A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior, simply remove the thumbs screws holding each side panel in place. While the layout within the ONE is traditional, with the drives in the front of the chassis, Antec is offering quite the unique tooling. For one the opening in the mainboard tray is huge, so that you should not have any issue gaining access to the motherboard underside for an easy CPU cooler change. The other, certainly more interesting, aspect are the hard drive bays. In terms of cable space behind the motherboard tray, you will have to work with around 20 mm if you take both the body and side panel into account. Not too much, but it should be enough for most users.


The Antec ONE may hold up to five 3.5 inch hard drives with the usually supplied trays or rails. These are to be pushed in from the mainboard side until they snap into place, with the connectors facing the open side of the construction. You may also mount a single 2.5 inch drive on the floor of the chassis. Antec mentions that you may install up to two such drives, which I suggest means that an additional one can be placed in the very top 5.25 unit. The other 5.25 inch bays with the same screw-less system can be found within the Antec ONE. You will probably be able to use the fourth, very top bay for an internal drive as well, but due to the design of the front panel, no external drive will fit here.


Turning our focus to the rear of the chassis, there is nothing out of the ordinary in the bottom of the chassis. Four small, foam covered bumps are used to support the weight of the PSU and to reduce vibrations. Above that are the afore mentioned expansion bays next to which are the two openings to route water cooling tubes through. As seen from the outside, the rear fan is all black and utilizes a 3-pin mainboard header for power.


As the ceiling fan is of the same variety, you will also get the same connector. One may install an additional fan in the bottom and up to two extra ones in the front of the chassis. For a chassis in this price range, two included fans are quite alright.


Antec has made sure, that nothing disturbs the all black color of the chassis by making the case leads and I/O ones black as well. All of these are of the standard variety, with a 20-pin USB 3.0 plug used to connect the USB I/O to directly to the mainboard It will be interesting to see, if Antec will include an adapter cable for those users who do not have a big header on their board.