Antec 1200 Review (not 56k friendly)
Well, here is my first review EVER! 
I said I was getting an Antec 1200 and now I have it!
When this arrived at my door I was certainly suprised at its size!
I got it out the box and had a look.
The all black theme certainly looks brilliant. The paint looks good. Not too thick or thin. Also the plastic on the front is so solid and high quality that it feels like metal.
Lets take off the side panel.
The black interior makes a nice change from the standard grey/white. I noticed that this case has ALOT of thumb screw. It is tooless, but not that easy. Also, the lower sidepanel screw was so tight, I had to use a screw driver to undo it. TJHarlow on Youtube had the same problem with the same screw. Nevertheless this is a very minor problem (if its even considered a problem). Very conveniently all of the motherboard stand-offs were in all the correct places. Strangely, they use different sized screws which are included in the accessory box which we will have a look at now.
This box was in the bottom harddrive cage. To get it out, you have to remove the cage. This is done by removing both sidepanels, then eight thumb screws (four each side). Then the harddrive cage slides out the front. The box was held in with masking tape so that it doesnt leave any glue residue on the metal.
When I put the harddrive cage back in, the dust filter handle (a small plastic tab) sometimes pops up and hits the above harddrive cage. While this isn't a very big problem it can be quite annoying and may lead to accidentally breaking one one day.
In the Accesory box is a bag of assorded thumb screws. Long screws for the harddrives, 51/4 to 3 1/2 bay adapter. Lots of stand-offs and three removable cable ties. Three more are included pre-attached to the case for cable management.
Here you can see a size comparison to a standered ATX case. The smaller one is 46CM tall. The Antec 1200 dawarfs it!
So, after checking it out I got to work on transferring my old hardware into this new case. NOTE that I am getting a new PSU in a few days and this Winpower 550W is only temperary. :biggrin_mini:
Strangly enough, my £25 case has a removable motherboard tray which was very suprising when I was disassembling it.
This made things alot easier :yahoo:
Eventually, after some time I got everything moved over. Sadly, my PSU's cables were nowhere near long enough to reach the 24 pin or the 4 pin CPU power. This was very annoying because I had forgot to order some cable extenders. Because of the PSU mounting position in the Antec 1200 it is mandatory that you buy cable extenders if you don't want cables running infront of everything.
Like I said, I'm getting a new PSU with longer, sleeved black cables along with some cable extenders which should make cable management alot easier.
To work on the Antec 1200 was a very nice experiance. Much better than my old case. With a really solid high quality feel and no sharp edges I can definatly reccomend this case. However, if you are looking for a case which you can just stick together in 5 minutes, then you will want somthing without screws, just plastic tool-less operation. I prefer the Antec 1200 over cases like the Thermaltake Armor + because it doesnt feel so temporary. It feels like its going to be a nice setup which wont need tinkering all the time. Unfortunatly, this is not me at the moment :lol2:
As you can see, I've had to "mount" the PSU externally in order to use it. :mellow:
Luckily this is only temporary.
So, here is my setup for now.
As for noise levels, the Antec 1200 is very quiet on low. It also does shift alot of air on low. Its brilliant. Nowhere near as loud as the HEXUS reviews make it out to be. Even on high, the loudest thing is the rear and top fans, making a low pitched hum. Its still perfectly acceptable and much quieter than an intel HSF, those things sound like planes on max! The airflow on high is amazing.
Overall, I feel that this is a brilliant case. It has exeptional build quality, brilliant looks and airflow and ontop of that its very quiet. Also, there is loads of space to work in and no sharp edges.
I highly reccomend this case!
PS, very sorry about image sizes, I don't know how to resize.
I said I was getting an Antec 1200 and now I have it!
When this arrived at my door I was certainly suprised at its size!
I got it out the box and had a look.
The all black theme certainly looks brilliant. The paint looks good. Not too thick or thin. Also the plastic on the front is so solid and high quality that it feels like metal.
Lets take off the side panel.
The black interior makes a nice change from the standard grey/white. I noticed that this case has ALOT of thumb screw. It is tooless, but not that easy. Also, the lower sidepanel screw was so tight, I had to use a screw driver to undo it. TJHarlow on Youtube had the same problem with the same screw. Nevertheless this is a very minor problem (if its even considered a problem). Very conveniently all of the motherboard stand-offs were in all the correct places
. Strangely, they use different sized screws which are included in the accessory box which we will have a look at now.This box was in the bottom harddrive cage. To get it out, you have to remove the cage. This is done by removing both sidepanels, then eight thumb screws (four each side). Then the harddrive cage slides out the front. The box was held in with masking tape so that it doesnt leave any glue residue on the metal.
