A Closer Look - Outside

Taking a first look at the chassis, you will notice its weight. Clocking in at 5 kg, the AI4 is no featherweight. As we will see later on, this is due to the thick steel used. anidees has taken all the design elements from the AI6 series and has simply shrunken them down for their mATX chassis.


Taking a look at the front, it becomes apparent that the entire front and top is lined with aluminum. While the other panels are made of plastic, the plastic is of excellent quality. I was not able to push or bend anything out of shape. The rear does not hold too many surprises, with the PSU bay in the top. anidees clearly is not trying to reinvent the wheel, but aims to deliver in terms of quality instead.


Both sides of the AI4 are completely solid, but the company placed their logo on the main side panel, which makes it a nice little touch, instead of plastering it all over the front.


Hidden behind the door is a weird-looking metal-mesh element that allows for fresh air to be pulled in by the fans. Its extruded shape is a bit too much as it doesn't mesh well with the chassis's overall design. A flat surface here would have been beneficial. Above it are two 5.25" drive bays. Each cover can easily be removed without having to pull the entire front off to do so. Interestingly enough, each of these can also be used for 3.5" drives. Simply remove the metal mesh part in the center to do so. This is a pretty cool feature because it gives users more flexibility.


Looking at the rear, there are five expansion slots, which is one more than the minimum for a mATX board. Above that are a 120 mm exhaust fan and a few cut outs you may break free to route liquid-cooling tubes through, for example. However, anidees does not include any grommets for these. You may install the PSU into the very top with its fan facing up or down because there are two sets of mounting holes. We would suggest installing the unit with its cooling unit facing down.


anidees decided to include four USB plugs in the top. Two of these are USB 2.0 and two are USB 3.0. They are spaced apart nicely, which allows for bulky USB flash drives to be connected. The audio connectivity can be found to the right of this array of plugs. Below it are the LEDs and the reset and power buttons. You will find a simple but effective fan controller on top of those, which makes for a very good, well-rounded set of I/O.