Antec P180 or Wave Master for new rig?

Matt Van Dam · 14 Feb 2007 at 16:48

Hi guys,

I'm hoping for a bit of advice from experienced rig-builders on what case to go for on my new build, see below.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
BFG nForce 680 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £149.99
(£176.24) £149.99

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £173.99
(£204.44) £173.99

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £51.99
(£61.09) £51.99

Tagan TG700-U25 700W ATX2.0 Dual Engine Silent SLi Compliant Silent PSU £94.99
(£111.61) £94.99

Samsung SH-182MRSMN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige,Black,Silver) - Retail £18.99
(£22.31) £18.99

Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM £18.99
(£22.31) £18.99

Sony Floppy Drive - Black £4.99
(£5.86) £4.99

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £109.99
(£129.24) £109.99

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £224.99
(£264.36) £224.99

I'm pretty sure from what I've read that the P180 will be plenty big enough for all this hardware and form factors shouldn't be an issue in regards to being able to use the wealth of connections on the BFG Mainboard, but the Wave Master is so sexy looking but is a very old case now, does it still do the job with new motherboard in allowing accessing to all connections and will it be big enough to contain all that hardware above? Also will cooling be an issue with a smaller case such as the wave master?

Any advice from owners of each case would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys

melbourne720 · 14 Feb 2007 at 17:09

Your luck is in, I have that case (P180), motherboard, CPU, and graphics card and I can confirm they all fit and work well together.

P180
Pro's
It's very quiet
It looks good
It has loads of room inside
It is very cool running

Cons
It's heavy
The aluminium panels dent quite easily
You need to make sure the PSU cables stretch, as the PSU is at the bottom of the case (Seasonic M12 600W works well).

Arcane · 14 Feb 2007 at 17:41

The P182 and P190 are due soon, looks to have sorted out some of the niggles that the original has.

DarkShadow · 14 Feb 2007 at 17:54

Hi there, The Wavemaster is an awesome case. I've had it for almost 3 years and I love it

The airflow isn't the best however. Take a look at my thread: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=8767727#post8767727

relax · 14 Feb 2007 at 18:12

We have a P180 here and the psu being at the bottom was a big hassle actually.

It was hard to feed a lot of the cables upthrough the bottom section.

It was a tagan psu with fairly stiff coated cables.
It was a worry trying to plug in one of the graphics card power cables into the card its self becuase there was little space and little slack due to the hard cable from what i remember.

There is a fair bit of pressure on the card now from the cable.

The case sides also seem to pop off every now and again (from what my brother tells me not sure if theres any truth in that one)

No motherboard tray which is a pain also for me, my older antec case has one and makes things a lot less hassle.

geff_r · 14 Feb 2007 at 19:45

Get an akasa eclipse they are the greatest case ever made.

Cosimo · 14 Feb 2007 at 20:45

melbourne720 said:
Your luck is in, I have that case (P180), motherboard, CPU, and graphics card and I can confirm they all fit and work well together.

P180
Pro's
It's very quiet
It looks good
It has loads of room inside
It is very cool running

Cons
It's heavy
The aluminium panels dent quite easily
You need to make sure the PSU cables stretch, as the PSU is at the bottom of the case (Seasonic M12 600W works well).

Agree with alll that, the Enermax Liberty 630W also works well with this case.

Junk · 15 Feb 2007 at 11:32

you will find the wavemaster a little restrictive with all that due to airflow, i had to move to an alasa mirage (eclipse with a door) when i upgraded to a similar spec to yours.

wavemaster is beautiful, but you will have more room in the p180, and hence better airflow.

gunner · 15 Feb 2007 at 12:10

I have and love my Black P180, if you do go for one save yourself some hassle and buy an extension cable for your PSU at the same time.

Other than that, the customer care if you do have problems is second to none. Although I would be tempted to wait and see if there is to be a P182. If you can't wait I think its a great case, get a black one though. Looks cool and not in the least like a fridge!

Messiah Khan · 15 Feb 2007 at 12:17

My p180 really annoyed me in the end tbh. I found it over engineered and cramped to work with. V2000+II for the win

gunner · 15 Feb 2007 at 12:33

especially if you actually want to live inside your PC.

Messiah Khan · 15 Feb 2007 at 12:49

No, I just want enough space to be able to run a decent amount of harddrives and do some modding and fit water cooling and phase cooling and...

hmm, maybe I want quite a bit.

Azza · 15 Feb 2007 at 12:55

messiah khan said:
My p180 really annoyed me in the end tbh. I found it over engineered and cramped to work with. V2000+II for the win

Same here, apart form the V2000+II part.

I went for an Eclipse. Brillaint case.

Phil2008 · 17 Feb 2007 at 18:12

My Wavemaster is beautiful and cool. Cpu idels at 28-32c, Gpu idels at 41-42c

Matt Van Dam · 17 Feb 2007 at 18:43

Plenty enough room for all that gear speedy?

Hamoodii · 17 Feb 2007 at 21:30

geff_r said:
Get an akasa eclipse they are the greatest case ever made.

by far, along with the PC7+

Phil2008 · 17 Feb 2007 at 22:41

Matt Van Dam said:
Plenty enough room for all that gear speedy?

Its a bit full in there as you can see, but you can tuck most of the wires behind the motherboard tray

If I were you I would put a 120mm fan on the side of your case. So then you have no hot air comming off your cards and up to the cpu and power supply. I had a 10-15c drop with the side fan.

Matt Van Dam · 18 Feb 2007 at 13:32

Thanks for that speedy, much appreciated