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Antec P180


Date
: 03/9/06 – 05:17:59 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer: Antec Inc.

Price: $120 – $150 average

Antec has been a major player in the DIY computer market for as long as I can remember, and thats a long time! Since its inception in 1986 Antec has thoughtfully and carefully updated and upgraded its product line. I purchased my first Antec case, which came with a power supply, in 1998; eight years later Im still using it. Obviously Ive had a good experience with the case and continue to have a fondness for their products. Since that first purchase Ive added a number of additional Antec products to my hardware collection.

Over the years, while many companies started to design cases with more bling, adding components that do not really add to system stability, airflow, or quietness, Antec held the high ground, refusing to embellish their cases clean lines and workmanlike functionality. Continuing along the same lines but submitting arguably their most progressive design so far, the P180 case, a striking hybrid aluminum mid-tower, the Antec P180 is here for review.

Page 2 : Package

The P180 comes in a big, heavy package. (Simon can attest to this as he managed to carry the thing for a few kilometers). The case itself is very well protected by cardboard-lined, Styrofoam packing and the aluminum sides are covered with plastic sheeting. The whole case itself is enveloped in a cardboard sleeve. There is even a strip of Styrofoam behind the front door for even more protection.

Inside the case there is a box that contains a standard assortment of screws, spare standoffs, and keys. Including the ten page manual everything is here to assist in building your case.

Page 3 : Specs & Features

The specs as theyre listed on the Antec website:

The key features listed on the Antec website:

Page 4 : Exterior

The first word that comes into my mind when I see the P180 is austere. Very clean lines are virtually uninterrupted over the entire surface of the case. The only exceptions are the mesh fan cage on the top, rear of the unit and the small cutout area of the door to allow access to the multimedia ports. Just behind the façade there is a strip on either side that allows for airflow into the case. Beyond these few embellishments youre left with brushed aluminum surfaces framed in black. Given that black and silver seem to be the most popular colours used in mice, keyboards, monitors, and other peripherals, this case will look slick with most modern setups. Each side of the case is a three layer composite made up of a layer of plastic sandwiched between two layers of aluminum. On the case I received, there is a slight bulge on the left, rear panel where the outer aluminum layer has marginally separated from the plastic layer. It's not visually noticeable at a glance, but I felt it should be noted.

Page 5 : Interior

While the exterior of the case may be striking, the star of the show is the interior. Here, your world is turned upside down and compartmentalized. Despite the somewhat jarring first impression, its clear that Antec have thought about the interior of the case and for the most part have achieved a very functional space. Much has been written regarding the questionably functional VGA cooler bracket, so rather than beat a dead horse here, Ill just say that the item is likely best removed, the only penalty youll suffer is losing the drive rail storage that attaches to the outer side. I will have a bit more to say in the installation section.

Leaving the aforementioned aside, the remaining interior of the case is really quite spectacular, especially the slick hard drive cages. Both cages have tabbed pull-rings for easy removal. The lower cage has silicone grommets for mounting the hard drives in a vertical orientation while the upper cage utilizes horizontal drive trays. The trays also feature silicon grommets to attach to the bottom of the drives. At the rear of the upper tray there resides a small tool chest; its a nifty feature but Im not sure how often Id access it given its location. Looking at the area as a whole, probably the most clever design feature of the case is the lower chamber. When mounting hard drives in the lower drive cage, in conjunction with the power supply and extra thick 120mm fan, the whole lower chamber becomes essentially a wind tunnel, sucking cool air in the front of the case, over the hard drives, and then exhausting the hot air out of the back of the power supply. Its quite an elegant solution for cooling the drives, while at the same time, contributing next to no additional heat the upper chamber where the rest of the components live. The slight downside to this design is it requires all of the power supply cables to be run through to the upper chamber. Ill discuss this more in the installation portion of the review.

There is nothing genuinely unique about the upper chamber. The motherboard area is clear of obstructions and comes with standard ATX stand-offs. In this standard orientation, the video card, frequently the hottest component in a modern system, resides below the CPU and therefore possibly adds to the workload a CPU cooling solution has to perform. Antecs solution to this is the strategic placement of two 120mm fans at the upper rear and rear top of the case. An optional fan can be mounted at the middle front of the case as well. Given the layout of the upper chamber, the only components that dont get any direct airflow are the ones that reside in the 5 ½ mounts. Although optical drives can get pretty warm, this seems like the most sensible trade-off given the desired size of this, already long, case.

There are strips of dampening material that run along any surface that will come into contact with the outer panels. There is no internal speaker in the case. All-in-all the P180 is a very tidy case; we'll see how these features come together during installation.

Page 6 : Installation

I've built hundreds, possibly thousands of computers, but I must confess that building one with the P180 was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Working with the case, was for me an exercise in one frustration after another. This isn't to say this was all Antec's fault, granted, some of the issues could have been avoided had I been more diligent and had measured all of the cable lengths, but in all my times, I've never, even in huge, full-tower boxes, found I've been unable to route a cable to make it fit. Given that experience, I think I should be given a bit of slack for not measuring my power supply cables first. While I usually put together a case in about an hour, I had to spend nearly four hours to get things right with the P180.

