Antec P180

     The bottom of the enclosure is neatly divided in half.

     The right side panel will need to be removed to install the power supply. The metal frame has rubber pads which are designed to secure the power supply and reduce vibrations . There is an extra large (120x38) TriCool fan installed to give the power supply air flow .

     The right side of the bottom compartment has another removable drive rack. Since there isn't a fan installed on the front of the enclosure, we'll be relying on that fan in between the power supply and this drive rack to bring air into the enclosure.

Putting it all together...

     All around, the P180 has the feel of a very high quality enclosure. Here is a complete system built around the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal motherboard, a single SATA hard drive, two optical drives, two eVGA 6800GT video cards (with SLI bridge installed), and the Antec Phantom 500 power supply. Unfortunately with the SLI bridge installed, the graphics card fan does not have enough room to be reinstalled into the enclosure. Also, with the fan installed in the chamber with the power supply, leaving extra cables on the bottom is tough because they are sure to get caught in the fan blades. While a fan guard on the fan could prevent that, the only way to be sure would be to wrap ALL of the power wires together so no single wire could get through the fan guard. This leads into the jumble of power wires that come up through the bottom of the enclosure. A nice modular power supply system that would let the builder reduce the extra cables would be VERY ideal here.

    The side panels of the P180 are constructed with aluminum and a molded plastic. Their small size makes them even more durable and the plastic is very high impact, so they shouldn't break with normal use. Does this design make the case more quiet? it does seem so, but this is a very subjective opinion. After all, some folks aren't bothered AT ALL by the sound of six high speed 80mm fans. I wont' classify myself as that tolerant of fan noise, but I'm not easily rattled either.

    What would I change? The case needs to come with its own buzzer for the motherboard. Unless your motherboard has its own, you can't hear the beep codes. Also, I would have made the IEEE 1394 header connector all single point connections instead of one big block. It won't mate to the Gigabyte board. so that feature is wasted. Sure, I would like to see it made entirely out of a lighter material like aluminum, but the sheer size of the enclosure means it would probably still be heavy. The weight of the entire system assembled as pictured: 21.6 pounds.