Maximum PC antec RSS Feed

Antec Nine Hundred Two

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:00:11 -0500

Antec improves its flagship gamer's midtower but takes few risks

One change we appreciate: The Nine Hundred Two has a classy black-painted interior.

To quote Yogi Berra, “It’s like déjà vu all over again!” The Antec Nine Hundred Two is a refresh of Antec’s well-loved and much-imitated Nine Hundred midtower gaming chassis. And although the Nine Hundred Two does boast several refinements over its predecessor, it’s not exactly revolutionary.

First we’ll talk about what the Nine Hundred Two has in common with its predecessor. Both cases are matte black steel with plastic side windows, mesh-style front bezels, and are nearly the same size: At 19.4 x 8.6 x 18.6 inches, the Nine Hundred Two is barely a half-inch wider than the Nine Hundred and a fifth of an inch deeper.

Like the Nine Hundred, the Nine Hundred Two comes with four fans: a 20cm low-rpm Big Boy on top, and three 12cm blue LED fans—one in the rear and one on the front of each three-slot hard drive bay. Here we see some improvements on the Nine Hundred: All the fans now include blue LEDs (and the front ones have intake filters). Fan speed controllers are now mounted directly into the case, with the two front fans controlled by variable speed knobs in the front bezels and the top and rear fans controlled by switches on the case’s back plate. On the Nine Hundred, the fan controllers were ugly white and dangled loose inside the case.

The Antec Nine Hundred Two is aptly named; it's only slightly better than the fan favorite Nine Hundred.

The interior of the case is painted matte black, unlike the unfinished steel of the Nine Hundred, and the motherboard tray now features a few cable-routing cutouts and ties on the rear. Gone is the front-panel FireWire port, replaced with eSATA, which we find much more useful.

System installation is virtually identical to the Nine Hundred. As in the Nine Hundred, large videocards like the Nvidia GTX 280 stick out into the hard drive bays by about half an inch, blocking one 3.5-inch slot (out of six) per videocard. There’s simply no room.

Where the Nine Hundred Two differs from its predecessor in terms of installation, it veers towards usability. Cutouts and tie-downs on the motherboard tray, both new in the Nine Hundred Two, make cable routing easier. Drive installation, though, could be better—it’s 2009; can’t we have screwless drive bays yet? Especially egregious is hard drive installation, which requires unscrewing the eight thumbscrews that hold the hard drive case, using four long screws to install the hard drive into a vibration-damping bay, and reinstalling. That’s the opposite of screwless.

Insofar as we liked the Nine Hundred, the Nine Hundred Two is a conservative success—it mostly replicates the Nine Hundred, with a few modest improvements. But the Nine Hundred is a two-and-a-half-year-old design, and we were hoping for a little more oomph.

Antec Announces CP-850 Power Supply, New Form Factor

Andy Salisbury — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:12:15 -0600

Today Antec announced a brand spankin’ new PSU that will feature a new form factor designed specifically for their cases.

The new power supply, the CP-850, will swap over from the standard PS/2 form factor, the current standard for power supplies, in order to improve airflow, allow for better component selection and even operate quieter (or so Antec claims).

It’ll be available for $149.95 through major retailers (online and in store), and will come with a 5-year warranty

Image Credit: PC Perspective , and thanks to commenter Xtomik for the find!

Antec Skeleton

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:00:00 -0600

We have to give Antec points for bucking the mainstream: The Skeleton is a seriously cool-looking case. The motherboard rests horizontally, so the case’s footprint is much wider than that of a standard tower chassis, but it’s also shorter. The open design and sliding component tray make it easy to swap parts in and out, and installation is quick and relatively painless. The Super Big Boy LED fan, which truly is both super and big, dominates the top of the case, keeping air moving over all your components, and the open design ensures that there’s plenty of airflow. A smaller fan mounts in front of the hard drive bay for additional cooling.

Removing two spring-loaded thumbscrews lets you slide out the component tray about three quarters of the way, providing easy access to the motherboard as well as the optical and hard drives. The side panels remove easily, and there’s a sliding bay for the power supply. But screwless this case ain’t. Your Phillips head screwdriver will be a constant companion.

The open design offers no protection against liquids, pets, children, or Chex Mix. The squat proportions also work against it—there are only two 5.25-inch and two 3.5-inch bays under the motherboard, so any additional hard drives need to be mounted outside of the case, for which Antec provides four brackets. And given the open-frame design, there aren’t many solutions for elegant cable routing. We had to do some finessing to connect all our parts.

Depending on your motherboard’s layout, you may have issues with the front-panel connectors; the HD Audio ports are in the rear of our EVGA 680i board, and the Skeleton’s front-panel audio wires barely reached them. And watch out for your CPU cooler—anything more than about four inches tall will bump up against the fan cowl and prevent you from moving the tray in and out, so avoid any of the monstrously huge coolers that are so popular these days. Stock fans will work fine, and fortunately, so will our current favorite cooler, the Thermaltake DuOrb. Due to the space constraints, any water-cooling setup will have to use an external reservoir—since the Skeleton has only two 5.25-inch bays, it’s impossible to mount one internally.