Things started off quite positively. I really liked the lower drive cage, the silicone grommets were perfect and the supplied screws were easy to use and only required thumb tightening to apply sufficient grip. The cage itself slides into the case beautifully and smoothly. With that done, I moved to install the power supply.

Here's where things started to go downhill for me. I decided I'd use the very quiet Hiper unit I reviewed a number of months ago. For those of you that didn't read that review, the unit has terrific modular cables that attach with bomb-proof aviation-style connectors. With the extended length of the connectors, the unit was not going to fit. Never being one to say never, I decided to switch the thick bottom fan with the fan that is attached to the top of the unit. I figured this was a pretty safe trade off as the power supply has substantial cooling on its own and with the exception of the thickness, both fans were 120mm, tri-cool fans. After switching the fans, I found the lower fan mount was somewhat loose and although there was no visible damage, I was unable to get it to securely lock it into place again. It's easy enough to wedge into place, but a somewhat more robust solution seems necessary in any future revision of the case. The next thing I needed to do was unscrew the power supply cage. The two screws on the front side were easy enough to remove, but I needed to also unscrew three additional screws to remove the other side panel to access the remaining two screws of the cage. Once removed I noticed that along every interior surface there was a strip of silicon to dampen any vibration; nice touch. The only problem was that I couldn't really see a need for the cage. With the power supply seated on two silicone strips along the bottom and firmly screwed to the back of the unit with four screws, I failed to see the need to use an additional four screws to further retain the power supply. After pondering this a little longer, to make sure I wasn't missing the value, I proceeded without the cage. I was able to get the power supply into place (barely) with the thinner fan and proceeded to install the optical and floppy (yes, I know, I know) drives.

With a variety of nifty tool-less rail designs and Antec's own silicone grommet solutions, I'm not really sure I understand why Antec chose to use standard, plastic and metal, screw-in rails. They work well enough I guess, but given the rest of the package, this solution seems kind of retro. In addition to the rails, I was also disappointed to see the standard metal blocking plates that you have to twist and twist to remove before being able to mount the drives. I have an old Addtronics case where these plates screwed on, I always thought that was a classy touch, but frankly, I'd be just as happy to see cases shipped without any plates blocking the drive bays. Once the plates were removed, the drives all were put in place quite easily and sat flush without fuss.

It was time to mount the motherboard. First, you have to remove the VGA air duct, the question is how? The answer: unscrewing everything you can until the thing finally comes off. I had to unscrew twelve screws before I was able to remove the thing. Four of those screws were to actually open the unit, but as it turns out, you don't need to do that, it's just that I didn't know where else the unit might be attached, so I had to check. The duct is one bizarre item. With the duct finally removed, there is enough room in the upper chamber to mount the motherboard. Thankfully that was a painless event, the holes lined up to the mounts and everything screwed down nicely. The add-in cards also installed well, there was no bowing of fidgety screw placements along the AGP/PCI retention spots, once the seven screws holding down the back plate covers were unscrewed and the plates were removed. While everything fit well, again, I think that Antec could have implemented a tool-less solution for card retention.

Now it was time to route cables and make everything neat. To start, it should be noted, that there is a slightly sharp edge that runs along the lower edge of the shelf that separates the compartments. The area is a pretty good place to tuck cables, so if you're using it, be careful not to slide your fingers along the sharp edge or you might get cut. And so began the cable hell. Between the two compartments there is a sliding, plastic, cable routing/retention device. All the cables from the power supply need to pass up and through this device to get to the upper chamber. To access the lower hard drive cage you then also need to route the power and SATA cables back down into the front of the unit to pass over the middle fan. Once the cables have been threaded through the mechanism, you can slide the plates to bunch the cables. This serves two purposes, first it maintains the integrity of the lower chambers air flow isolation, and also keeps the cables away from the exposed blades of the central fan. If I was amending the design of this case, I'd opt to make it about an inch longer and reposition the fan compartment to accommodate a longer power supply and provide a wire-formed fan grill on both sides of the lower fan chamber.

It has been addressed elsewhere on the web that with the placement of the power supply in the bottom of the case, there may be issues running your ATX cable to the connector on the motherboard. Luckily with my Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard, I was able to reach the connector without issue. The second last power cable I attempted to seat was the 12V ATX. It didn't reach. On the motherboard, the connector is at the very top and no routing either under, or around the add-in cards allowed for this cable to stretch long enough to fit. Luckily for me I have lots of gear hanging about and was able to find a power supply in another computer that had a 12V cable that appeared like it was going to be long enough. For the average person though, this would have been a serious hassle, and would mean having to either make or buy an extension cable, or even more extreme, having to purchase a new power supply. The worst part of that plan though, is that it is extremely hard to find out just how long the cables on a power supply are. Even Antec themselves don't publish the length of the cables on their units. A quick look around the Internet indicates that it's very hard to find the cable length of any power supply units. So what is a consumer to do? I guess you'd have to estimate the length you're going to need and actually shop at a retailer that allows you to open boxes and measure cables. Clearly that is a hassle, especially if you're somewhere that doesn't have access to a variety of computer shops or shops online. I'd like to suggest to Antec that they publish the cable length of their power supply cables, and perhaps even list all power supplies and corresponding motherboards that successfully fit within the P180. In the end, only one power supply I had, an Antec TruePower 330 watt unit, had a long enough 12V cable. Two other Antec units did not have a long enough 12V cable. You need about 24 inches of length to be sure that you'll be able to reach the furthest areas of the case.

