Performance Analysis

First and foremost, we should stress that testing a case such as this in its out-of-the-box fanless configuration is clearly not indicative of a setup we'd recommend you adopt. It serves as a warning to anyone that takes a liking to it, though, and figures it should be good enough to deal with an overclocked CPU. With a largely-sealed chassis and no rear exhaust fan, the P120 Crystal struggled and our CPU was essentially bouncing off the limiter after just a few minutes, so at the very least you'll need to add a couple of fans to get some airflow going on.

The GPU was a little less toasty, with the fan speed fixed at 70 percent being far more able to draw air in from the vents beneath it. Still, the GPU delta T of 55°C was  nearly equal-worst and 7°C warmer than the best result in the graphs. This is all getting back to the risk we mentioned Antec is taking with the P120 Crystal. At this price, we look favourably on cases that perform well out-of-the-box, for the simple reason if you're spending less than £100 on a PC case, you probably won't want to be spending another £30-40 on kitting the case out with fans.

Conclusion

So, has Antec's gamble paid off? We think so. It's not the most feature-laden case, but corners have to be cut somewhere if you're building a water-cooling-focussed chassis with tempered glass and solid construction for less than £100. With way more time than we spent on cable tidying, there's no reason why this comparatively compact case couldn't house a high-end water-cooled PC and by high-end, we're talking a pair of 360mm radiators and E-ATX motherboard - Intel 18-core, or 32-core Threadripper territory, and we can't say the same for cases we've mentioned already, which cost the same but are geared towards far less lavish builds and will probably never see a drop of coolant. 

The difference with the P120 Crystal is that it can absolutely pull it off. Kitted out with RGB lighting and water-cooling, it would look great, yet it only costs £80. It's maybe less-inclined to being air-cooled, although a column of RGB fans in the side vent might not look too bad, and is certainly not an out-of-the-box performer here, either. If you need an affordable case to build your first LAN party eye-catcher and proper water-cooling rig into, though, it's perfect and we feel this great execution deserves our top award.