Another thing I just noticed... do you have to open the front door to hit the power and reset buttons?

Also, what is that piece between the the two fan grills on the front?

Not complaining, just curious, this looks like a great case.

Yes you have to open the door to use reset and power button. Hardly a problem imo... Wastes a fraction of a second of your life every time you have to use the buttons, oh my

piece between the the two fan grills on the front? -- it is supposed to be a floppy drive cover... obviously still needs a bit of work, which is why they are calling this a 1st prototype production run. Only a couple were made this round.

Don't forget that most BIOSes allows you to configure power-up with the keyboard. So you don't even need to open/close the door to power up.

Is there enough space behind the frontdoor for a fancontroller like the Akasa AK-FC-03?
I know that the case already has the fan switches with three settings ... but people might still like to use a fancontroller for more finetuning (or to adjust other loud fans like the NB screamer on the A8N-SLI mobo).

If its any help, the Akasa AK-FC-03(fan controller pro) fits behind the door in the SLK3700AMB so i would suspect it fits the p180 too I dont use it for any fans currently, just for temperature monitoring.

I consider that a blessing with kids in the house. That front door and key is a vital point for me when buying a case. Without it you newer know when the computer will be shut off

The case looks nice but I dont really see why you are so excited? Is it beacuse Antec is an american company? I mean to proclaime a case the best even before it hits the streets seems a bit...

Dont get me wrong it looks like a nice case but "to feature everything a silent PC enthusiast or performance nut would want." Well that sounds like an ultimate case and I doubt that it is. I would consider a cheap passive cooling case that works as a performance case at the same time as it is silent ultimate. Impossible? Well maybe but still what I would want.

I guess I will have to make do with this in the mean time

A case that is cheap & passive & performance & slient --

Even just 2 of the properties together are tough.
3? highly unlikely & impractical.
4? Totally incompatible, basically impossible.

Also, please don't misquote me. No "proclamation" was made -- look again at the headline -- it is a question, not a statement, based on marketing claims. Writing fun & interesting headlines -- over and over again on similar topics for years -- is a challenging art.

That's news to me. I always thought the were Taiwanese.

I eagerly await a review of the P180, but I'd also like to see a review (or comparison) with the Lian Li V1100...that's a version of the V1000 that has a front door and sound dampening a la their previous 6070 case. It seems to me that the V1100 and the P180 are very similar in design, except the V1100 flips the motherboard so that access is from the right-hand side (like the V1000). It seems to me this would work better as the power cables wouldn't have to stretch as far to the MB connectors. I'd also like to see a comparison of the V1100 to the V1000.

Sure, that might be worthwhile. We'll see if we can get one around the same time. You do know the LL will be at an immediate acoustic disadvantage -- normal aluminum construction vs. steel chassis + composite panels.

Actually, the dual-2.5 has active WC with a Laing DDC pump.

Anyway, it seems like apple really had a heat problem. Maybe thats not so uncommon in dual cpu machines, but they sure used a lot of different techniques to get everything under control. I wonder now about the effectiveness of the different compartments, 9 fans, and 21 sensors when ultimately they use water cooling. Is this a good design or just over engineering?

Apple's water cooling is just heatpipes, not what is normally discussed regarding water in pc circles. I do think that 9 fans is inefficient though, unless it has a much bigger heat problem than any pc system.

Please note that the dual core P4s (Prescott) will NOT have HT. There will be 2 CPUs appearing, not 4. The advantages of HT you have seen in video encoding and other things, will go away and be replaced by two single cores advantages. This means P4 dual core will not gain so much where HT was efficient. AMD will catch up in these areas with their dual core A64.

Hmmmm, that's true...I'd still like to see a comparison. The distance to the MB power connectors has me a little worried but surely Antec has given this some thought as well. I prefer the look of the Lian Li but the Antec will obviously be a better value. I certainly applaud their (and Lian Li's, and Silverstone's) efforts towards silent enclosures, wish more companies would join in.
Hey, since I just mentioned Silverstone, maybe it could be a three-way match-up...determine the best silent enclosure in the $150-250 range....

