Antec P-180 SPCR build (pics)

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c1001

Gawd
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Oct 24, 2004
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943
I have finally put a new rig together with a new Antec P-180 case.
The innards are an Asus A8V mobo, Antec Phantom 500x passive PSU, eVGA 6800gt with a Zalman VF-700CU (fan run at 7volts), AMD 64 3500+ (stock) with a Scythe Ninja CPU heatsink run passively, 1gb Corsair XMS RAM, 2x Seagate 200gb HDD in a RAID 1 config, Liteon DVD-RW and DVD combo, Mitsumi 7-1 reader/floppy, 5 120mm case fans [3x 120mm Nexus (intake), 1x 120mm Coolermaster LED (exhaust) and 1x120mm SilenX LED (exhaust). Feedback is appreciated.

Here are the innards:


Close up of the mobo area:

By cutting out several sections of the floppy disk bracket and the mobo tray, I was able to keep most of the PSU cables out of sight. They are hidden by the upper HDD cage.

Here is the Nexus inbetween the PSU and the lower HDD cage. This fan needs guards on both sides to prevent HDD and PSU cables form getting caught in the blades.


Scythe Ninja under lights. Ain't she purrty! These two exhaust fans running at around 1200rpm are doing a good job at keeping the 3500+ cool.


Here is the front of the beast. You can see the blue LED light from the exhaust fan.


The bottom front case fan door hides another mod. I shaved several millimeters from the Nexus fan bracket so that it would fit in the space between the lower HDD cage and the front case wall (can't understand why Antec souldn't have designed the lower HDD assembly 3-5mm back to make this easier). The HDD cage can be inserted and removed without any friction from the fan, and th fan blades do not hit anything. In addition, I had to replace the stock fan filter with this AC Ryan one. I had to sand down around 3mm from the filter frame so that the front case fan door could close.

The two lower case fans provide plenty of air to cool th passive Antec PSU.

I am impressed with the temps and silent performance of the case.I ran Rthdribl for 30 minutes to add some load.


Asus probe temps:
Idle Load
23c - mobo 25c - mobo
39c- CPU 45c -CPU
CPU temps are higher than the 33c idle 39c load temps the 3500+ had with a Zalman CNPS-7000B-Cu LED CPU cooler, but this is a passive cooler.

With no PSU or CPU fans and with the 6800gt voltmodded to 7v, this is a really quiet build. The loudest noise are the two exhaust fans. In the kitchen I could not hear them over the refrigerator hum.

Case impressions:
This is a reaaallly heavy case when built. There isn't a good way to lift it. It is too low to the ground to get your fingers under it. On the rear wall there a are number of solid handholds, but the front is just a plastic door on a light plastic frame - definitely not designed to lift by. THIS CASE NEEDS WHEELS. Overall, it is overengineered in a number of areas. There is a lot of extra steel in the case that does not add to structural stength. An example is the middle fan bracket in the bottom of the case which stretches across the case, even though the last inch on either side does not touch the case walls or floor Just extra weight that doesn't provide any support. The entire floppy disk holder assembly is made of heavy solid steel when it could be made at least partially perforated. Floppies aren't known for their noise or vibrations.. This bracket also eats up valuable cable routing room on the side of the case. I ended up cutting out a good chunk of it. The plastic parts of the case seem flimsy compared to the steel sections. The plastic hinges and tabs on the case walls and door seem too easy to snap.

It is a solid quiet case. The black SPCR edition looks menancingly low profile. I just don't want to have to move this case too often.

One quality control complaint:


As you can see I am having the problem that several others are. The plastic on the side panel is seperating from the steel beneath. I'll need to call Antec about this.
 
:eek: can i have the Scythe Ninja??? please :D nice case overall, but i personally didnt buy it for the same 'faults' u mentioned, good case nonetheless
 
pincho said:
:eek: can i have the Scythe Ninja??? please
Click to expand...


The Scythe Ninja surprised me. The SPCR review of it in the P180 is what convinced me to try it. The mounting system for the Ninja is a love hate thing. It has two pressure mount bars which you push down to snap to a retention bracket. I love that you can just snap it on to the mobo with the mobo mounted in a case (although I don't think you could remove it that way). I hate that forcing the bars down causes torque and the base of the heatsink wants to slip to the side away from where you are pushing. This torque, and the counter-pressure that you have to apply to prevent it, can and does mar the surface of the cpu and heatsink base.
 
i put a scythe ninja in my p180 too, getting that damned thing clipped in is a biiiitch.
 
c1001, have you considered routing the four-pin ATX12V cable under the motherboard? That might help a little bit.
 
