For those who don’t know, Aqirys is a neighboring brand from Romania that really started off strong from the very beginning. With a few products they sent me for testing, I noticed that they take a very serious approach when it comes to selecting materials and components. This is also rounded out by an aspect that many brands have somehow neglected or forgotten over time - the unboxing process adorned with small details that can surprise you, delight you, but will certainly leave an impression, which is definitely not insignificant.
For example, with this case, as soon as you open the box, you come across this little box where Aqirys has packed very detailed instructions for the case, accessories like remotes that you will need, some metal panels that you will see later what they are intended for, and this box for tools and screws, with all the screws you will need and of course, a few spares in each section in case you lose half the stuff like I do when I turn around. So this was a very nice surprise for me.
Then we move on to the case which, for some reason, reminded me of the Fractal Define 7 which I have been using for various needs for almost 4 years now, not by design but by the quality of construction and the truly interesting modularity of the interior, and even the quality and sturdiness of the materials used.
Design-wise, this case doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, which leads me to conclusion that it’s an original Aqirys model, and I really like what I see here. The front panel doesn’t come off, or at least it shouldn’t, but you can optionally disassemble it. However, there’s no need, because Aqirys made it so that when you remove this angled glass, you get access to the superfine dust filter and all the fans, but also to the modular cage in which they are located. Some put such a cage or section on top of the case, like Fractal, Aqirys put it forward, like the NZXT H5 Flow for example, only bigger and better. The glass itself is very steeply angled, so the front panel is almost completely open for ventilation, which you can feel when the built-in fans are turned on.
The top of the XO-1 is another part that reminded me of the Fractal case because the entire so-called roof of the case is a metal panel with ventilation perforations and openings that frame the central hub. Here you can best see how wide the case is because there is a truly huge gap from the positions for installing the radiator to the motherboard panel. Among the options on the hub, the power and reset buttons are super high quality and sturdy, with a premium feel, and the USB connectors are 3.1Gen1 and Gen2 for type C and type A, color deleted to look more elegant.
The interior, in a word, is huge. There’s no theoretical chance that something can’t be installed or that you’ll come into a situation where some component sections collide because the clearance is too small - there’s simply no chance. This case is made for owners of the largest, and even the heaviest graphics cards, for owners of boards that have gigantic VRM coolers, for owners of 360mm high-performance all-in-one coolers with very thick radiators, and even for those who would play with some custom loop solutions, although I must admit that I’m more speculating this last part just because of the amount of space, I haven’t tried it in practice.
A detail I like are these corner openings for cable management, which are designed so that when an E-ATX board covers that front section, you still have a functional opening on the side for each cable. Another detail is this super sturdy bracket for those gigantic graphics cards which is secured from the backside with two huge screws.
The CPU air cooler here can be as high as 170mm, which means the Noctua D15 fits without any issues, and a 360mm AIO fits on top, on the side, and on the front part, i.e., the cage, also without any problems; it just requires a bit of juggling with the installation in that section.
The back panel has two large openings, both for ventilation. The main one is, of course, where you would install fans on the side, and the other is more like a pretty useful option because this section, when you remove the side panel, is also modular. This entire panel can either be a carrier for hard drives and SSDs or even a part where you would install three more fans to draw heat away from the back of the motherboard or from the power supply below.
There we also have an overview of a really great controller that is built into this case. It’s a completely standardized solution with normal 4-pin PWM and 3-pin 5V ARGB connections, powered by a SATA connection, and it even offers PWM share and ARGB share connectors if you want to leave all that to the motherboard, for example.
This black remote works in tandem with the controller entirely only when everything is switched to the controller, but when you share signals with the board, then the remote only has a button to switch ARGB control to the motherboard, while you adjust the RPM in the BIOS. This is absolutely phenomenal because you have full freedom, and the only downside is that because of this, there are a million cables, but this is not the fault of Aqirys itself.
Now, the modular back panel - I’ve never seen this utilized in cases like this. Here, for example, it’s not for changing orientation, but for adapting to more compact motherboards and opening up additional space at the top of the case. Simply remove the bottom row, put the panel back, a little lower, and you have a case that makes smaller motherboards not look so awkward, and at the same time, the so-called ceiling is additionally lowered for numerous additional purposes. All this may be a bit of a gimmick, but it’s done so well that I can easily overlook the somewhat questionable functionality. MATX owners will certainly be happy.
Of course, all of this must be rounded off with a PC build, which you will also see in a separate video, but it certainly served me to see how the case behaves in a real assembly of a pretty powerful computer. I’ll leave the exact components in question for a separate video, and here I can only give a concrete conclusion - this case gets a medal that I find very hard to part with, and that is the Platinum Award because for the price of 136 euros, which is what it costs here in Serbia, this Aqirys XO-1 brings all the qualities of, for example, a Fractal Meshify 2 case, with a few things that even slightly surpass it in terms of some more modern solutions, but definitely all that follows with a price that is far enough, about 70€ less than the competitor model, which makes this particular Aqirys XO-1 a very interesting product.
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