After meticulously removing the Hiper power supply, removing all of the PCI/AGP cards (so that I could run the 12V cable up behind the front of the slots), and replacing it with the other Antec unit, I was finally able to complete the initial installation of the case. I say initial because when I went to power on the unit for the first time, nothing happened. It seems that in replacing the power supply I had knocked a few of the front panel connectors and as a result the power button wasn't connected. After removing a bunch of stuff in the interior so that I could get my hand in to replace the connectors, and subsequently replacing the items, I finally was able to close the case up and start using the thing.

Page 7 : Operation, Thermals, and Acoustics

While I was trying to regain a steady mind after my harrowing installation I noticed the blue power LED, but where was the drive activity light? I swung back the double-hinged door (I didn't mention this earlier, but the door opens with a double-hinge so that you can lay the door flat against the side of the case, a somewhat handy feature) to find that the drive activity LED is hidden by the door. It seems to me that it would have made more sense to place the drive activity light so that it was visible when the door was closed. I'm pretty sure that even without a dedicated power LED that I'd know if the unit was on by either the drive activity light, or the sound of fans. Which is the perfect segue into the next item.

Is it silent? No. Is it quiet? Sort of. When everything is sealed up, the case, in its default state has a quiet, though slightly high-pitched whooshing sound signature. I should note that I replaced my Arctic Cooling VGA cooler with the still quiet, stock ATI X800XT HSF unit and used the stock AMD 3800+ X2 HSF unit during this review. When comparing the sound output of the completed P180 with the previous home of the components, another three fan plus power supply configuration, I'd say the P180 is quieter, but not by much. Due to the different characteristics of sound, I attempted to record a before and after clip, but I was unhappy with the resulting audio files, so I've excluded them from the review, so you'll just have to take my word for it. In conclusion, regarding the sound, you'll likely have some work to do, choosing after-market cooling solutions, and carefully adjusting fan speeds to achieve a nearly noise-free computing environment.

For those of you that do plan on mounting a 3 ½ inch drive, it's worth noting that the bay is placed about two thirds of the way down the case and requires a fair bit of hunching over to get down to use it if the case is standing on the floor.

Along with noise, the other major factor to consider is heat. With my previous setup my average idle temperature was 35C for the CPU and 21C for the motherboard, and under load it runs on average at 49C and 26C. The processor was operating at stock voltage and frequency. It takes about 20 minutes for the computer to return to its idle temperature after extended load. With the P180, idle is 35C for the CPU and 29C for the motherboard. While under load the CPU averages 53C and the motherboard runs about 31C. The P180 also takes about 20 minutes to return to idle temperature. The room temperature during the testing was a reasonably steady 22C.

Frankly, Im vexed about the 8 degree difference between the two cases. While it would seem the CPU cooler is doing most of the work for the CPU, the case fans arent moving as much air within the case as in the previous setup. Running the fans at full speed, switching the orientation, or otherwise altering the interior arrangement had no real effect on the average temperatures. Surprisingly, even adding an additional 120mm front case fan to the P180 had no significant effect. It would seem the P180 is not a star performer in the cooling department.

Page 8 : Conclusion

Living with this case is certainly a whole lot easier than it was working with it though. The case, to my eye, looks terrific. I even like the top fan cover well enough. I think the hard drive cages are excellent. I like the included tri-cool fans, and the case is quite quiet.

I would love to see Antec address a number of the issues I raised with a revision of the P180. The list of updates Id like to see are: more space/length for the power supply or perhaps even including a power supply with appropriate cables, fan guards in the lower chamber, cable pass-thru under the lower chamber fan, silicon grommetted optical drive bay, externally visible drive activity LED, tool-less add-in card retention mechanism, no internal optical drive cover plates, and perhaps a simple side-mounted fan rather than the internal VGA duct. I suppose thats quite a laundry list.

From the delivery forward it has been a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows. I think the strengths of the P180 outweigh the many weaknesses, but only by a small margin. And when you factor in cost and the need for a power supply with specific cable lengths I think you need to really consider whether this is the case for you. But if you know all of the information going in and are shopping for an attractive, quality case, I think the P180 should be on your short list of high-end enclosures.

Advantages:

Appealing design
Quality build
Excellent hard drive cages
Reasonably quiet

Disadvantages:

Power supply/motherboard combo may require very long power supply cables
Case temps run warm even with additional front fan
Hard drive LED hidden behind door
Expensive

Overclockers Online would like to thank Antec for making this review possible.