O11 alternative? Antec P120 Crystal Review – Sign of life of a traditional manufacturer

1 - Einführung, Spezifikationen und Unboxing 2 - Qualitätseindruck und Features 3 - Einbaubericht und Bautagebuch 4 - Kühlperformance und Fazit

Installation report

For me, the best test is still the practical test and what better way to do this than to simply install a running system in the case? While I don’t currently own a water-cooled graphics card due to the current price range, I thought it would be wrong not to take advantage of the generous amount of space in the case as well. So I decided to add at least a small custom loop for the processor. The following components had to be accommodated:

First, I thought about the arrangement of the fans and the positioning of the radiator. Because I want to mount the pump combination upright and supply the GPU, which is still air-cooled, with sufficient fresh air, I ultimately decided to mount the radiator on the side. Thermally it would probably make more sense to get warm air out of the case at this point, but for the CPU temperature it is undoubtedly advantageous to let cool fresh air flow through the radiator from the outside. Observations on this can be found in the section “Thermal Performance”.

As you can see on the picture above, I already mounted the RAM, the M.2 SSD and the CPU including the waterblock on the board before I screwed it into the case. Removing the huge glass door gives you plenty of room to screw, but I still prefer to mount these components outside the case.

I deliberately kept the water circuit simple so that I could quickly swap hardware for future testing. Although I had to discard my first idea to get past the graphics card without tight bending radii, the layout is now almost like an AIO and I only need to loosen the CPU block to easily swap all components. Even though most of my fittings now have over 15 years on them, they passed the leak test immediately.

I mounted the SSD in the designated spot, and I noticed that the carrier plate fits really well in the bracket. There is absolutely nothing wobbly or rattling.

Apart from the fact that you have to unscrew the feet to mount the fans on the floor, you can reach everywhere very easily. Even the cable management in the relatively small “chamber” behind the motherboard is completely intuitive and in the cover of the power supply can be surprisingly many unused cables and even an RGB controller easily accommodate.

Ready mounted, a, in my opinion, visually quite appealing system has been created. You can argue about the lighting, but in times of RGB you are quite flexible. If necessary, you just turn off the whole disco ball.

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