Aercool Aero-1000 Review and Interview

Interior

As with any ATX case, you'd expect to be able to house numerous of hard disks and SSDs and the Aero-1000 offers enough space for plenty. In addition to the two 5.25in bays are five tool-free drive mounts spread across several drive enclosures, each of which can house either 3.5in or 2.5in devices. There are a further two tool-free 2.5in bays sandwiched in between the two multi-purpose mounts too. The top mount is removeable, but each of these sports large cut-outs to aid airflow.


As standard there are two 120mm front intake fans and a rear 120mm fan too - enough to handle high-end systems within reason out of the box if the front mesh does its job. The front mounts can house two 140mm fans too, but while there's space for a 45mm-thick radiator here, once you've done the essential task of removing the top drive mount, you can't actually fit in anything larger than a double 120mm-fan radiator; we tried squeezing in an NZXT Kraken X61, but it's too tall whichever way you try.


Thankfully, the roof has no such limitations and the double 140mm-fan radiator of the Kraken fitted fine with plenty of room for a row of fans or even a thicker radiator. Indeed, Aerocool touts the Aero-1000 as being water-cooling friendly. That said, there's not a whole lot of room for pumps. The lower drive mounts are riveted in place and there's not really enough room to mount one in front of the PSU, leaving only the 5.25in bays, which is certainly doable.


Roof radiators encroaching on the 5.25in bays at the front shouldn't be an issue for the most part, with a 30mm-thick radiator and single row of fans still allowing the lower 5.25in bay enough room for long DVD drives, while the upper bay could be used to house a fan controller or hard disk.


Cable routing is excellent - there's a large gap above the motherboard for passing through the 8-pin EPS 12V connector and fan cables and four large rubber grommets around the motherboard tray too. It should be pretty easy to build a tidy system into the Aero-1000 and even a water-cooled dual-GPU system shouldn't be too trying either.


Of course, the chances are that if you're buying a sub-£60 case, you're also not looking to water-cool your system or use an all-in-one liquid cooler. There's a reasonable 170mm CPU clearance but a more generous 290mm of space for GPUs with a longer 410mm available if you remove the centre hard disk module. There's a medium-sized CPU area cut-out in the motherboard tray and while there are no lavish velcro ties, extra-long cable ties are included that are actually pretty useful.