DriverHeaven.net: Antec P180

The P180 interior:

When I removed the side panel of the P180 I discovered a pretty unusual design, it reminds me a little of the Lian li PC-1100, with its dual compartments.

In the lower compartment you have the PSU to the left and a hard drive cage with room for four hard drives to the right. And in the middle you have a 120mm fan that draws air from the front cooling both the hard drives and the PSU.

I removed the lower hard drive cage by releasing a thumbscrew and pulled it out, inside the cage there is a box containing the “spoiler” for the top exhaust 120mm fan, and some extra drive rails.

If we take a closer look on the lower hard drive cage we see that it has some silicon cushions to absorb vibrations and keep the hard drives quiet. A nice touch from Antec especially as its frequently all the "little" touches that make the end product so appealing.

Mounting the top “spoiler” was easy; just align it with the mounting holes and snap it in place. Whether this device has any real functionality is debatable, but I assume it’s supposed to lead the hot air back and maybe help dampening noise.

Let’s move on to the upper compartment, it also has a hard drive cage with room for two hard drives. That makes a total of six slots to mount hard drives in, not bad at all. The upper cage uses the same way to mount the disks as the Antec P160 that we reviewed a while back. It also has silicon cushions. On the side of this cage we can see a clever little piece of design work; it has a little box containing all the screws and standoffs for the case, plus some spare silicon cushions.

The vga duct with some drive rails mounted to it, that has a position for an 80mm fan (optional). It draws cool air from the back of the case to the graphic card. In order to remove the duct you’ll have to release six screws, two on the front and four on the back of the case, this must be done to be able to install the motherboard, a little complicated if you ask me. In my opinion it would have been better with some sort of quick release mechanism for the duct, or even some hinges.

Here’s the P180 with the drive cages and the vga duct removed.

This is the cable routing hole; it is adjustable so when all the cables are routed you can adjust the plastic plate to seal off the lower compartment as much as possible.