Well, new system arrived Saturday, missed courier so had to wait for Monday.
All built and running. Tested/overclocked that night and I thought I would write a little something about my experiance with the case.
First things first, its not small, but its not huge either. My ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme almost touches the top side of the case and is god awfully close to the window. You will not be able to use a fan in the optional location in the side window if you use this cooler or an Artic Cooling S1 on your graphics card either.
Cable management is a pain in the ass, even with newer revisions the room between the back of the motherboard tray and back panel is minimal, mine is ever so slightly bulged with the 24 Pin ATX cabling and a few molexes hidden back there. Even using this there is very little room bewteen the back of any HDDs and everything gets a bit squashed.
Bringing the 12Volt 8 pin from the bottom of the case to the header on the motherboard is also a pain, mine reaches (Corsair 520) but its tight, and it goes over my graphics card, I am a bit of a perfectionist so this is annoying me, I will need to get an extension cable to route this properly.
I use the provided shroud on one of the HDD bays which allows you to use an additional 120mm. This is fantastic for me as it allows me to directly mount another 120mm to actively cool the S1 VGA unit. It does render the bay un-useable in terms of HDDs though, its tight enough as it is and with 2 HDDs in the bottom tray the Sata headers on my Ip35 Pro are very difficult to get at.
Its a shame there is a lack of of a tooless design for mounting HDDs. However, this is somewhat made up for in the fact that alignment of the bolt holes to the threads on the drives are perfect once you have slid the disk in.
Another gripe, which could have been a massive ****-block is that the cables from the power, reset switches and HDD activity lights are god awfully short. The Abit IP35 Pro I have in mine has its headers almost in the lower left corner, more centrally aligned though. They only just reach and thats having brought them over the top of the board and not routed neatly like I would like to see them. The USB cable just about reaches when routred but its the same fate for the Firewire, its tight, has to come over the board and around my 8800GT and only just reaches. I really dont know what Antec were thinking when they designed these cables. They require much more length.
If you are thinking of using the top mounted Headphone/Audio out port. Dont. With the short cabling limiting your ability to route the sound is entirely distored and rendered unberable with noise from every power cable this thing has to cross to get to the header on my mainboard. If you can get it routed without exposing it quite as much as I have, you might get away with it. I use a USB micorphone so have not tested the Mic port here but I imagine it suffers the same fate.
Onto the good things. Airflow.. theres lots of it... more than enough infact. This thing cools me when I am sitting next to it.. quite literally.
Looks, I like them. Its not overstated but it is most certainly not boring. The top 200mm looks fantastic and the front of the case is minimalistic but modern looking with its all mesh approach.
The build quality is solid, I could not find any faults here. The front blanking plates needed a little tightening to keep them nice and fixed, none of the meshes were bent and everything felt nice and secure. No wobbles, squeaks or any signs of it falling apart anytime soon. The top tray might seem gimmicky but trust me, its not! Its now the permanent home for my HTC TyTn II and the closely located USB ports make it more than ideal as this device charges and syncs over USB. The addition of a HP style "Long PCI" card plastic section to keep the card nice and straight was a nice though for any GTX owners out there, my 8800Gt is not long enough to test this thing but I am sure its of the right dimensions.
Things I would change:
Cable management. Even with the new revesion its still tight. Needs more room behind the motherboard tray and side panel. An extra 10mm would have done.
A little extra room behind the HDD trays as to not obscure headers and make cable management hard.
MUCH more length on the cabling for the LEDs/Switches/Audio ports
Toolless design on bays.
Things you should consider:
A large Heatsink on your CPU or a large cooler on your graphics card knocks out the optional 120mm on the windowed panel.
Cable length from your PSU. I use a modular Corsair 520 and it was only just ok, even if not ideal.
Header locations on your mainboard, with specific reference to the Switching/LEDs.
How many drives you want to use and with what options, you cannot use it all. Optional 120mm fan on one of the drive bays knocks out 3 potential slots for example.
