The Case Exterior

Although the P190 looks sleek and simple on the outside, the beast hidden inside it is betrayed by its extreme weight. It is a large case, considerably larger and longer than any super midi ATX case but not humongous like cube cases. The sample we received weighs slightly more than 23kg (we actually had to use human weight scales to measure!). The side panels weight about 3kg each, making just the two side panels weigh as much as an entire small lightweight case does.  The Antec P190 is certainly not the kind of case you will carry to a lanparty, in fact it is more accurately described as the kind of case which will make you think twice before moving it at all.

The front of the case is spartan, but there are a lot of things hidden behind the shiny black door. Only the front USB, Firewire and headset ports are visible when the door is closed. The door closing mechanism is magnetic and should last a lot longer than a plastic latch. The power and reset buttons are just above the front ports but hidden behind the door. Behind the door you will also notice the four 5.25” device slots, a single 3.5” slot and two filter holders for the front 120mm fan. Opening up those holders will allow you to clean the front fan filters of the case periodically, as although fan filters do a great job at keeping the interior of your system cleaner they also get clogged up quite fast, especially in a dusty environment.

Almost every surface of the P190 has at least one fan attached to it, there are two large 140mm fans at the top of the case and a 120mm fan at the rear, all working as exhaust fans. These 3 fans can have their speed controlled via three switches at the top rear part of the case. The switches are not rheostats, which means that you cannot adjust the speed of the fans exactly to your liking, but they have three settings to choose from, low, medium and high. At low, they are exceptionally silent, while at high they effectively turn the P190 into a rather unpleasant sounding wind tunnel.

Another interesting feature of the P190 is the two rubber grommets found at the back of the case for water-cooling pipes. If you are going to water-cool your system, you aren’t going to feel any guilt for using your 100$ dremel on your 400$ case anymore. At the bottom of the Antec P190 you can see the two (supplied) Neo Power units. Yes, there are two power supply units included in the P190 and that partially justifies the weight of the chassis.

The dual layer side panels of the P190 are considerably heavy, but they do a great job as sound insulation. Essentially they are not a single solid panel but two panels, where the second plate sandwiches a layer of sound deadening material between itself and the primary panel. Unlike several cases which merely have a layer of sound insulation glued at the inside of the panel and suffer from aging very fast, these are going to last for a long time without pieces of the insulation material coming off. Antec did not stop there. In order to completely seal the case closed and minimize vibrations they have added a strip of insulation material at the edge of the side panels. These strips not only aid the sound insulation of the case but also negate any vibrations which can generate rattling.

The talking point of the left side panel is the massive 200mm fan. The fan is as big as a mATX motherboard itself and works as an intake, cooling all of the motherboard and the cards attached to it. It will certainly be of much use if you are going to use multiple PCIe VGA cards or even if you have a passively cooled high grade motherboard. The fan speed can be controlled by the switch next to it, which is the same as the switches we found at the rear part of the case, yet this time you will have to take the side panel off in order to adjust its speed. Antec did not leave the massive side panel fan without a filter, which hooks right beneath it, but once again the side panel has to come off in order to remove the filter and clean it. A note which we would like to make is that the fan power cable is somewhat short, so you better be a little careful when removing the side panel.