Antec One Review

Performance Analysis

Without a front intake fan, the One relies on its two 120mm exhausts in its default cooling configuration. However, the pair of fan's proximity to the core hardware helped to deliver remarkably capable cooling for a budget chassis. Under combined CPU and GPU load a CPU Delta T of 47°C is an excellent result. The original One Hundred could only produce the same result when its speed-controlled fans were turned up to their maximum setting, where they were much more audible than the two fans installed in the One.

Our monstrous HD 5870 1GB graphics card barely fit inside the One, thanks to the chassis limited GPU accommodation due to side-facing drive cages.However, a GPU Delta T of 43°C, the same result as the One Hundred when its fans were set to minimum speed. is still fair and places the One roughly in the middle of our performance graphs.

This performance would be perfectly acceptable from a case twice the One's price, so for a £45 chassis to deliver such competitive cooling is commendable. There's also the ability to improve cooling via the three extra fan mounts should you need it.

Even though the liberal use of mesh means noise can easily leak from within the case, the One was still quieter than the One Hundred at its maximum settings, suggesting Antec has found the right balance between noise and effective cooling with its pair of 120mm cooling fans. Even so, we could still hear our graphics card over the case fans, despite it only being set to spin at 30% of its maximum capability.

Conclusion

Antec’s case line-up was starting to look a little confusing, so we were glad to see the company refocusing its efforts into one budget chassis rather than three. Considering it costs less than £50, the Antec One has a lot going for it. Features such as USB3 (including an internal header), SSD mounting brackets, tool-free optical drive bays and motherboard backing plate holes are all useful, and build quality is great with just one or two exceptions. Although not perfect, it’s relatively easy to build a tidy system inside (as long as you don’t have a ludicrously long graphics card such as ours) and crucially, cooling performance is at the same impressive level as the cases it was built to replace.

While obviously not as capable as larger or pricier chassis, the One looks like a superb choice for anyone looking for a budget case. With more fans and far superior cooling to the BitFenix Shinobi and more space than the Fractal Design Arc Mini, there aren’t any alternatives that balance cooling, features and price quite as well as this.