Still, we love the design and portability of the Skeleton. It’s especially useful for testers and other people who, like us, swap hardware frequently. If you have plenty of desk space and don’t need to worry about errant liquids or hairballs, the Skeleton could be the bold, new case you’ve been looking for.

Antec Enters the Mobile Computing Market with Customized Laptop Parts

Paul Lilly — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:42:35 -0500

The most popular method of purchasing a notebook remains buying a prebuilt machine and calling it a day. That slaps in the face of enthusiasts who know they could do just as good of a job putting together a laptop, but there just aren't as many options to go the DIY route as there are in the desktop arena. The good news is, that list is growing.

Asus and OCZ both already offer whitebook solutions, and today Antec announced that is launching a new line of standard components for the mobile computing market. Referred to as common building blocks (CBB) and developed according to a common set of specifications initiated by Intel, the interchangeable components takes away much of the guesswork from would-be system builders hoping to go the DIY route.

"Our new line of mobile product components offers system builders for the first time the ability to configure and build laptop computers specifically for their important accounts, and to fully support them in the field," said Scott Richards, Antec senior VP. "We are proud to be the pioneer global provider of these products to the channel, helping system builders penetrate mobile computing markets that were previously closed to them."

Do you find the notion of building your own notebook appealing?

Antec Twelve Hundred

David Murphy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:25 -0500

ou will not find a more powerful air-cooled case on the market than Antec’s Twelve Hundred—not unless you strap a box fan to the side of your chassis. That’s what it would take to challenge the cooling prowess of this full-tower enclosure, which features one 20cm fan on top and five 12cm fans placed throughout the interior. These six blue LED fans are attached to individual switches that allow you to tweak the strength (and sound) of each fan to suit your needs.

While the case’s cooling is top-notch, not all of the Twelve Hundred’s features are so thoughtfully designed. The fans’ cables could stand to be longer to better utilize the case’s numerous holes and attachments for cable management. And while the Twelve Hundred comes with an additional switch to turn the 20cm fan’s light on and off, it would be nice if we could control all the lights at once. And the installation procedure for hard drives is overly complicated. You have to remove a grand total of 16 screws to insert a single drive—what ever happened to no-fuss rails?

The case has plenty of room on the inside—vertically. Larger graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s 8800 GTX, fit inside the chassis but leave little room for stringing cables along the card’s side. We would have preferred a wider case to the unusable space above the motherboard. The chassis supports three 5.25-inch devices and nine 3.5-inch drives, but we’d gladly trade two drive bays for more usable space.

We liked the Antec Nine Hundred, but we expected the Twelve Hundred to improve on its predecessor’s shortcomings—such as the narrow body and overly complex drive installation. Antec has done nothing to fix these issues. We could excuse these things in the Nine Hundred because its exceptional cooling-based design impressed us greatly. We’re now at the design’s second iteration, and the Twelve Hundred offers little above and beyond what we’ve already seen. This isn’t an improvement; it’s a resize.

Antec Three Hundred

David Murphy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:36:00 -0500

Spinning the Three Hundred's fans at high speed brings to mind the hurricane-like din of its Nine Hundred sibling.

We find ourselves wondering how a company like NZXT can do a better job of creating a budget version of Antec’s gamer line than Antec itself. That’s not to say the Three Hundred is a bad case; it just has little that’s special.

Case in point: You get no fancy lighting effects, no side panel window, and no screwless way to mount six hard drives or three 5.25-inch devices. The case barely fits an 8800 GTX card as is—a problem we also encountered with its greater sibling, Antec’s Nine Hundred chassis.

The case comes with a 12cm and a 14cm fan around the motherboard area, and both use Antec’s familiar switch for setting the fans to high, medium, or low speeds. We’re curious why the normally fan-crazy Antec opted out of including fans for the case’s six hard drive bays—there’s space for two 12cm fans, you just have to bring your own.

The case’s cables wrapped around to our motherboard inputs quite nicely, although there’s not much to connect: Front-panel support on the Three Hundred consists of a mere two USB slots and standard audio jacks. That’s pretty spartan, given the Tempest’s eSATA and FireWire options.

But it fits the murky profile of this nondescript case. Where other chassis in this feature have tried and fallen short, Antec quit at the starting line by offering little more in the Three Hundred than what you can find in a $20 enclosure.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

Antec P190

Dave Murphy — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:26:38 -0500

If all the world’s computer cases were playing a game of Battlefield, then the Antec P190 would surely be one of the tanks. This thing is a monstrosity of a midtower, though functionally, it differs very little from everything else in Antec’s P-series of cases. However, this case does add improvements we’ve been dreaming of since we first laid our hands on the P180. The P190 comes with that extra bit of horizontal space that makes all the difference in the world if you rock extra-long videocards. Previous models were just too cramped—even if you weren’t using a water-cooling system.

