Aerocool Aero-500 Windowed Mid-Tower Chassis Review




/ 8 years ago

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Introduction


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Aerocool is back on eTeknix once again and today, we’ll be taking a look at their budget friendly mid-tower, the Aerocool Aero-500. There’s a big market for affordable cases with great amounts of component compatibility and the Aero-500 certainly ticks a lot of the right boxes. You’ll find it capable of housing a high-end gaming system, some water cooling, long graphics cards, and much more and that’s sure to make it appeal to a wide range of system builders, especially given its affordable price.

With a long history of creating some fantastic chassis, Aerocool are always a welcome site here at eTeknix. Sure, we love our flagship models with crazy spec and price tags, but every now and then, a down to Earth and affordable product is just as good, especially given that these are the products people are more likely to actually invest in for their own system.

Features

  • Superb gaming case aimed for great airflow performance.
  • Specially designed top metal cover with extended depth to easily install 240mm water cooling system.
  • Bay covers are designed with a simple flip mechanism for easy removal of bay cover without removing the front panel.
  • Support hi-end graphic cards up to 374mm.
  • Supports max. CPU cooler height of 155mm.
  • Supports max. PSU length of 180mm.
  • Magnetic metal mesh sheet on top panel is easy to remove for cleaning and adds style to the chassis.
  • Removable PSU dust filter for easy cleaning.
  • Supports up to 4×3.5” HDD and 2×2.5” HDD/SSD.
  • 1 x USB3.0 + 2 x USB2.0 / HD Audio + Mic.

With support for an (up to) ATX motherboard, a pair of 5.25″ drives, a good amount of 3.5″ and 2.5″ hard drives, seven expansion slots, an ATX PSU, a good size air cooling tower and even a little room for a slim 240mm water cooling radiator; pretty much everything you could hope for from a decent gaming PC build.

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First impressions of the Aero-500 are certainly positive, with a huge side panel window giving us a great look at the interior and a pair of easily accessible thumb screws at the back to open it up.

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The right side panel has a large recess, which should give us a little extra room for cable routing/management behind the motherboard.

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The front panel is certainly my favorite aspect so far, with a huge ventilated section that will provide plenty of cool air to your system, and those stylish 5.25″ drive bay covers with quick release paddles.

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The silver parts are only plastic, but they do look like metal tabs; such as the ones found on more expensive Aerocool chassis products. It’s worth pointing out that this i on the import model, as the UK version features black clips.

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Around the back, you’ll find a 120mm fan exhaust with a 120mm Aerocool fan pre-installed. Below that, you’ve got a screw guard to the right of the seven expansion slots, and finally a PSU mounting area at the bottom.DSC_6680

The top panel has a large ventilated section with dust filter as well as the main I/O panel.

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The dust filter is magnetic too, so you can easily pull it off, give it a clean and quickly get it re-installed.

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Towards the front you’ll find two built-in fan controllers, with the options for high, low and off, giving you great control over acoustics and cooling. Aside from that, the usual HD audio jacks, 2 x USB 2.0 and a single USB 3.0 ports.

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The base has some large feet, which gives it great stability and some firm rubber grips that will help prevent it sliding around your floor, but also eat up a few (if any) vibrations from your system. There’s a small clip-on dust filter for the PSU; it’s nothing fancy, but it’ll get the job done.

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Interior


The interior is quite spacious, which is always a good thing. The chassis is quite slim, so you may want to steer clear of particularly large CPU cooling towers; be sure to check dimensions before you order one. The powder black paint job of the exterior continues throughout too, giving the whole thing a uniform appearance and there’s also a lot of cable routing holes and cut-outs to help keep things neat and tidy.

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In the back, a pre-installed 120mm Aerocool fan, which comes fitted with both 3-pin PWM and a Molex power connector for maximum compatibility. The top expansion slot has a removable cover, but the bottom six are a snap-off design.

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At the bottom, you’ll find a pair of rubber pads for the PSU mount, and the option to mount the PSU normal or inverted.

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A pair of 5.25″ drive bays, as well as room for more 2.5″ drives just below it.

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There’s no bays in the mid-section, allowing a huge amount of room for a graphics card; even the biggest GPU on the market should fit with ease.

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Three hard drive trays at the base, each with a tool-free slide out tray, although you can also mount 2.5″ drives with the included screws.

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There’s just enough room at the top for a slim 240mm cooler, which should be ideal for a standard AIO cooler, or you can fit 2 x 120mm fans if you felt the need.

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There’s a little bit of room behind the motherboard for routing cables, but keep in mind that there’s a raised section on the side panel that will more than double the space available.

