Antec P180 & choice of PSU

[Shackley]

Hi

I am thinking of using an Antec P180 case in a graphical / analysis workstation I am building (not used for games). I understand that this case has possible problems with PSUs for two reasons related to the PSU being in a separate compartment :
a) the cooling fan should be at the back rather than on top.
b) the cables need to be unusually long to reach the motherboard and peripherals such as a DVD writer

I plan to use :
o Asus AM2 nForce 590 SLI motherboard
o AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000
o 4 x 1Gb PC6400 DDR2 RAM
o 4 x SATA HDDs
o two 7900GT 256Mb graphics cards to support 3 x 19" flat panels

I do know that the new Intel chips are faster and will probably be cheaper than the AMD AM2 series - but they aren't generally available yet.

Does anyone have any experience of this case?
What PSU have you used?

Any help / feedback would be much appreciated.

 

[Shackley]

As you can see it has a fan on top of it.. you can orientate it with the fan pointing up or down, the way it mounts leaves room around it for the fan to work correctly.
The important thing is the COMBO of the motherboard and psu.. some boards have the 24 pin and 4 pin connectors in the most awkward of places.

On mine you can see the 24pin isnt a problem(top right), but the 4 pin is in the very top left, I had to solder an extension onto it!

Many thanks for this - a beautifully laid out case. I am really impressed that you have even gone to the trouble of taping-up around the disk caddies, very tidy!

I understand about orienting the PSU with the 120mm fan at the top, but won't this cause problems as a result of the narrow gap that the air has to use to get to the fan and aren't you logically drawing hot air 'down' through the PSU rather than up through it?

I get the impression that you have abandoned the additional (Antec) 120mm fan in the PSU/Disk area - is that right?

Highly recommended though this case is, I do get the impression that Antec didn't entirely think through air flow in the region of the PSU.