Ad Terras Per Aspera

I was in the market for a new case. My last one, some no-name cramped little tower was nearing ten years old, and couldn’t handle modern parts anymore without severe cooling problems, and it couldn’t even fit a front case fan properly without vibrating no matter what fan I used; not only that, it didn’t dampen noise from anything in the case.

I decided I wanted a case that was elegant, black, made of heavy steel, and designed to be dead quiet. I decided on the Antec P180B. This case is the kind of case Darth Vader would buy. This is the kind of case that would find itself at home next to a Bugatti Veyron. In 2001, this case is what they found floating in space near Saturn. This case makes both HAL and Sharon Apple envious.

This case is now quietly running under my desk as I write this article. Not only is it running silent, its running cool. Antec really designed a winner this time; I mean, you wouldn’t think it would be possible to obsess about a case, but this case should not hold parts… it should be placed on a pedestal and worshiped.

And now, the unboxing.

Newegg shipped the case to me in it’s retail box, with no outer box. The UPS guy was suitably punished for getting whatever the hell he got on the outside of the box (you can see it bleed through in a couple spots), because he had to carry this titan of a case, this Stealth Bomber of a Goddess, to my door from his truck; remember, people, the case weighs a good 40 pounds.

They put those white cardboard end caps to keep the thick packing foam (its almost a rubbery substance instead of Styrofoam) from scuffing the case. The shiny look of the case isn’t the case at all, but a Saran Wrap like material produced by Daubert Cromwell called ProtekWrap that static clings to the metal to prevent it from corroding. I will not be taking this off the side panels in any of these photos, as I didn’t want to scratch or get finger prints on the case while building it. The side panels look like the front, a sort of black brushed metal look, it’s really classy.

You can see the back panel, the top fan, and the front case door still wrapped in ProtekWrap in these shots.

The front panel unwrapped: two USB plugs, a Firewire plug, a microphone in jack, and a headphone out jack. Notice: If you own a Soundblaster, Creative Labs has screwed you as Soundblasters do not have the standard plug that these audio jacks use, so don’t expect these to plug into Creative Labs cards; the Firewire plug however is not effected and works fine.

You can also see the inside of the case, and a close up of the sound proofing on the door and the two thumb screws that hold the panel on.

Here, you can see these holes allow you to push a plug into the case from the outside (or from the inside to the outside) and securely hold it. In the middle photo, you can see the speed switches for the top and back fans. In the right photo, you can see part of the box that holds the power supply, including buffers to prevent vibration.

The three drive bays. The drive bays at the top and in the middle use drive rails, which make it easy to insert and remove drives. The bottom drive bay requires you to slide the drive cage out and screw the drives to the cage (buffered with silicon grommets). The bottom drive bay has a cardboard box stuffed in it right now, and you can also see the rest of the PSU box and lower chamber fan.

The PSU box prevents vibrations from noisy PSUs from transferring to the rest of the case. The box fits very tightly over PSUs (almost to the point that removable top section bows out when you fit it over the PSU) by design. It may take a little effort to screw it down, but as I said, this is by design.

The left photo is power cabling panel, which allows you run cables from the PSU at the bottom of the case and securely hold the cables in place. There is also room behind the motherboard panel to even run the main ATX cable behind with room to spare as to prevent cable clutter (I chose to do this, as well as hide the power cables from the top and middle drive bay drives, and the top and back fans).

The middle photo is the bottom drive bay slid out, and the right photo is the contents of the box which includes the top fan grill/spoiler, the drive rails, and the screws that go in the toolbox (picture of that later)

The left photo is of the middle cage slid out, and you can see the drive rail clasps for the two drives it holds. This cage, if you don’t want to put drives in it, can also be used to hold another fan (allowing back to back 120mm fans, or just a single fan away from the front of the case to reduce noise). The middle photo is of front panel cabling, and the right photo is of the (empty by default) 120mm front case fan position. I decided to move the lower chamber fan to this position as the power supply I chose won’t benefit from this and the drives in this cage will.

Note: If you are using a fanless PSU (such as Antec’s, which was designed with this case in mind), do not remove the lower chamber fan.

Here is a picture of the toolbox I mentioned earlier, and is a brilliant way to keep track of screws without losing them and is attached to the opposite side of the cage. In the middle is a close up of the Antec imprint on the inside metal chassis. On the right, a closeup of the front plugs with the door shut including the startup lock.

Here is a close up of the case’s front, all re-assembled. In the middle is proof the door can actually open the whole 270 degrees without any trouble. And the last photo I took for this unboxing is the case all assembled with parts in it, and running so you can see the blue LEDs… I overdid the exposure quite a bit as you can see, the LEDs aren’t really this bright.

I am quite pleased with this case, and it’s both the quietest case and the best looking case I’ve seen. It’s well worth the $130 I paid for it. I equipped it with a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 610 (which does live up to its name), and between that, the three 120mm case fans on low and my silent Seagate 3.5″ drives and the CPU and GPU fans (neither silent), I can hardly tell the computer is even on, and if I replace the GPU can with a silent one, I wouldn’t be able to tell at all.

For those interested in silent computing, this case combined with a silent PSU would put you a long way towards your goal. I give the case a 9.5/10 (a half of a point deducted for above normal, although unavoidable, weight).