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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TemjinGold - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I really liked the concept of the P180 Mini because I hate big bulky cases. I will never have more than 2 HDs and 1 SSD and I will never use more than 1 gfx card. I also like uATX motherboards. Any idea if there are plans for a P280 Mini or sorts?danjw - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I was looking at the product page for the P180 mini a couple weeks ago and that was up said "P183 mini", it has since been changed back. So that suggests they are getting close to a release of an update to it.danjw - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Opps, just reread this I meant, "... the image that was up ..."albiglan - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Wasn't there a problem on the P183 that the USB3 connections for the front panel were routed in a "flimsy/cheap" manner? I assume from the lack of coverage on the built in wiring that all is well and good now? Thx for the review! Glad to see Antec is on a better path with this case...haukionkannel - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
It would be nice to see how this new P280 compares to P183. The P280 is easier to assemble, but how about acoustic and temperatures. Are they better or worse in P280?I am happy owner of original P180. It is really a pain in tha ass to assemble, but otherwise very good and quiet case. So it would be nice to see some results of how taking the dual cahmber away has change the things.
tomek1984 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I got one of the first versions of P180, and it's still one of my favorite cases today. I never saw any real advantage of the dual chamber but it did help in cleaning big cable cluster. The only problem i had with this case, was trying to install long video card, basically you cant, unless you take out top hard drive cage. So this new design is quite an improvement.My only hope is to see a case which will equal Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 in exterior appearance. It was the first case i had to use a grinder during assembly and the case quality control is not existent ( most screws barely aligned and cable management was completely useless), but that case is second to none in exterior appearance ( together with P180 the only two options i will ever consider in my living room), handle bars also come in very handy when you have to move it around.
Metaluna - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
The main advantage of dual chamber is that you can cool the hard drives using the PSU exhaust fan only (the middle fan is pretty useless unless you've got four 15k rpm SAS drives down there). It also isolates the PSU from the GPU, though you probably get most of that benefit from just having the PSU at the bottom without the partition.That said, I've always hated the removable drive cage down in that chamber. Such a pain to work with.
bobbozzo - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
And mounting spinning drives vertically (in the P180) often is discouraged, forcing one to move the drives to the other bays. I also moved the lower bay fan to the front of the upper drive bay.bigboxes - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
It makes no difference on a drive's orientation. Also, the P183 has removed the fan from the middle. However I added a 120mm in front of the hard drives... all mounted vertically (that's the C: drive and three download drives). The only drive that has died in this case was mounted horizontally in the upper hard drive chamber.http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh175/bigboxes/...
8steve8 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
full size ATX is dead, (or should be)other than graphics, no one buys expansion cards... micro-atx should be the large board for people who want custom features/expansions, and mini-itx should be the mainstream size.
I wish chassis developers would put more effort into smaller sizes.