Antec One Mid-Tower Chassis Review

When taking the sides off the case you suddenly feel as if you need to weigh it down to prevent it from floating away with the case coming in under 5kg. Made from extremely light-weight materials the “One” has clearly been cut from the same cloth as the rest of the Antec Range.

The interior feels small with all of the HDD 3.5” drive bays located down the right side of the tower. Due to the size of this entry level tower, Antec have maximised space by reversing the Drive bays. This requires drives to be rear mounted into the cage with a pressure fit bay for 2.5” SSD’s located above. With 5 HDD bays in the rack, the case comes complete with Tool-less accessory clips which allow you fit your Devices into the selected bays with ease.

With room for three 5.25” optical drives the “One” offers the same Tool-less clip design here as the Eleven Hundred. This uses a quick release clip that slots into the screw fittings of the drive to secure it in place.

Moving across the case onto the motherboard tray, the “One” has a selection of access holes designed for cable management. These are well positioned and allow you to access different areas of the case without running an excessive number of cables through the main tower area. above this is the main rear exhaust fan that offers pleanty of cooling potential located directly above the CPU.

The loom of cables from the front panel also appear to be a good length to reach the board while still affording enough length to route through the rear of the case. The tray as expected comes pre-loaded with a selection of locating pegs that are designed to take a range of boards including ATX, Micro ATX and Mini-ITX.

As previously mentioned the “One” has 7 expansion slots on the rear of the tower. Utilising the reverse cage design it is possible to take up to 2 GPU ‘s, 10.5” each. This offers an impressive flexibility not often seen in entry level cases such as this.

The PSU cut-out fits most standard power supply units however we are a little concerned about the snug installation that may be required for the larger derivatives on the market.

Looking at the rear side of the motherboard tray we can see that there is not a great deal of clearance between the case chassis and the door panels. We have been assured by Antec that the Bulge design of the doors offers additional space for cable management, but we feel there may be some applications where you find this is just not enough. The motherboard tray itself comes complete with an enlarged CPU cut-out for easy and fast heat sink mounting applications.

The overall design of the towers internal components is naturally a very high quality and feel very well made. The crisp edges of the pressed metal and clean folds make it feel solid with very little to grumble about.