Antec P183 Case Review

Posted by: David Mitchelson (Mishima) on: 04/24/2009 10:10 AM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

Interior

From the outset the P183 on the inside looks very similar to the P180 and for the most part there haven't been any major changes. The P183 follows on the brilliant workmanship previous Antec cases have given us. Casting our eyes inside the case we see that the dual chamber design is still there, the power supply is nicely isolated at the very bottom of the case and there is a small shutter that allows you to feed cables through but minimize the gap thus enhancing the effectiveness of the airflow in and around the case. Towards the front of the case inside this lower chamber is a cage that can host up to 4 hard disk drives.

Directly above this compartment is another cage that can host a further 2 hard disk drives. Again the concept behind mounting these cages is similar to the P180. To remove a cage - remove a thumbscrew and pull the ring towards you to extract the cage. Once the cage is out, depending on which cage you have removed requires a different approach to installing a drive. To mount a hard disk drive in the upper cage you must remove a tray from the cage and use the large headed screws to secure the drive onto the tray. Care much be taken not to tighten these screws too hard as this will hinder the anti-vibration concept. For this I have made sure not to tighten the screws. Soon as this is done slide the tray into the cage and place the cage back into the fitment, applying the thumbscrew and slotting the ring back in place.

As you can see so far, you are able to completely isolate certain devices and completely customise the inside to your requirements. If you install your hard disk drives in the bottom chamber this allows you to install a fan to the upper 3.5" cage by placing the two clips provided which ultimately supplies some additional cooling for your GPU. One thing to note is that we only have 2 120mm fans inside the P183, but extra fans can be installed to the front side of the case quite easily.

In and around the P183 there are anti-vibration strips to reduce noise. The door panels in particular have been equipped with some extra padding to dull out noise.