All built and running. Tested/overclocked that night and I thought I would write a little something about my experiance with the case.
First things first, its not small, but its not huge either. My ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme almost touches the top side of the case and is god awfully close to the window. You will not be able to use a fan in the optional location in the side window if you use this cooler or an Artic Cooling S1 on your graphics card either.
Cable management is a pain in the ass, even with newer revisions the room between the back of the motherboard tray and back panel is minimal, mine is ever so slightly bulged with the 24 Pin ATX cabling and a few molexes hidden back there. Even using this there is very little room bewteen the back of any HDDs and everything gets a bit squashed.
Bringing the 12Volt 8 pin from the bottom of the case to the header on the motherboard is also a pain, mine reaches (Corsair 520) but its tight, and it goes over my graphics card, I am a bit of a perfectionist so this is annoying me, I will need to get an extension cable to route this properly.
I use the provided shroud on one of the HDD bays which allows you to use an additional 120mm. This is fantastic for me as it allows me to directly mount another 120mm to actively cool the S1 VGA unit. It does render the bay un-useable in terms of HDDs though, its tight enough as it is and with 2 HDDs in the bottom tray the Sata headers on my Ip35 Pro are very difficult to get at.
Its a shame there is a lack of of a tooless design for mounting HDDs. However, this is somewhat made up for in the fact that alignment of the bolt holes to the threads on the drives are perfect once you have slid the disk in.
Another gripe, which could have been a massive ****-block is that the cables from the power, reset switches and HDD activity lights are god awfully short. The Abit IP35 Pro I have in mine has its headers almost in the lower left corner, more centrally aligned though. They only just reach and thats having brought them over the top of the board and not routed neatly like I would like to see them. The USB cable just about reaches when routred but its the same fate for the Firewire, its tight, has to come over the board and around my 8800GT and only just reaches. I really dont know what Antec were thinking when they designed these cables. They require much more length.
If you are thinking of using the top mounted Headphone/Audio out port. Dont. With the short cabling limiting your ability to route the sound is entirely distored and rendered unberable with noise from every power cable this thing has to cross to get to the header on my mainboard. If you can get it routed without exposing it quite as much as I have, you might get away with it. I use a USB micorphone so have not tested the Mic port here but I imagine it suffers the same fate.
Onto the good things. Airflow.. theres lots of it... more than enough infact. This thing cools me when I am sitting next to it.. quite literally.
Looks, I like them. Its not overstated but it is most certainly not boring. The top 200mm looks fantastic and the front of the case is minimalistic but modern looking with its all mesh approach.
The build quality is solid, I could not find any faults here. The front blanking plates needed a little tightening to keep them nice and fixed, none of the meshes were bent and everything felt nice and secure. No wobbles, squeaks or any signs of it falling apart anytime soon. The top tray might seem gimmicky but trust me, its not! Its now the permanent home for my HTC TyTn II and the closely located USB ports make it more than ideal as this device charges and syncs over USB. The addition of a HP style "Long PCI" card plastic section to keep the card nice and straight was a nice though for any GTX owners out there, my 8800Gt is not long enough to test this thing but I am sure its of the right dimensions.
Things I would change:
Cable management. Even with the new revesion its still tight. Needs more room behind the motherboard tray and side panel. An extra 10mm would have done.
A little extra room behind the HDD trays as to not obscure headers and make cable management hard.
MUCH more length on the cabling for the LEDs/Switches/Audio ports
Toolless design on bays.
Things you should consider:
A large Heatsink on your CPU or a large cooler on your graphics card knocks out the optional 120mm on the windowed panel.
Cable length from your PSU. I use a modular Corsair 520 and it was only just ok, even if not ideal.
Header locations on your mainboard, with specific reference to the Switching/LEDs.
How many drives you want to use and with what options, you cannot use it all. Optional 120mm fan on one of the drive bays knocks out 3 potential slots for example.
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