With the extremely built-in nature of PCs today, the Mini-ITX form-factor has turn into a really viable choice for high-performance gaming system. With loads of motherboards obtainable for each AMD and Intel’s newest platforms, equipping an ITX system with a CPU is straightforward sufficient. However the small dimension of the shape issue implies that housing an ultra-wide flagship-level graphics card stays a problem. For this yr’s Computex commerce present, Antec was displaying off their resolution to the issue of big video playing cards: the Efficiency 1M case, a Mini-ITX case with a separate chamber only for a big video card.
Antec’s Efficiency 1M is a dual-chamber Mini-ITX chassis that splits off the video card from the remainder of the system. The first chamber homes a Mini-ITX motherboard and an SFX energy provide, whereas the secondary chamber homes an enormous graphics card. Notably, the 2 chambers are bridged utilizing a PCIe riser cable, permitting the motherboard chamber to be far shorter than even a half-height PCIe card, whereas the video card chamber can maintain a triple-slot video card parallel to the motherboard chamber, reducing down on wasted house. For Antec’s Computex demo, the corporate had a triple-slot ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 put in to showcase how this labored.
Antec’s determination to allocate a lot of the case’s quantity to th video card chamber does include a slight catch, nonetheless: it does not go away a lot house for a CPU cooler within the motherboard chamber. The quick motherboard chamber implies that system builders should use a low-profile cooler; these are available, however it does go away much less thermal headroom general for high-end CPUs. So there are nonetheless trade-offs for with the ability to accommodate a high-end video card.
In any other case, the Efficiency 1M chassis from Antec look very fashionable and are historically nicely constructed from chrome steel and aluminum. The chassis could be geared up with two 120-mm or two 140-mm coolers for additional airflow (which can assist efficiency), one 2.5-inch SATA SSD, and even some RGB bling. To make the PC constructed inside a Efficiency 1M case extra handy to make use of, there are two USB Sort-C ports on the entrance.
After all, housing a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in a Mini-ITX chassis has its peculiarities with regards to dimensions and Antec’s Efficiency 1M measures 424×175×260mm, which is fairly massive. However, for an ultra-high-performance gaming system, that is fairly compact.
Antec’s Efficiency 1M Mini-ITX chassis will likely be obtainable in gunmetal grey and matte black colours typically later this yr. Pricing is one thing that the corporate is considering now, although take into account that we’re speaking about distinctive premium merchandise.
