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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IceDread - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
With that ugly front it's a no no.tarv - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Me want ones!LeeF - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
... now if only you guys would actually compare it to them. :)I'm still rockin' the P180 I bought in 2005. It is a PITA to swap out hardware, but I've never minded because of the looks and the quiet. I actually prefer its looks to the P280, but I think I'd still happily switch to the P280 for the ease of upgrading and the drive rails that accommodate 2.5" drives. I just installed an SSD in mine, and I had to use a horrible kludge of adapters to mount it in a 5.25" drive bay because I couldn't find any 3.5" adapters that would line up with the screw holes in the P180s HDD rails or lower drive cage.
The noise and cooling performance will be the crux of the decision for me, though. I have a Zalman CNPS 10k Quiet cooler which fires toward the back of the case, so the top fan positions are entirely superfluous (and possibly detrimental) in my case.
ZappedC64 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Decent case.TGMGroup - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
I remember when Antec was the best of the best, before companies such as SilverStone and Fractal Design came out. It's nice that they're doing their best to get better.NoWayMan - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Would like to build a new system in this case - a lot easier than the P180 I have.cstuss - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
It's been a real struggle to find a decent case with top port access that was quiet and not covered in 'cool' led lights. This case looks like a winner to me. I'd love to build a system in this bad boy.Upinsmokes - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
another nice case from antec. great review too.racerx_is_alive - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
I like to install those USB card readers in my computers, and they usually fit in the 3.5" bay- but this case doesn't have one of those. Do they have a faceplate to adapt one of the 5.25" forward facing slots to handle a 3.5" drive like the card reader?MKBL - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Is PSU to be mounted downward? I have Antec HCG-620, which is sitting upward at the bottom of Three Hundred. and by the look of its branding, I thought it was naturally built to be mounted upward. Can it be reversed, upside down?