Antec Nine Hundred Two: Second Generation Gamer Case

Comparison

With everything installed, let's take a look at one of the more important aspects of any case: cooling performance and acoustic noise.

Noise levels are good but not spectacular. We have definitely seen better cases when it comes to keeping things quiet, but we have also seen worse designs. As expected, high fan speeds increase noise levels quite a bit. It's also worth mentioning that the fans that Antec includes are not particularly quiet; purchasing fans from a different vendor noticeably reduced noise levels.

Temperatures are quite good overall, particularly the hard drive and ambient temperatures. We tested with the fans set to both low and high speed, and as expected the temperatures are generally lower at high fan speeds. However, it's interesting to note that CPU temperatures actually increased at the higher fan speed, potentially indicating a problem with airflow at that setting. Now let's see how this case compares to other cases when it comes to proper cooling.

Note: The first column is the CPU temperature, the second represents the graphics cards, the third is for the hard drives, and the last one is the ambient temperature.

Note: The first column is the CPU temperature, the second represents the graphics cards, the third is for the hard drives, and the last one is the ambient temperature.

Temperatures are very important when comparing different cases. Naturally, some cases are larger or smaller, but in terms of raw cooling performance the Nine Hundred Two is near the top of the charts. Again, keep in mind that we are using a high-end build with a quad-core CPU and three of the hottest graphics cards around -- not your typical setup. We will add a midrange system in the near future in order to provide additional performance insight.

The idle temperatures are the lowest of any of the tested cases; only Antec Skeleton offers a lower ambient system temperature, but you would expect that from the "open" design. The Silverstone FT01 and Raven along with the Antec Skeleton also offer better CPU temperatures. Moving to the load tests, overall performance drops somewhat, with a CPU temperature that is higher than everything but the rather old Silverstone TJ10. GPU temperatures are near the top, with hard drive and ambient temperatures clearly benefiting the most from the cooling design.