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Another 2.5″ drive bay is found right behind the motherboard, giving you even more room for storage drives.

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And finally, to help with that cable management, there are loads of handy cable tie loops, as well as cable ties in the box, so getting a clean-looking build should be fairly straight forward.

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Behind the front panel, you’ll find a built-in foam filter; these can be tricky to clean, but a quick blast with a hose from your vacuum cleaner should do the job nicely. There’s room for two more 120mm fans here too, so lots of cooling potential. Just keep in mind, these fans aren’t pre-installed, so it may be worth ordering a single 120mm, at least, before starting your build.

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Complete System


Fitting all of our components couldn’t have been more straight forward here, as everything fit with ease. The cable routing looks a little rough, but it’s pretty decent overall and all major cables are well out-of-the-way of airflow and fans.

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There are dedicated 2.5″ bays, but since I’m using a single drive, it was much easier to use the slide out trays at the base.

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The PSU fit with a huge amount of space to spare, giving you extra room for spare cables or even a bigger PSU if required.

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Obviously more than enough room here for multi-GPU configuration. Just keep in mind that cards lower down will be limited by the placement of the HDD bays.

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There’s a small cable routing hole just behind the motherboard at the top for the 8-pin CPU cable, but you may need to route this cable before installing the motherboard as it gets partially covered once it is installed.

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We’re not using the 5.25″ drive bays in this build, so it doubled up nicely as a bit of cable storage. There’s still a good amount of space behind the motherboard too, but so long as they’re out of sight, what’s the difference.

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The Sapphire R9 270X Tri-X Toxic is a colossal graphics card, but thanks to that mid-section being clear, it fit with a huge amount of room to spare and has lots of breathing room for airflow from any front mounted fans.

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Overall, a very clean and tidy looking build, with the added bonus of that huge side panel window giving a very uncompromising view of the interior; perfect for showing off your shiny new hardware.

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Final Thoughts


Pricing

I must confess that when I started writing this review, I didn’t know the exact price of this chassis. I knew it was a budget model, but expected it to be around £40-50 overall. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out it’s only £29.99 from Overclockers UK or £29.45 from Aria! This is absolutely incredible value for money for a chassis of this specification and I can’t stress enough ow much value for money you would be getting if you pick one up.

Overview

When looking for a budget chassis, you’re often more motivated by the price than anything else. You need something on that budget and you’ll just have to get the best spec you can hope for. Thankfully, we’ve got companies like Aerocool that are pushing the limits of what you can get for so little. The Aero-500 ticks virtually every box for a mid-to-high budget gaming PC build, offering up room for a high-end GPU, water cooling support, good airflow, cable routing, a decent amount of storage drives and more. Then we’ve got nice little bonuses like the magnetic dust filter on the top panel, dual channel fan controllers, with a fan off function too, something you don’t often see.

Aesthetics get a big thumbs up, as there’s that huge side panel window to show off your hardware, a clean-looking front panel with some stylish 5.25″ drive bay covers, and a good quality 120mm fan pre-installed too. So where does this kind of value come from? Well, there’s a few things to take into consideration here. While we do have a magnetic filter on the top, the front panel is just padded with thin foam; it does the job, but it’s a cheap and dirty solution. There’s also no intake fans as standard, so I’d immediately order at least one before you build your new rig and that is at least another £5 investment there. The panels are quite thin too, as are some of the plastics, although I’m not going to mark the chassis down for this, as it’s priced to reflect the materials used. Of course, the quality of the design helps hide the cheaper building materials, and Aerocool has certainly done a great job of making a budget chassis look a lot more like one of their higher end models.

Overall, there is a lot of chassis here for very little money. The build quality is decent enough, the design looks superb and a few little bonus features certainly help sweeten the deal. If you’re on a budget of around £30, you’re going to be hard pushed to find anything as good as this.

Pros

  • Stylish design
  • Side panel window
  • Reasonable cable routing spaces
  • Room for long GPU
  • 120mm fan pre-installed
  • Some water cooling support
  • Magnetic dust filter on top panel
  • Built-in fan controllers
  • Very competitive price

Cons

  • No intake fans pre-installed
  • Foam dust filter on front

Neutral

  • Thin panels, although no more so than anything else in this price range

“The Aerocool Aero-500 is all the chassis you need for your next gaming build. It looks great, has some nice features and best of all, it’s incredibly affordable, leaving the rest of your budget to spend on faster hardware.”

Bang-For-Buck

Aerocool Aero-500 Windows Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Thank you Aerocool for providing us with this sample.

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