Antec Plus 1080 AMG
Dec 28th, 2002 | By Archive
Antec Plus 1080 AMG
Date
: 12/28/02 – 01:41:27 AM
Author
:
Category
: Cases
Page 1 : Introduction
Manufacturer: Antec
Price: $140
Introduction
A good computer case is what makes the base of a solid computer system. Many consumers forget about this (just like they forget to get a good monitor, keyboard and mouse) and end up with a crappy case featuring sharp edges, a rotten power supply, bad cooling arrangements and no extra features what so ever. O² only brings you reviews of cases that are worthy of your hard earned cash and this time, I am taking a closer look at a brand that hasn't been in our labs before: Antec.
Antec, Inc was founded back in 1986 and headquartered in Fremont, California, USA. As you may or may not know, they have become quite an established manufacturer in the enclosure technology meaning they build cases of a very high quality level. Besides their popular cases, Antec also produces power supplies to go with their cases (or to get separately) as well as cooling fans (O² reviewed their SmartFans a while ago). The Antec gamma has several series of cases like the Performance Series, the Rackmount series and of last but not least the Solution series (cost effective ones).
Overclockers Online was able to score their top of the line
Performance Plus AMG
case, the
Plus1080AMG
. The name of this case somehow reminds me of Mercedes sport cars (AMG is the house-tuner of Mercedes-Benz in case you didn't know that) and thus my expectations for this server case where pretty high … Interested to see if it was able to meet my demands? Let's get busy!
Page 2 : Specifications
Specifications
As usual, I'll start out with a speclist directly from the manufacturer website:
Case Type
- SOHO File Server
Case Dimensions
- 20.6" x 8.1" x 18.6" (H) x (W) x (D)
Drive Bays
- Total: 10
- Front Accessible: 4 x 5.25", 2 x 3.5"
- Internal: 4 x 3.5"
Expansion Slots
-Total: 7
Cooling System
- 5 x 80mm fans:
- 1 front (Optional)
- 2 rear (Standard)
- 1 HDD (Optional)
- 1 Side Panel (Standard)
Power Supply
- 430W TruePower ATX12V True430
Material
- 1.0mm SECC
Net Weight
- 31.7 lbs.
Gross Weight
- 35.5 lbs.
Motherboards
- Fits standard ATX / Xeon (PIII Core) / Pentium 4
Special Features
- 2 front USB ports, 1 front IEEE1394 (Firewire) port
- Swing-out side panel with handle
- Quick-release drive bays with release lever
- Snap-in fan mounts
- Large front panel vent with washable air filter
Package Includes
- 1 Tower Case
- 1 430 Watt ATX TruePower (True 430) – installed
- 1 power cord
- 2 case fans
- 1 set of screws and motherboard standoffs
- 1 complete set of drive rails ( 6 rails )
- 1 Installation manual
Antec categorizes the Plus1080AMG as a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) Fileserver, meaning it should be able to take a lot of hardware and offer enough cooling and power needs to keep everything up and running. Judging by the case dimensions, they are not wrong with their server category: it measures 20.6"x8.1"x18.6" (HxWxD) making it a pretty large case (not the largest but still …).
In my humble opinion, a good case (and especially one that is aimed towards a fileserver use) should have a lot of expansion room available! Luckily, Antec agrees with me on this matter and has fitted it with a total of 10 drive bays. On the outside, there are four 5.25" bays and two 3.5" bays to accommodate cd-rom's, cd-rewriters, zip drives, rheobusses, baybusses, … or anything else you might want to fit in there. Next to that, there are another four 3.5" bays on the inside of the case, ready to take on two pair of hard drives. Note that the 3.5" bays (both external and internal) can be removed and installed again by using a quick release handle!! … No more hassles with screw drivers).
With all that hardware on the inside, you'll need good cooling features to keep everything safe and cool! Again, this case meets your needs and comes with a total of five 80mm fan spots. In the bottom front of the case, you can install one fan to draw in cool air (with a nice filter to keep dust out of the case preinstalled). Another 80mm fan can be installed right in front of the harddrive rack, which I applaud as I like my drives which house my precious data to remain cool at all time. Of course, all the incoming air needs a way out! So there are two 80mm fans preinstalled next to the motherboard ports (at the same height of the CPU's) in order to draw hot air out of the case, away from the hardware. The fifth fan is sitting in the side panel, drawing cool air in and blowing it over the add-on cards. This "blowhole" is an excellent way to keep your AGP card cool and allow you to overclock it even more. The blowhole is hexagon shaped, with hexagon holes that serves as fan grill making the entire setup look pretty sweet! Note that all fans are installed without the use of tools or screws! Instead you use the included fan mounts in which you just "click" the fans … Great system!
Besides good cooling, one also needs a good power feed in order to keep the system stable (indeed, an underpowered PSU can cause instability …). The Plus1080AMG comes with Antec's very own True430 PSU, also known as the "True Power PSU" line. This baby is rated at 430W and is an excellent choice for a heavy duty system. If you browse forums as often as I do, you encounter many problems with PSU's. The True Power PSU is one model that seems to enjoy positive feedback from most consumers, and after having used one myself, I happily join the True Power crowd. This PSU delivers a very steady power feed to my system (rest assured it was stressed as you will see in the "testing" part of the review) and is well designed: it comes with two 80mm fans (one at the bottom to suck hot air in, one at the back to blow the air out … just like the Enermax PSU's), enough molex connectors to hook up hard drives, cd units and more, an ATX12V line for P4 boards (and some duallies), a nice ATX cable which is nicely coated with black fabric to keep things clean and last but not least, this PSU has two "fan-only" molex connectors. Why are they fan only? Well, they are pre-modded so they only supply a 7V output instead of the regular 12V output, making your fans spin slower and resulting in less noise.
