With the highly integrated nature of PCs these days, the Mini-ITX form-factor has become a very viable option for high-performance gaming system. With plenty of motherboards available for both AMD and Intel's latest platforms, equipping an ITX system with a CPU is easy enough. But the small size of the form factor means that housing an ultra-wide flagship-level graphics card remains an issue. For this year's Computex trade show, Antec was showing off their solution to the problem of giant video cards: the Performance 1M case, a Mini-ITX case with a separate chamber just for a large video card.

Antec's Performance 1M is a dual-chamber Mini-ITX chassis that splits off the video card from the rest of the system. The primary chamber houses a Mini-ITX motherboard and an SFX power supply, while the secondary chamber houses a huge graphics card. Notably, the two chambers are bridged using a PCIe riser cable, allowing the motherboard chamber to be far shorter than even a half-height PCIe card, while the video card chamber can hold a triple-slot video card parallel to the motherboard chamber, cutting down on wasted space. For Antec's Computex demo, the company had a triple-slot ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 installed to showcase how this worked.

Antec's decision to allocate most of the case's volume to th video card chamber does come with a slight catch, however: it doesn't leave much space for a CPU cooler in the motherboard chamber. The short motherboard chamber means that system builders will have to use a low-profile cooler; these are readily available, but it does leave less thermal headroom overall for high-end CPUs. So there are still trade-offs for being able to accommodate a high-end video card.

Otherwise, the Performance 1M chassis from Antec look very stylish and are traditionally well built from stainless steel and aluminum. The chassis can be equipped with two 120-mm or two 140-mm coolers for extra airflow (which will help performance), one 2.5-inch SATA SSD, and even some RGB bling. To make the PC built inside a Performance 1M case more convenient to use, there are two USB Type-C ports on the front.

Of course, housing a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in a Mini-ITX chassis has its peculiarities when it comes to dimensions and Antec's Performance 1M measures 424×175×260mm, which is pretty large. On the other hand, for an ultra-high-performance gaming system, this is pretty compact.

Antec's Performance 1M Mini-ITX chassis will be available in gunmetal gray and matte black colors sometimes later this year. Pricing is something that the company is thinking about now, though keep in mind that we are talking about unique premium products.

Source: Antec

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  • meacupla - Thursday, June 13, 2024 - link

    yeah, this is a pretty cool offering for a company that came back from the dead.
    It's similar to a fractal Terra, but I think the cooling might have less resonance issues with the grill design.

    IMO, they both don't quite beat the Lian Li A4-H20.
  • sharath.naik - Sunday, June 16, 2024 - link

    How so? its 19L in volume. A normal tower layout NR200P is 18L. This case makes Zero sense, the original Ghost s1/Dan A4 sandwich layout cases are all 7-9L in size. That was the original idea behind sandwich layout, to save on volume. Here it makes no sense, just go with tower layout as it will give you the best compatibility to all cooler choices, noise and ventilation.
  • erinadreno - Monday, June 17, 2024 - link

    NR200P doesn't fit a TUF 4090. Although you can buy other 4090s that fit, but you know, ASUS.
  • meacupla - Wednesday, June 19, 2024 - link

    Dan A4 was released in a year where GPUs weren't as bloated, and CPUs didn't pump out as much heat.
    A4-H20's top mounted radiator pulls heat trapped behind the GPU and improves thermals drastically. It's a much needed improvement for 2024.
    NR200P's primary benefit is cost. It doesn't have an ideal airflow layout, sadly.
  • Techie4Us - Thursday, June 13, 2024 - link

    will be available in gunmetal gray and matte black colors


    If this is true, then why do the pics show a red & black (aka da barfo ROG) version ?

    I'd really prefer a single color one, if that is what will be made available...
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, June 13, 2024 - link

    The attention grabber here is to name the current fastest GPU and state a case made mostly of holes can support it. I guess that's okay if you don't mind constant dust ingestion and lots of fan noise that isn't impaired in the least by the container you put your parts into in order to protect them from dust and reduce noise.
  • kaidenshi - Friday, June 14, 2024 - link

    I have to agree. Having owned a NUC11 Extreme, it's like running a vacuum cleaner on your desk. I got tired of taking it apart and blowing it out every few weeks so I sold it and built a normal non-ITX/STX sized system.
  • godrilla - Friday, June 14, 2024 - link

    Cool I have a h210 case that housed a 3090 hybrid and now 4090 suprim liquid, and a Noctua D15 cooler for the 7800-x3d. FYI the 7800X3D is a must for no throttling small factor builds!
  • Kakti - Friday, June 14, 2024 - link

    This is great, I'm so happy more of these *capable* small form factor cases are being made. I'm also happy to see that Fractal Design has finally updated their selection, but what I really want is one horizontal case that nearly matches these new cases.

    I have a Fractal Design Node 605 case that I'm going to hold onto until my last breath it seems. It's absolutely perfect for an HTPC build. It can hold a full ATX motherboard, full size PSU, it easily fits my EVGA RTX 3070 (and 1060/970 before that). No need for risers or ribbon cables but they're not a deal killer, it just shows how great the 605 is. And it's nearly the same dimensions as this case if laid down:

    New Antec MiniITX Box
    -------------------------------
    Height 260mm = 10.23"/ approximately 10.5"
    Deep 424mm = 16.7" / approximately 17"
    Wide 175mm = 6.88" / approximately 7"

    FD Node 605 HTPC Case (as just measured by me, official numbers may be slightly different)
    ----------------------------------
    Height 6.5"
    Deep 13.25"/ 13.5"
    Wide 17.3" / 17.5"

    It blends in perfectly with the rest of my home theatre setup, it looksl just like am amplifer or preamp. Notcua D14 has no issues keeping the CPU cool for gaming, and I put in a mATX mobo to give some extra space for airflow. The only downside is that it's getting long in the tooth - the front inputs are USB 3.0 and Firewire 1.0 (I believe, never used it).

    Please someone make a new version, I promise there is a market for them.

    And if anyone knows of a similar case please let me know. I'm perfectly fine with the 605's size, the other Nodes are either too small, too tall or too boxy and simpy don't fit in with my audio gear. I'm even been contemplating getting a low end receiver and ripping out the internals, but at that point I may just get quotes from a CNC shop in town.

    Please someone make a new version!
  • abufrejoval - Thursday, June 27, 2024 - link

    It sure looks cute, but why would I ever want to *look* at a computer?

    For me the area where I can immediately visually focus, without too much head or body movement, is very premium real-estate. So I tend to fill it with screens, which are obviously providing content and value.

    A chassis just doesn't, so it's best somewhere as far away as possible to avoid noise and heat, yet close enough to allow manipulation or the occasional device connection or media change.

    Typically that has been towers under the table for decades, more recently even NUCs, but in shelves below the table so I don't have to bend down too far should I indeed ever need to touch them.

    I avoid that using KVMs and docks for changing inputs but also to move ports on the desktop, where again the cover minimal surface area, somewhere between keyboard and screens.

    Perhaps that also explains why stuff like RGB leds is totally beyond me and I tend to have ugliest but sturdiest cases I try to recycle as long as possible. Only the need to push far more air and Wattage has had me replace cases recently, which have largely become more holes than material.

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