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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NGneer - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I won an NVidia Quadro 4000 as a doorprize at a SolidWorks 2012 presentation a few weeks ago and now I need to build a workstation around it (for cheap). This would be a nice case to house everything in.jesh462 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I do appreciate the p280s aesthetics. The extra expansion bays are lost on my needs, I'd rather see more acoustic dampening. For the money, I'd still pick an R3 or modded Shinobi.MisterDonut - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
If only my Antec 900 wasn't alive....hatwell - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I really like black cases. When you throw in all the other features - you've got a winner!Jettubby - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Great reviews as always!yadir - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
I needed a case for a new build and I think the P280 would be a great 'brother' to the P182 I have.lowryd1000 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Nice case, sign me up.havoti97 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
I have the P182 and love it. Might look into this in the future for a build.justben314 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Any chance on some of these case reviews to get more detailed information posted on the specs of the stock fans installed? Even if it were just information from the manufacturer, would be a welcome detail for enthusiasts.It would probably be a pain to setup testing for, but Anandtech's detailed reviews would be a welcome addition to the world of case fans and other fan systems outside of CPU cooling.
justben314 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Upon further review, it's nice that you have included the fan type (Antech TwoCool) in this review. Not normally in other reviews, so was unexpected, but as previous post states, very welcome. :)