Having covered the inside of the Plus1080AMG, let's take a closer look at the outside part. The entire case is made out of 1.0mm SECC, making it a high quality case and reducing noise as well. Because of this 1.0mm thick layer, the weight goes up as well: 31.7lbs net weight and 35.5lbs gross weight! Can you say "powerlifting"? ;). A case this heavy needs a solid base to rest upon: it comes with four rotatable feet to ensure a rockstable setup.
The front bezel looks very slick with a horizontal grill in the bottom half (behind this are the two 80mm fans and the dust filter) and a nice door in the upper half. Behind this (lockable) door, you'll find the external drive bays, the chrome power button and the reset button (which is too small in my opinion) and of course the necessary LED's. Antec fits this case with a total of four LED's: a green one to reveal power status and three orange ones for hard drive activity: I hooked up one to the motherboard and two of them to my RAID controller and since I have a total of three hard drives in this box, I get one LED per drive … sweetness!
One last feature I want to point out about the front bezel, is the two USB2.0 ports and the FireWire port which are hidden behind a small door in the bottom part. You just hook these up to the motherboard and "voila" … instant USB and FireWire access!
With that out of the way, the sidepanel needs our attention. As I already mentioned, it comes with a preinstalled blowhole to cool down your video card (and other add-on cards), but that's not the only feature! The sidepanel also features a lever to easily unlock the sidepanel and swing it open for easy access to the internal part. If needed, you can also use screws to secure it (like you do with other cases) but I prefer just to use the lever as it keeps the panel firmly in place and makes it easy to access the rig. If you like, you van also lock this panel with a key (just like the front door) to keep unauthorized personnel (read: sisters, brothers, friends, parents and perhaps that pet monkey) away from the computer system :).
Now that I have covered pretty much all features about the Plus1080AMG, I believe it's time to give this case a run for its money …
Page 3 : Testing
Testing
The past few weeks, I was planning on putting together a new rig for myself. I knew I wanted a lot of storage room, several 5.25" units and possibly even a dual CPU motherboard and fitting processors. When the Antec 1080AMG case showed up on my doorstep, I knew I had found the ideal housing for this nifty project so I was on my way … Let's see what I had listed to fill up the case shall we?
- Motherboard: IWill MPX2 AMD760MPX
- CPU: 2 x AMD AthlonMP 2000+ (would need some overclocking ;))
- Memory: Crucial 1GB PC2100 ECC Registered DDR
- Hard Drive(s): 1 x IBM 30GB 7200RPM, 1 x IBM 34GB 7200RPM and 1 x Western Digital 45GB 7200RPM
- Video: ATI Radeon 8500LE 64MB
- Sound: Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! Platinum with matching LiveDrive!
- CD-ROM: Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM, AOpen 32x/12x/48x CD-ReWriter
- Various: IOmega IDE Zip 250
- RAID: High Point RocketRAID 404
- NIC: Accton 10/100mbit
- O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Professional + SP1 + Latest Drivers
As you can see, the case would be filled up to the top with pretty sweet hardware that would make an excellent workstation for myself. The power supply would get a good test with all of the above up and running and the cooling would be thoroughly tortured as well in order to keep everything nice and cool!
First thing I did, was mount those gold colored mounting points for the motherboard onto the backpanel. Once that was completed, I carefully installed the IWill MPX2 dual AMD motherboard into place, which is a pretty large motherboard as a matter of fact! Next on the list was putting the CPU's in the sockets and of course installing the heatsinks to keep them safe at all situations: I decided to go with a pair of Thermalright SLK-800's kindly supplied by 2Cooltek and a pair of 80mm Delta fans (7000RPM each) hooked up to those 7V molex connectors (otherwise I would go deaf in a few days). After I plugged in all four memory stick, I easily removed the hard drive rack thanks to the lever system and I went on installing the drives into place. The 5.25" units are installed using a drive rail system, which allows you to quickly remove and replace them in case of an emergency! The last thing left to do was installing the add-on cards and hooking up the power lines to the motherboard … After that was done, the case was closed and I was ready to press the power button.
As expected, the system posted just fine without making too much noise (with all those fans I thought I would be sitting next to a 747 Jumbo Jet but that is not the case at all …), in fact the only noise you can hear is the air flowing through! Quickly after setting up the BIOS, I was installing Windows XP and about two hours later the system was totally setup and running like a charm. With all this hardware hooked up to the PSU, I was eager to launch Motherboard Monitor and find out if it could handle the load. After putting a full load on the system by running Sisoft Burn-In wizard along with RC5 and Super PI, the power lines barely moved and every readout was rockstable!! Way to go Antec with their True Power PSU!
Page 4 : Conclusion
Conclusion
As this was my first time review of an Antec case, I was not sure of what to expect from this manufacturer. After having tested their Plus1080AMG SOHO Fileserver case, I must admit that they have a new supporter on their team as I am totally digging this case! It is made with an eye for quality and frankly, it shows: the finishing of the painting, the rounded edges, all the extra features, the quick-release hdd-racks, the lever controlled side panel, the cooling features and of course the excellent TruePower power supply makes the Plus1080AMG one great case. The only things that bothered me about it is the non-existing removable motherboard tray and the tiny reset button (now if you have a stable system who needs it … but still ;)). Apart from those two remarks, this case has it all and has become one of my all-time favorite computer housings! Therefore, I happily reward Antec with the one and only O² POWER Award!
Good
- High quality level
- Cooling
- TruePower PSU
- No tool design
Bad
- Tiny reset button
- Non-removable motherboard tray