Review System

Assembly

To add a motherboard to the Antec Dark Cube, just place it before screwing it down to secure it. There is a little more room between the board and the motherboard tray than with traditional cases, so cable routing in this space is a real possibility. The memory slot lines up with the opening of the shroud, but the board extends beyond it a bit. Even though Antec markets this as an ITX chassis, there seems to be no tangible benefit of going for the more compact motherboard. On the inverse, going with an mATX variant doesn't mean you have to compromise anything in any way either, so Antec opting to highlight its ITX capabilities is a bit confusing.


The Dark Cube can accommodate air coolers of up to 175 mm, which essentially means any 120 mm tower cooler will fit, as well as a choice of several 140 mm variants. Installing a 240 mm AIO bears no surprises, but we made sure to route the fan cables before screwing everything down. The PWM connectors on the front PCB are in an excellent position for these fans as well.


As the board is upside down, any GPU you install will have the fans facing upward, but blowing downward. The Palit GeForce RTX 2080 easily fits with a bit of room left, so you could do a push/pull configuration while using a thin radiator without issue.


Adding storage is quite simple as well, and the only thing you could do without pulling the hole frame out of the shell of the Antec Dark Cube. The frame allows for one 2.5" and one 3.5" drive to be installed, and may then be placed back into the chassis with the thumb screw to secure it.


To install a PSU, anything of up to 220 mm should be just fine, but there is no real reason you can't go even longer with classic AIOs installed. Once mounted on the frame, simply slide it in and secure the whole contraption.


With everything installed, we tried to keep the interior as clean as possible by routing the front panel cables through the hole and using zip ties to secure them, just so you could see it clearly. As Antec includes several Velcro strips, you would use those instead for more flexibility.


Interestingly enough, that attempt of using the opening also meant that the zip-tie hook and its cables would not be able to pass a structural part of the outer shell, so we had to re-route some cables to stay inside the frame and refrain from using this zip-tie hook to make things fit. This is unfortunate as Antec could easily reduce the size of that structural part to give users just a bit more wiggle room.

Finished Looks

With the system turned on, you will also see the four corners of the Antec Dark Cube light up, which is a pretty nice touch. This should result in a nice glow in darker environments as well. You may switch between the vented or glass front at any time as it is just held in place by hooks.


As the windows are tinted fairly heavily, you can't make out too much unless you opt for plenty of extra lighting. This is unfortunate as Antec forgoes the benefits of metal mesh venting for the possibility to clearly show off your hardware, but goes with too much tinting. This is clearly so that the opposite side with the hard drives is well hidden, but some brands use two levels of tint, with the main side having less for better visibility.


Taking a peek at the top, you can see the GPU if you look closely. In the rear, everything is accessible, and one could use the handle to route external cables through to keep things a bit tidier.

With the built-in controller, you are able to cycle through several single and multi-colored animations. On top of that, the Antec Dark Cube allows for the usual set of solid colors, which you can see below.