_Korruption_ said:
c1001, have you considered routing the four-pin ATX12V cable under the motherboard? That might help a little bit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought about it, but would have to mod the cable by lengthening it or by removing the molex connector that comes attached to that cable. I ran out of patience for now!
 
c1001 said:
Yeah, I thought about it, but would have to mod the cable by lengthening it or by removing the molex connector that comes attached to that cable. I ran out of patience for now!
Click to expand...
So wait, I'm confused. Either A or B?

A) The ATX12V cable isn't long enough to go under the board and come back up
B) There's a molex connector attached to the ATX12V? Sounds unlikely.
 
My mistake.
ATX 12 cable that came with the Antec Phantom has a PCI-E connector on it. I would need to remove it and splice the cables in order to get ot to fit BEHIND the motherboard
(I would also have to cut yet another hole in the motherboard tray). Getting that cable to fit UNDER the motherboard would be touch and go as the cable is thick enough to cause some grounding issues. With the PCI-E coonector it would be impossible. I've had cables under the motherboard cause grounding issues in the past, so I only put thin fan, audio or front panel wires under a motherboard if I have to.
 
I'm doing my fist ever build now in the same case and have a couple of questions:

1) What is the trick to getting the floppy installed using the rails? Do you come in from the front or back? My rails can't get past the piece of metal that they are supposed to lock onto.

2) I am also using the Mitsumi floppy/card reader, do I have to connect the ribbon cable and USB cable in addition to the power cable?

3) Where do I plug in the various fans? Just to a line from the PSU or is there a spot on the mobo (I'm using the Asus A8N-SLI Premium)?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
 
SphincterBoy said:
3) Where do I plug in the various fans? Just to a line from the PSU or is there a spot on the mobo (I'm using the Asus A8N-SLI Premium)?
Click to expand...
Either that fits your needs.

If the fan has RPM monitoring, you can plug it into your motherboard. I hook most of my non-monitored fans to my PSU for the sake of wire management.
 
c1001 said:
One quality control complaint:


As you can see I am having the problem that several others are. The plastic on the side panel is seperating from the steel beneath. I'll need to call Antec about this.
Click to expand...




Li Li all the way... never hear about quality problems with their cases. :D
 
SphincterBoy said:
I'm doing my fist ever build now in the same case and have a couple of questions:

1) What is the trick to getting the floppy installed using the rails? Do you come in from the front or back? My rails can't get past the piece of metal that they are supposed to lock onto.

2) I am also using the Mitsumi floppy/card reader, do I have to connect the ribbon cable and USB cable in addition to the power cable?

3) Where do I plug in the various fans? Just to a line from the PSU or is there a spot on the mobo (I'm using the Asus A8N-SLI Premium)?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
Click to expand...

1. No real trick. Just make sure that the rail brackets aren't reversed and are mounted to the correct set of holes on the floppy.

2. You have to connect the ribbon cable if you want the floppy to work and the USB cable if you want the card readers to work. The SLI premium should have three USB connections on it, plenty.

3. Personal preference here. Most fans have 3-pin and 4 pin connectors. If you want the mobo to monitor the fan speeds and have 3-pin connectors on our fans, plug the appropriate fans to their respective fan connector as indicated in the A8N-SLI manual. The four pin molex connector is used to plug the fan into the PSU. They can be daisy chained together, and you should not have any problem connecting four or five fans to one molex connector from the PSU as they are low power items. A two-pin fan (no yellow wire) should not be plugged into the mobo as the mobo cannot read the fan speed of this type of fan.
 
There's supposedly a revised door. My p180 came w/the revised door but I bought mine like 2 weeks ago from Newegg so it is relatively new. The new door includes more magnets I believe you can get a replacement from Antec itself. Please refer to this thread @ SPCR for more details : link
 
Do you think a YateLoon 120mm could be sanded down to fit in the front of the lower chamber?
 
I would call Antec on that side panel...that would anger me :mad:



Great pics...love the case
 
OrAnGe said:
Do you think a YateLoon 120mm could be sanded down to fit in the front of the lower chamber?
Click to expand...

Most likely yes. The Yate and the Nexus which I used have the same shape. Just remember to use a dremel or a sander on low power so as not to melt the plastic as you are sanding away.
 
c1001 said:
Most likely yes. The Yate and the Nexus which I used have the same shape. Just remember to use a dremel or a sander on low power so as not to melt the plastic as you are sanding away.
Click to expand...

Ok I was thinking of getting two YateLoon 120's for the front since you belive they could probably be sanded down the same. The question is would two yates undermine the silence of the case or are they of acceptable DB to use with the antec's on low. I only ask because the nexus is 15$ and the yate is 8$.
 
For the OP, some questions on [H]ard|Drives

Are your Barracudas PATA/IDE or SATA?
If they are SATA, how is the seek noise on them?
Did you consider Samsung drives?
 
Where did you shave off your nexus fan to fit it in the lower chamber. On the top and bottom. On the front or back? What?

