Antec P280 Review: When Enthusiasts Are Engineers
by Dustin Sklavos on November 15, 2011 10:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Antec
- P280
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
Here's where we separate the men from the boys. Our overclocked test bed has proven to be very stressful on "less prepared" enclosures, and this is hopefully going to produce some more decisive results. So far, Antec's P280 has put in a strong performance, offering decent thermals with low acoustics, but it's still competing pretty squarely with Fractal Design's Define R3, an enclosure that costs between $30 and $40 less. The R3 lost a lot of steam in our overclocked testing, though. Can the P280 pick up the slack?
Unfortunately, while most of the other components are running pretty frosty, the P280 has a hard time dealing with the substantially increased thermal load of the overclocked i7-875K. What we can glean from the results is that it's able to mostly manage overall ambient temperature, and the GeForce GTX 580 runs nice and cool compared to some of the other cases, but the processor may just not be getting enough cool air running through it. The P280 supports 240mm radiators, and getting one in there may not be a bad idea.
Once again it's hard to justify running the fans at their high setting. At their low setting the P280 is nice and quiet at idle, though load performance is dicier. Once again the P280 is in the same general ballpark as Fractal Design's up and comer.
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fatpat268 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
"While some people may be a little peeved at losing the dual chamber design of the P180 line, I'm not particularly bothered by it."I'm not. The dual chambered design is the main reason why I want to get rid of my P182. In my experience, the dual chambers have little effect compared to a standard design, but it makes it twice as difficult to assemble.
I'm currently looking at new cases right now, and I'm glad that Antec ditched that design.
Strunf - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I share the same feeling about the dual chamber design (at least on the P182), it's quite a pain to work on the lower chamber, everything is cramped and you have to be extra careful to not let the cables touch the fan that is in-between the hard drives and the PSU.If there was a easy way to remove the piece of steel separating both chambers I would do it in a heart beat, the case would be much better then...
kmmatney - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Yep - getting the hard drive cables to not touch the fan can be tricky in the P-182. I still love it, though, just for how quiet it is. I can passively cool my HD4890 using only one case fan (and the hard drive fan) for an almost completely silent system. Glad to see the improvements, though.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
After some time I removed the fan in the lower chamber. I've got only one HDD and the PSU is 80+ Gold (now), so I don't it any more. Still cramped, but much easier.MrS
TeachPA - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
I kind of liked my dual chamber 180. It was pain but once my cables were secure it didn't cause any problems.rrohbeck - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Look at the Define XL by Fractal Design.I just bought one and it's great. It has two chambers too, but done right without a fan in the way. And it doesn't have the fans in the top so it's quieter - much better as long as you don't want watercooling or manual fan control. I don't.
The one thing that the Antec has that I want is the double hinged door. Otherwise the Define XL is nicer and it has plenty of cooling with two additional fans. Enough to overclock the heck out of a Bulldozer with a NH-D14 anyway and it's still quiet.
kasakka - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link
I've got the Define R3 and it has some issues like hard to close side plate, side plate screws not mounted on the plate itself (like they were on the Antec P150), too small reset button and a bit fiddly cable routing.It's not a bad case but not a great one either. Personally I really loved the Antec P150 except it had a poor quality power/reset button (easily breaking plastic) and couldn't fit full length graphics cards without taking a hacksaw to some parts.
geniekid - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I wonder a little bit about the CPU cooler. Would a cooler with a different configuration work better with some of these cases?I understand it's important to keep things consistent across different cases, but I can't help but think that cases that do such a good job of ambient cooling (R3, P280) should have no problem with a CPU that has it's OWN cooler attached to it already. It makes me think the CPU cooler isn't doing it's job properly.
geniekid - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
"It makes me think the CPU cooler isn't doing it's job properly." Or, alternatively, that the case may have been designed with another CPU cooler in mind.Dribble - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Looking at the case it looks like cool air comes in at the front + bottom, turns 90 degrees gets heated by the gpu and then probably wants to exit mostly out the top which is blowing accross the cpu a bit. Another design of cooler might take a degree or two off.That said the gpu gets lots of cool air, and being as these days that's the hottest thing in the pc you could argue that it's now more important to cool then the cpu.