Cheaper & Better? Montech Air 1000 Lite ATX Case Review

Performance Evaluation

We loaded up the Air 1000 Lite with an overclocked 3700X on a 2x120mm closed loop liquid cooler, and an RTX 2070 graphics card, for full-load stress testing.

System Configuration
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: 8 cores/ 16 threads, 32MB L3 Cache O/C to 4.20 GHz (42x 100 MHz) at 1.3625 V Core
CPU Cooler	Fractal Design Celsius S24 2x 120mm Closed-Loop Liquid Cooler
Motherboard	MSI X570 Ace: AMD X570, Socket AM4
RAM	PNY XLR8 MD32GK2D4320016XR: 2x 16GB DDR4-3200 T-Force Vulcan Z TLZGD416G3200HC16CDC0 DDR4-3200
Graphics	Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming OC 8G: GeForce RTX 2070 1815 MHz GPU, GDDR6-14000, Maximum Fan When Listed
Hard Drives	Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB NVMe SSD
Sound	Integrated HD Audio
Network	Integrated Gigabit Networking
Power	Corsair AX860i: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Platinum
Test Configuration
Load Software	AIDA 64 Engineer Version 6.00.5100, Stress CPU, FPU, Cache, GPU
H/W Monitoring	HWiNFO64 v6.28-4200
SPL Monitoring	Galaxy CM-140 SPL Meter: Tested at 1/4 m, corrected to 1 m (-12 dB)

The Air 1000 Lite offers excellent mounting space for our full ATX configuration, but the cable connectors of our modular power supply simply could get past the folded-back lip on the lower drive cage. Given the choice of moving it forward or omitting it, we chose the later.

Our components look great even without any additional case lighting, though lighted DRAM might have also fit in nicely.

The Air 1000 Lite’s relatively open front and dual intakes make its temperatures look particularly good at full fans, though the old Air X ARGB had a lower GPU temperature.

That open front does terrible things to noise levels at 100% fans, though we recall that cooling performance wasn’t so bad at the automatic fan setting where it shines.

The Air 100 Lite has the best cooling to noise ratio at auto fans, and the second worst cooling to noise ratio at full fans. We’d say pick your poison, but we always let our systems manage fan speed, and we’d have a hard time tolerating a machine that produced this much max RPM ruckus if we had to use it that way.

Pros:	Cons:
Superior dust filter access. Provides excellent airflow. Great cooling to noise ratio in auto fan mode. Includes full set of screwed-in slot covers.	Only seven expansion slots (Air 900 ARGB has eight). High noise at max fans. Cramped quarter surround lower drive cage.
The Verdict:
Great airflow and easy dust filter access make the Air 1000 Lite an excellent value to buyers who despite case lighting.

One thing we should note is that while the Air X ARGB is currently $80 and the Air 900 ARGB $74, the Air 1000 Lite is only $70. The Air 1000 Lite provides superior dust filter access when compared to either of those models, and buyers who don’t like RGB won’t care that it’s missing the $10 to $20 in lighting features that Montech’s other models have. We’ll reiterate its superior dust filter access to those who don’t want RGB as we give it our stamp of approval.