P180 Antec Case Review

This is a review of Antec's P180 case. This case has features that no other one has. First off, you will notice how it has very nice and clean lines. Few computer cases have this quality of design. The case is of high interest to those who want an extremely quiet computer.  The case was in part designed with the help of Mike Chin of Silent PC Review.

The case was made out a different material than what is usually used. Most cases are made with sheet metal and some with aluminum. Antec uses hybrid composite panels for its construction. They also used silencing techniques with a goal of achieving 20db in sound and excellent air flow. It looks like they did it. It was one of the quietest cases I have tested.

The design of this case was somewhat different than the normal one chamber case. It was made with separate thermal chambers. It was also designed for simple airflow paths. See the separate chambers below.

Antec P180 separate chambers
 

The separate channel follows that the Lian-Li case initiated with their successful PC-V1100 case. Perhaps this is the way of the future of case design from all manufactures.

  
Lian-Li Separate Chambers
 

The door in front of the P180 has aluminum on the front skin and plastic under it for sound absorption.

The front of the case has IEEE1394 FireWire, USB 2.0 ports and audio ports for convenience to the user.

The door needs to be opened to turn on the power and reset the computer. You can also easily see the LCDs with the door shut.

On the bottom of the case there are four soft silicone rubber legs which helps to absorb the vibration of the case.

Here are the specifications of the case.

The case was shipped to us in a nicely printed box. The P180 case inside was supported with thick plastic forms for shipping, much better padding than I have ever seen a computer case shipped in before.

The Antec P180 case is a revolutionary new case design. What makes it unique and different from other computer cases as I said above is its two chambers that isolates the power supply and CPU into different cooling zones. Heat from each zone is separated. In the lower chamber the heat from the power supply is taken care of by the fans inside of the power supply and by the P180 case fan at the middle bottom of the case. By putting the power supply in a different chamber it is believed that at least 20% of the power supply heat which normally goes into the computer is dispersed out of the bottom chamber. This then makes the computer run much cooler. See the picture below.

The side panels of the case are composed of aluminum and plastic in layers. This has three layers, which are aluminum, plastic and then aluminum again. This helps to eliminate both noise and vibration. It helps this the be one of the most quiet cases available. The panels of the case sound different when you tap them. You don't hear the normal clang. It's more like a thump. This helps the acoustic damping of the computer.

This three layer panels also helps to eliminate putting in the noise absorption material that many people stick in the inside of their cases to make it more quiet. To put this material in a case is time consuming to install and sometimes has a bad smell to it. Also many times absorption material can raise the temperature of the case several degrees.

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