When I put the harddrive cage back in, the dust filter handle (a small plastic tab) sometimes pops up and hits the above harddrive cage. While this isn't a very big problem it can be quite annoying and may lead to accidentally breaking one one day.
In the Accesory box is a bag of assorded thumb screws. Long screws for the harddrives, 51/4 to 3 1/2 bay adapter. Lots of stand-offs and three removable cable ties. Three more are included pre-attached to the case for cable management.
Here you can see a size comparison to a standered ATX case. The smaller one is 46CM tall. The Antec 1200 dawarfs it!
So, after checking it out I got to work on transferring my old hardware into this new case. NOTE that I am getting a new PSU in a few days and this Winpower 550W is only temperary. :biggrin_mini:
Strangly enough, my £25 case has a removable motherboard tray which was very suprising when I was disassembling it.
This made things alot easier :yahoo:
Eventually, after some time I got everything moved over. Sadly, my PSU's cables were nowhere near long enough to reach the 24 pin or the 4 pin CPU power. This was very annoying because I had forgot to order some cable extenders. Because of the PSU mounting position in the Antec 1200 it is mandatory that you buy cable extenders if you don't want cables running infront of everything.
Like I said, I'm getting a new PSU with longer, sleeved black cables along with some cable extenders which should make cable management alot easier.
To work on the Antec 1200 was a very nice experiance. Much better than my old case. With a really solid high quality feel and no sharp edges I can definatly reccomend this case. However, if you are looking for a case which you can just stick together in 5 minutes, then you will want somthing without screws, just plastic tool-less operation. I prefer the Antec 1200 over cases like the Thermaltake Armor + because it doesnt feel so temporary. It feels like its going to be a nice setup which wont need tinkering all the time. Unfortunatly, this is not me at the moment :lol2:
As you can see, I've had to "mount" the PSU externally in order to use it. :mellow:
Luckily this is only temporary.
So, here is my setup for now.
As for noise levels, the Antec 1200 is very quiet on low. It also does shift alot of air on low. Its brilliant. Nowhere near as loud as the HEXUS reviews make it out to be. Even on high, the loudest thing is the rear and top fans, making a low pitched hum. Its still perfectly acceptable and much quieter than an intel HSF, those things sound like planes on max! The airflow on high is amazing.
Overall, I feel that this is a brilliant case. It has exeptional build quality, brilliant looks and airflow and ontop of that its very quiet. Also, there is loads of space to work in and no sharp edges.
I highly reccomend this case!
PS, very sorry about image sizes, I don't know how to resize.
0
Comments
But thanks for posting this up. I have a friend who has been eyeing the 1200 for his next case and it's great to have somebody on a site we know that actually posts his comments about it.
Are you using the fan speed controllers at all or did you just set them once and move on, I hated having to take apart the 900 to change speeds for "legit reasons"....whatever those could be.
Take apart the case? There is little knobs on the front of the case to controll the front fans and a small panel with switches to control the rear fans with a low, medium and high setting. I dont have to take anything apart. Erm yes i could actually mount it in the other but then my desk wouldnt have much space lol. :P
Antec 900 Gaming case:
Less fans included then the 1200. By default two 120mm in the front, one 120mm in the back and the 200mm mounted on the top.
It may look that there is some space between the side case plate and the front but that is because I didn't have it tightly secured with the rear screws.
Top angle with huge and silent fan. Included is a tray for your condoms....errr..change and guitar pics.
Love the design for the harddrives, easy access.
If I ever want to go water-cooled, no need for drilling out holes.
Inside, back to front.
Inside, front to back.
Ooops, how did this get there....oh yeah, the reason I must regularly clean the case out.
All in all, I love this case. All fans currently set to low and you can hardly hear this thing if not for the video card running Folding@Home's GPU2. As stated earlier in this thread, this case is smaller then it's big brother the 1200 but with 1TB and 1.5TB drives for next to nothing, who really needs all those extra drive bays anyways. Spacious and roomy and a smart design, this is by far the greatest and coolest case I have ever owned.
its 120mm in the front and back and 200mm on the top of the 900
Thanks for correcting me. I was too lazy to pull the boxes out of storage and check the manual.
I've only had this case for a month, this jsut goes to show that this thing really does shift some air. Hardly any dust in my case too
One problem I do have however is that the acrylic side panal window is poor quality, and i have accedentally scratched it with all those circular micro scratches by using a flanel and some window cleaner. However, this doesnt bother me too much it still is slightly annoying. Anyway, I LOVE this case