CPU power via the rear of the case. We found similar PSU cable length issues in this case that would normally be associated with larger towers. This would suggest that the tower would benefit from additional grommet holes further down the case to accommodate smaller power supply installations. In addition to this the passive air circulation vent design stretching down the front face of the tower gives the Eleven Hundred a dominating presence enhanced with the angular port bay adorning the top of the face.

Other nice features to see on the Eleven Hundred are the tool-less design of the drive bays. Many cases on the market opt for screw based fixing which are awkward to reach at times. The only development that would be nice to see is a similar tool-less operation for the SSD cage to make swapping out drives a quick and easy process. The Blue LED lighting system that projects colour from the top of the tower gives the case a dynamic look. With on/off functionality controlled by a switch on the rear of the case it is a user defined option. We personally feel that it brings the case to life adding another dimension to the tower.

It was good to see on the Eleven Hundred that there were a variety of USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports on the front of the Tower. This offers a good compromise between speed and affordability when building a machine and would be attractive to gamers who could make use of both types of USB port.

To conclude we were extremely impressed with the general usability of this case and the small touches that make it a joy to work with. The external aesthetics and clean angular design of the Eleven Hundred is also a winner for us. Currently for sale at around £101 the Eleven Hundred offers a lot of quality for the price and Antec haven’t saved on design or functionality with this chassis. If you are looking for a high quality mid-tower chassis for a gaming system, that is sure to last for a few years, then this may just be what you are looking for.