We love how two in-tandem power supplies are included in this beast: a 650W device for your motherboard and cards, and a 550W one for everything else. That said, cable management is still an issue with the P190. To its credit, Antec continues to try to find better ways to route or otherwise minimize the impact of the snarl of cables shooting out of the southern chunk of the case. But the design still feels wrong, especially when you have to route your cables through a tiny rabbit hole, over a fan, and back through a hole just to get to the lower drive bay.

t least the case’s airflow is totally unrestricted, thanks to the whirling power of four 12cm fans and a beastly 20cm side-panel fan. They’re all tri-speed fans too; perfect for the air enthusiast who’s trying to keep his hearing intact.

First-look: Antec's P182SE case

David Murphy — Thu, 17 May 2007 17:30:57 -0500

[to the tune of "American Pie"]
A long, long time ago... / We can still remember / How that P182 used to make us smile.

But now what really makes us squeal / is this case covered in stainless steel / so this blog post, we are forced to compile...

Seriousness aside, Antec has set a new level in exterior achievement with its P182SE case. And I say that as I do just because, as one might expect, the 182SE is nothing more than Antec's old P182 case with some steel attached to the side. The Millennium Falcon approach to case design, if you will. But just as everyone loves that ol' hunk of bolts, I do enjoy the shiny addition to this pleasantly designed case.

The P182SE also doubles as an awesome 7-Eleven-style security mirror.

Just as a matter of business, Josh Norem reviewed Antec's P180 case in the 2005 Holiday issue. And while the 182SE obviously differs from said P180 case, I'm talking about minutia here; for all intents and purposes, the insides of the 182SE are damned near identical to the 180. With that said, Josh gave the case a 7. He thought building a system inside the case "requires extensive and aggravating cable routing through the cramped compartmentalized interior." Just wanted to get that out there, so you can have a nice, neutral path when reading the rest of this post.

Seeing as I didn't actually install a system in said case, because this isn't a straight-up review, I can't really speak to Josh's concerns over the potentially cramped interior of said chassis. The exterior, however, is decidedly beautiful. Provided you don't ever touch it with anything other than a feather duster; after getting poked and prodded by various coworkers, the 182SE on my desk is a bit smudged up with fingerprints. Antec goes to great lengths to include a little polishing rag, but it just isn't the same. When you're picking this case up from wherever you intend to buy it from, grab a few bottles of Windex as well.

And again, this isn't a review, but I definitely wanted to make a note of Antec's front-panel design. Aka: brilliance in a box. I would like all the case developers that read this blog to sit back and take a minute to admire what Antec's done. First off, the door is nicely weighted -- it's not some flimsy pieces of plastic, nor is it some irritating, heavy-as-heck, swinging gate. It's pleasant. And opening said door reveals a nice, flat front. Instead of having to open the case and remove screws, or pop off the front panel entirely, you can just pull out the drive bay covers right there. Three-second job. Also cool, the front fan covers are attached via one of those little press-in-pop-out devices, which makes accessing (and cleaning!) the fan filters an absolute... wait for it... wait for it... breeze!

If we gave awards for "easiest way to remove dust ever," the P182SE would be walking away with the gold.

The back of the case is fairly ho-hum, save for two little rubberized water cooling holes. It's great to see more cases nowadays including these little guys, and I'm glad Antec's following suit. Shown here:

I'm in your case, makin' room for your 'tubes.

And while I'm on the topic of conveniences, I enjoy the P182SE's interior design. Like I said, I can't speak to the potential constraints involved when sticking a system in the case -- here's hoping your 8800 GTX doesn't create a giant wall between the top and bottom halves of your rig. But the hard drive bays are a real gem. Grab the ring, pull 'em out, and stuff your storage on the rubberized mounting holes. And if you're worried about keeping them cool, well as you can see (and somewhat-see), there's a fan in front of the power supply for the lower bays, and you can mount a fan in front of the drives for the upper. Neat.

Antec wins +42 bonus points for the beautiful paint job on the interior of the case. We do hate the standard "gun metal gray" color of typical cases.

Unfortunately, I hope your power supply is the size of a guinea pig, because that's about all the room you'll likely have to work with in the bottom of the case. Unless you remove the cooling fan, of course. But the prospect of that saddens me greatly; fans are you friends.

Seriously. You could really fit a guinea pig in here. A free Maximum PC t-shirt to the first person who mods up a little guinea habitat in this case.

So that's that. The P182SE. Seriously, the fanciest part is the exterior, which I'm quite a fan of; I've always wanted to have a mirror at my desk, and now I have achieved that dream. Were I not flying to Chicago this weekend, I would totally build up a system in this case so I could blog about how awesome/crappy it is come Monday. Alas, though. That will have to wait. But like I said, if you enjoyed earlier versions of Antec's P-number-number-number line, you'll find striking similarities with this new version.

Can you take emo MySpace pictures on the P182SE? You bet.