One thing Antec could do IMHO is to remove the door (I don't care for doors) and replace it with a nice looking aluminum bezel like on the Silverstone TJ06.

One question I have is why the raised exhaust vent visible in the perspective and side pictures isn't visible in the rear picture. Was this acidentally cropped? Or is the rear shot from too low a perspective to capture it?

Hm, yeah that's odd, looking at the rear pic it doesn't seem as if it has been shot from an too low angle IMO, the raised exhaust should be visible. However, if you look close at the rear pic there's a indent at the top of the case so, as you wrote, maybe it was cropped out.

It was either cropped out or it's a pic of a slightly different pre-production version of the case. And Antec does doors on practically all of their cases. I'm not crazy about doors but have decided I don't mind them over the drive bays, I'm not so crazy about covering the power/reset buttons though.

The vent is removable; it was probably removed.

I've been asked to caution that these are photos of a "T1" case -- I think t might stand for test -- and that the final product will not be identical. IE, there will be tweaks & adjustments between these samples and the mass production model.

Do some people actually shut their PCs off? What a concept!

The reason I want a silent PC is that my PCs are running 24/7 - I want to be able to use them at a minute's notice and I also use them to supply content (music, video, photos) to my home theatre via my connected DVD.

Yes you would have to open the door, but thats the norm for higher-end, and server chassis. Personally I rarely use the buttons on my case since I have it set up to turn on when I hit the space bar or Esc key. Even with the door it would only take half a second to tilt it open enough to slip your fingers in. Plus I see it as an advantage since with the door lock you can stop accidental shutdowns or restarts. I've had friends turn off my machine since they couldn't tell it was already on when they sat down to use it.


I wonder how a fanless PSU like the Antec Phantom or SilentMaxx PCS350 would work with this case. Can anyone think of any reasons why they would not be a suitable PSU for this case?
Also earlier Mike talked about how he might setup this case; but I'm not sure that would work as well with a fanless psu since having a fan in that lower mount would seem un-useful. Perhaps moving the HD(s) up into the main section would work. They would bring more heat, but two 120mm exhaust fans should be able to handle it, even if you decided to not have a fan on the CPU's heatsink.

It does indeed look very nice and have some good features, but I'm willing to bet it won't come cheap.
I can see the price of this one being up there with Lian-Li cases.

Actually, that's a nice news piece, w/good pics. Good find!

I'd be very surprised if Antec didn't ensure this fits all their PSUs, including the Phantom. This would probably work quite well with a fanless PSU, since that 120mm fan in the lower section would provide decent airflow through the PSU regardless of whether it contained a fan.

I'd suggest putting the hard disks in front of the PSU - they won't add much heat to ramp up the PSU fan (if present), and they won't be blocking airflow to the upper section. It also means you're unlikely to need a fan at the front of the upper section, as the upper rear fans won't have so many restrictions to fight against in order to provide decent airflow.

Hello: Check out curl's link above -- they show it with a Phantom installed! Here's the one fly in the ointment?:



Aren't those wires a bit too close to the fan blades? Maybe a 25mm thick fan would be better after all!

I don't recall it being as close in reality as it appears in that picture, its close, but I think there was an inch or so between them. Mr. Liu also suggested that the retention mechanism where the cabling comes up through the divider is one area that they were likely to change from the tooling sample. Unlike the Lian Li V series, the Antec has a sliding door to close off as much of the opening as possible once the cables are through, to preserve the air-tightness. If you look close you can see the soft foam along the edge of the dividor, to seal between it and case side too.

That may also be a Phantom 500 in there, which looked to me like a deeper-than-stock PSU.

Just one more thing we'll have to take a look at when we get one we can tear apart.