A Closer Look

The MX-1 is actually very light. Antect opted for a plastic & aluminum construction with space for a fan and air passages around the hard drive. This makes it a bit larger than other actively cooled HDD enclosures. The bottom utilizes four soft feet, to keep the unit from sliding around on your desk or floor.

Installation

The front is completely clean and only features the Antec logo. Even though the MX-1 package also carries the Veris brand, you will not find it anywhere on the device itself. This is a good thing, as it would only create confusion about the actual manufacturer brand. In the back you will find all the connectivity you would expect. Starting from the left, there is the power plug, USB 2.0 and eSATA connectivity. Antec also includes an on/off switch which should be large enough to notice when simply trying to hit by searching for it with your fingertips.


To open the MX-1 a single screw needs to be removed from the underside of the device. The top then simply slides off. Inside the case you will find the plastic tray, which holds the SATA hard drive.


This tray needs to be removed from the outer enclosure to install a hard drive. This is done by removing two further screws and disconnecting the LED power cable on the PCB. There are rubber spacers to eliminate any vibrations of the hard drive. As you can see Antec included a thin but fairly large fan on the bottom. Turning the tray over, the air tunnel can be seen clearly. The fan sucks air out of the underside of the hard drive and blows it out the back of the case. Due to the construction, cold air is pulled into the rear top airvents of the enclosure and passes over the top of the hard drive, down the front, gets sucked in by the fan and blown out the back. This design creates airflow over all areas of the hard drive.


To install the hard drive itself, you have to plug the drive into the SATA connector and secure it with the four special screws. Then slide the tray back into the outer shell of the MX-1 and secure it with the two previously removed screws. This means that you will need to remove and replace a total of 7 screws to install a hard drive, which makes the installation a tad bit more complicating than usual for such external enclosures.


There is a somewhat dim LED on the bottom. I have turned over the enclosure and turned down the exposure time, to correctly capture this image. While it should be visible in low light conditions, you will be hard pressed to see it during bright sunlight.