Antec Performance One P180B

Author's product rating:   

Ease of Use	Very Complicated
Quality	Good
Durability	Good
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Quiet, solid, good cooling
Disadvantages:	Big, heavy, expensive

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Before I start, this review was accidently published under my brother's ciao name due to the fun auto-complete function in Internet Explorer. Its been deleted from there now, so please bear that in mind - it's not copied or posted twice.

Anyway, without further ado......

Recently my old PC started to make weird noises, and basically gave up the ghost. The problem, as it turned out, was only a £5 fan but I used the excuse to buy an entirely new PC.

One of the bits that comprised my shiny new PC was this rather massive case. At somewhere in the region of 60cm high, it really is huuuuge, and at £80 without PSU rather expensive.

Build Quality and Appearance.
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The first the (other than the size) that strikes you, other than the fetching paint job, is its weight. It weighs an absolute ton, and I struggled to lift it with all the PC's guts in place. The sides and front are finished in a sound-deadening material. This doesn't look as good as a metal finish, but nonetheless is a nice feature. The case features a rather crazy "spoiler" on the top (which fortunately is optional - I'm not a boy racer so I left it off). The case is set off by those nice blue LED's I'm so fond of, however most of them are obscured by the door on the front.

Actually, it's just occurred to me. In the flesh, this case bears more than a slight similarity to my fridge. Albeit a black one, but still.

Anyway back to its outside. The door is smartly designed, since it doesn't obscure the ports on the front and has a nice locking mechanism. It also makes a noise like a fridge door when you shut it. You know, that sort of "thwamp" noise. Now that is a sign of quality :)

Great! But beauty is only skin deep. Inside its…..
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….crazy, actually. After opening up the case (using the thumbscrews - very user-friendly) you are greeted by the guts of what could be the most complex case I've ever come across. There are separate compartments for PSU, HD's and the main system board. Most cases, in comparison, have just the one or maybe 2 compartments. The PSU fits at the bottom of the case, behind a rather industrial fan (it's a 120mm, fact fans, but its also a custom Antec one that's 2 inches deep). In front of this is Hard drive area number one, which uses an innovative, though fiddly, cage system to mount the drives. The drives themselves are mounted on rubber grommets that really quieten them down.

There is another HD cage above this, although it sadly is not actively cooled, unlike the one next to the PSU. Both hard drive cages mount the drives in a bonkers sideways fashion - why I'm not sure, but I've yet to actually hear my HD's. Incidentally there is space for 8(!) HD's.

In a darkened recess above this, you have space for a floppy drive, and the big old CD/DVD above that. The floppy drive bay is very hard to get to; attaching the cable took several attempts. You can have up to 4 CD/DVD/other 5.25'' drives, but just the solitary floppy drive.

All the drives are mounted on rails, which lessen noise and make insertion and removal that bit easier.

Moving round the inside of the case, you reach the motherboard area. For a case of this size, price and spec, I was disappointed to see that the motherboard was not mounted on a tray for easy access. So much thought and effort has gone into the rest of the case, this oversight was a real letdown. Due to this, installing the mainboard proved to be tricky. The mainboard itself is cooled by 2 further 120mm fans, oddly set at 90-degree angles to themselves. Now I'm not an expert in fluid dynamics, but I'm sure this actually hampers cooling, due to creating turbulence. Ah well, I'm sure the people at Antec know what they are doing.

I should mention that all the fans have very smart speed settings, they are not just "on or off", there is a selector switch on each fan to go "low" "medium" or "high". Unless you're running really hot components *cough* Pentium *cough* it's best to leave them as they are.

Over the mainboard there is a giant bit of plastic, meant to cool the GPU. It's like an air duct. There is space to mount a 92mm fan if you like. I'm not sure how useful this is, but with a fan installed its quite noisy. I left mine off.

Just to summarise that section, since it could have been quite tough reading, the thing is tough to put together. It took me (and I'm reasonable competent) the best part of 36 hours.

How quiet is it?
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Well, pretty quiet is the answer. Anyone have an Xbox360? Well it's quieter than one of those, although bear in mind it depends on what components you put into it. Mine is only audible when the room is silent, and that's with 2 HD's, a 7900gt, and an Athlon 64 processor.

Anything else?
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Well yeah, a couple of things. First is front panel connectivity, which I think I mentioned. You get easily accessible connectors for USB, Firewire and sound. The only thing is, as is the norm for the case, they are fiddly to connect.

One of the last, but most important things to talk about, is Antec themselves. I've had an Antec case previously, and I want to stand up and say just how great their customer service is. I've had my previous case, an Antec Sonata, for a couple of years now, and initially when I bought it I lost some of the rubber grommets needed to put the case together. A quick email to Antec, and replacements were sent to me free of charge.

Remember that broken fan? A free replacement has just arrived in the post from Antec. I could have kept the old PC afterall.
Summary
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A tricky to put together case with good cooling performance, that's relatively quiet. A big minus is the complexity, and the fcat it comes with out a PSU. Make sure you buy an Antec PSU, since a) it'll be quiet and b) have cables that are long enough to reach to the top of this case.

Recommended, if you have the patience of a saint.