Oh and did you have to drill new holes for the fan screws?
 
DougLite said:
For the OP, some questions on [H]ard|Drives

Are your Barracudas PATA/IDE or SATA?
If they are SATA, how is the seek noise on them?
Did you consider Samsung drives?
Click to expand...

I can't answer for the Barracudas but I have a P180 and a 74GB Raptor and I cant here it at all unless I stick my ear with in about 6inches of the case and the rest of the room is silent. The P180 does have a few flaws but it sure is quiet. HD's stay nice and cool too.
 
They've fixed to door issue, fyi. Just make sure you get a new P-180 if you plan to purchase.
 
Can we get pics of your PSU cable-routing job? I'm curious to see where you cut, as I'm considering doing this myself...
 
I love the P180! great case, a heavy mofo tho!
I wanna put up pics of my Modd to it, but dont know how to post pictures. any help?
 
IceyN1pPles said:
I love the P180! great case, a heavy mofo tho!
I wanna put up pics of my Modd to it, but dont know how to post pictures. any help?
Click to expand...
imageshack
photobucket
supload

Start a new thread :D
 
c1001 said:
I have finally put a new rig together with a new Antec P-180 case.
The innards are an Asus A8V mobo, Antec Phantom 500x passive PSU, eVGA 6800gt with a Zalman VF-700CU (fan run at 7volts), AMD 64 3500+ (stock) with a Scythe Ninja CPU heatsink run passively, 1gb Corsair XMS RAM, 2x Seagate 200gb HDD in a RAID 1 config, Liteon DVD-RW and DVD combo, Mitsumi 7-1 reader/floppy, 5 120mm case fans [3x 120mm Nexus (intake), 1x 120mm Coolermaster LED (exhaust) and 1x120mm SilenX LED (exhaust). Feedback is appreciated.

Here are the innards:


Close up of the mobo area:

By cutting out several sections of the floppy disk bracket and the mobo tray, I was able to keep most of the PSU cables out of sight. They are hidden by the upper HDD cage.

Here is the Nexus inbetween the PSU and the lower HDD cage. This fan needs guards on both sides to prevent HDD and PSU cables form getting caught in the blades.


Scythe Ninja under lights. Ain't she purrty! These two exhaust fans running at around 1200rpm are doing a good job at keeping the 3500+ cool.


Here is the front of the beast. You can see the blue LED light from the exhaust fan.


The bottom front case fan door hides another mod. I shaved several millimeters from the Nexus fan bracket so that it would fit in the space between the lower HDD cage and the front case wall (can't understand why Antec souldn't have designed the lower HDD assembly 3-5mm back to make this easier). The HDD cage can be inserted and removed without any friction from the fan, and th fan blades do not hit anything. In addition, I had to replace the stock fan filter with this AC Ryan one. I had to sand down around 3mm from the filter frame so that the front case fan door could close.

The two lower case fans provide plenty of air to cool th passive Antec PSU.

I am impressed with the temps and silent performance of the case.I ran Rthdribl for 30 minutes to add some load.


Asus probe temps:
Idle Load
23c - mobo 25c - mobo
39c- CPU 45c -CPU
CPU temps are higher than the 33c idle 39c load temps the 3500+ had with a Zalman CNPS-7000B-Cu LED CPU cooler, but this is a passive cooler.

With no PSU or CPU fans and with the 6800gt voltmodded to 7v, this is a really quiet build. The loudest noise are the two exhaust fans. In the kitchen I could not hear them over the refrigerator hum.

Case impressions:
This is a reaaallly heavy case when built. There isn't a good way to lift it. It is too low to the ground to get your fingers under it. On the rear wall there a are number of solid handholds, but the front is just a plastic door on a light plastic frame - definitely not designed to lift by. THIS CASE NEEDS WHEELS. Overall, it is overengineered in a number of areas. There is a lot of extra steel in the case that does not add to structural stength. An example is the middle fan bracket in the bottom of the case which stretches across the case, even though the last inch on either side does not touch the case walls or floor Just extra weight that doesn't provide any support. The entire floppy disk holder assembly is made of heavy solid steel when it could be made at least partially perforated. Floppies aren't known for their noise or vibrations.. This bracket also eats up valuable cable routing room on the side of the case. I ended up cutting out a good chunk of it. The plastic parts of the case seem flimsy compared to the steel sections. The plastic hinges and tabs on the case walls and door seem too easy to snap.

It is a solid quiet case. The black SPCR edition looks menancingly low profile. I just don't want to have to move this case too often.

One quality control complaint:


As you can see I am having the problem that several others are. The plastic on the side panel is seperating from the steel beneath. I'll need to call Antec about this.
Click to expand...



did you use the mod where you drill out the rivets and then add the fan or did you just shave a fan down to fit in that little space with the bracket?
 
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