Antec P150 (cont’d)
This door conceals the front-loading hard drive bays, which are individually removable. Each bay houses a sled that incorporates rails for extremely easy hard drive installation. Four silicone grommets are employed to further diminish hard drive vibrations from adding to the system’s noise, and once the hard drive has been mounted to the sled, it simply slides and locks into place from the front.
Click to enlarge.
Not only do the hard drives load this way, but the included 5¼” to 3½” bay adapter has already been fitted with rails so that it, too, can be locked into place without screws. If one chose to, however, they could simply do away with the adapter altogether and have four 5¼” bays available.
For the other 5¼” drives, the user simply has to attach two included rails to either side of the drive and it will slide and lock into place from the front. One other handy feature is that six rails can be stored in holders in the bottom of the case.
The only active piece of cooling hardware present in the P150 is one of Antec’s tri-speed 120mm fans. In a case of this size, even a single 120mm will be able to move a lot of air through the enclosure and, combined with a decent power supply, it should be more than adequate for cooling moderate to high-end rigs.
Click to enlarge.
Notice also the black areas on the top and side plates; these are pieces of plastic that have been affixed to the metal to help dampen vibrations in the case, and we can attest that the plates really are quieter when struck. Whether or not this
really improves noise levels is probably a much deeper topic than this article can provide, but rest assured that it certainly can’t hurt, considering that plastic truly is a better sound insulator than steel.
In our last internal shot seen here, we can appreciate the case's dimensions It's not exactly spacious inside, but it's not that cramped either. “Large enough” is the term that comes to mind, but just like many other cases, the side-mounted IDE ports on our DFI motherboard aren't extremely easy to work with in the P150, but they are at least manageable.
Last, but not least, we thought that we should include a shot of the glowing blue ring around the power switch, which indicates that the computer is on. It's certainly subtle, but still a nice accent on an already stylish case.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
yacoub - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
Yes, the Antec P150 is the best case EVER. No really, it's awesome. I wish they'd offer it without the included PSU though, since that PSU has issues with some Asus boards. I ended up buying a different PSU ahead of time since I knew that and was getting an A8N-SLI Premium.I highly recommend the P150. No reason for any other case unless you simply need MORE room than it offers.
The best part about the P150 is you can build a silent PC system in it very easily. I have the included 120mm fan on the lowest setting and insulated from the case itself with rubber grommets so it's totally silent, a TruePowerII 480w PSU (has a 120mm fan inside it) which is totally silent, the harddrive isolated with the included grommets, the CPU fan throttled down dynamically with CPUSpeed, and the GPU fan throttled with ATITool.
It's also high quality part and construction-wise.
Live - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
The optional front fans in the P150 are for 92mm.Tamale - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
fixed.xsilver - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
anybody here from Australia? know where I can get the raidmax X1? not sure if there are any australian distributers -- (cant find anybody on staticice.com.au)Cygni - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
My only comment is with the title of the article. Probably should be a bit more descriptive... like "Cases - 3 Way Price Point Shootout" or something,.balilu - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
Is the P150 available in black or any chance of being in the near future?Tamale - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
I haven't seen any indication that antec is going to release other models of the P150.. that being said, you might want to check out their Sonata II reviewed several months back.Avalon - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
Raidmax getting an editor's gold choice award makes me giggle inside.Googer - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
Why does the title of the page sayate: January 13th, 2006
Topic: Cases & Cooling
Manufacturer: 3Com/U.S. Robotics
Author: Joshua Buss
Why is 3Com and US Robotics listed? 3COM Spun them off and they are no longer part of 3COM. Also 3COM and US Robotics do not make PC Cases and there were no other USR or 3COM Components reviewed in this article.
Tamale - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link
no idea. Thanks for point it out....