Antec P180

gunner · 2 Apr 2006 at 23:51

2 handy tips for this case (excuse me if you have heard them before):

1. Buy Silverstone's 24/4 pin extension cables, they come as a set and can be found very cheaply.

2. Swap the lower fan with one of the upper exhaust fans and mount it not with the plastic mount supplied but manually onto the reverse of the column. This gives you much more room to mount your PSU and still gives you airflow through the bottom of the case. The thicker fan pulls loads of air through the upper section as an added benifit.

These steps make a new build so much easier. Especially if you have a PSU such as the Hyper 580W. Which has quite short cables and metal attachements.

Messiah Khan · 3 Apr 2006 at 09:46

Good tips there gunner, thanks. Shame ive built the thing now, and no way am i taking it apart anytime soon

So does the lower fan mount easily at the top? And whats the performance difference of the two types of fan? Finally, is it possible to get hold of 4pin power extension cables, as this was my main problem. I managed to do it in the end, but the cable is really stretched.

thor · 3 Apr 2006 at 12:07

I ended up removing the bottom chamber fan altogether as it is much easier, and a lot tidier, to route the majority of the PSU cables through the second cable routing hole - the one closest to the harddrive cage.
My PSU has two 80mm fans, one on each side, so it does a fine enough job of drawing air through the chamber on its own without the need of another 120mm fan.
All the cables reached fine for me using a Tagan 420W I-XEye although I've used a couple extension cables for routing purposes - at the moment I'm only using the 20pin cable instead of the 20+4pin and have it connected to a 20->24pin adaptor/extension. Does this affect the stability of the board at all?

As it is, all my cables are nice and tidily tucked away so there's minimal impact of airflow. I did however want to keep the second hard drive cage (the one in the main section) in place as it makes the case look a little bit tidier. I found though that my case/cpu temps increase by a couple of degrees with it in place but my graphics card temp decreases slightly. I guess this is because the harddrive cage acts as an air channel, guiding the air directly to the graphics card.
Currently, I have the cage in place but I've attached another 120mm fan onto the other side of it - the retention clips have just about the right amount of tension to hold the fan in place, although I've added a couple bits of black tape just to be sure. I've found this gives the best of both worlds - both graphics card and case/cpu temps are at their lowest this way.

The other slight change I made was to reverse the top exhaust fan and use it as an intake. I wasn't sure if this would have a detrimental effect or not as now there is just the one exhaust, but it actually works wonders for my cpu temps. I've got a Zalman CNPS7700-Alcu and with the top fan working as an intake, my temps are lowered by another couple of degrees - with all fans in my system (4 Akasa Ambers, Sunon 40mm, 1 Antec TriCool) running at 5v/low, my A64 4000+ sits full load at ~37c

The_Biggles · 3 Apr 2006 at 19:03

Can anyone recommend a more reasonably priced PSU than the £100 approx. ones listed above. I'm running a 6800GT, 3.0G P4, 1.5G Ram so not exactly pushing the limits. My current PSU has very short cables so will need replacing when i transfer cases.

tia

gunner · 4 Apr 2006 at 13:07

Biggles, keep your PSU and buy extension cables for about a fiver, you are looking for silverstone's extension set.

Maybe OCuk could start stocking them?

Yewen · 4 Apr 2006 at 13:55

If you think they should stock them, post it up in the product suggestions forum

The_Biggles · 4 Apr 2006 at 19:19

Tnx guys. Couldn't see them on the site but found them elsewhere for a nominal fee. Surprised Oc didn't have it (unless i'm blind).

So obvious but never thought of doing that. Tnx again.

Paa` · 4 Apr 2006 at 21:35

Havana_UK said:
I have a P180 and replaced all the standard case fans (not the bottom section one) with Akasa Amber 120mm jobbies.

Two exhaust and one intake.

I don't have any heat issues.

Hav

I did exactly the same with my case.

However recently i decided to have a mess about tidy cables up etc and i put my hard drives in the bottom section leaving a empty gap where the intake fan was.

I removed the black plastic slide in's for the hard cradles and took out my akasa amber and put in the 120*38mm fan that comes with the case. I put it on high (cant hear it over the hdd's) and it reduced my PWM and chipset tempretures by 15 degree's each. my cpu went down 4c and my gfx stayed the same.

Quite pleased with the results and the case look's extremely tidy for what i have in it tbh.

Well worth the effort for me.