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Up And Down With Antec's P180 Case
By ,
1. Introduction

Wrangling with Antec’s new P180 case proved one of the most challenging upgrades I’ve had in a long time. Granted, it’s been a while since I upgraded my system, but taking into account all of the funky cases I’ve owned over the years, the P180 is definitely up there in terms of complexity. The results of your efforts, though, will be rewarding.

The finished system, in all its glory

The impetus to upgrade came from talking to folks at the Intel Developer Forum. My computers have not been upgraded in nearly three years. I didn’t see a need. My sole game of interest is EverQuest, which doesn’t require a top-of-the-line machine. Granted, I have to turn off particle effects when raiding, but that’s because without them I simply can’t see what’s happening when 20 or more people are casting spells at once, not because of system lag.

So I got by just fine with a 3 GHz Pentium 4 PC with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card. My only hardware upgrade in recent years had been the Radeon, after my old GeForce 4 died (ever see the fan on a video card freeze in place ?).

My main reason for wanting to upgrade was two-fold : one, I wanted better video, and the move to PCI Express was limiting my AGP options. I could get a new AGP card, but the performance bump would be marginal. Second, my P4s were old Northwoods and ran ridiculously hot. Even with a Thermaltake XP-90 heatsink and fan, the heat coming from the case was insane. The case sat under my desk and heat would build up, like a cloud, and eventually assault me in a wave. In the winter, it was welcome. During the summer, it most definitely was not.

I began my quest for parts on the Sunday after a lovely six-hour drive back from IDF. After doing some homework (on THG, of course), I settled on an Athlon 64 because it was more gamer-oriented and didn’t double as a hot plate like some Intel chips. Glowing reviews steered me toward the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum motherboard. Not needing a super high-end video card, I settled on an ATI Radeon X800 XL card.

Much to my dismay, my preferred retail outlet, PC Club, didn’t have all of the pieces I wanted. All they had was the Neo4. I was forced to journey up the street to that bane of technology retail, Fry’s Electronics. There, I got the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, a 530-watt Enermax power supply and the P180 case.

The Antec’s unique power supply location, with the 120 mm fan to cool it.

I would recycle the memory, 1 GB of Mushkin PC-3200 RAM, a Maxtor 120 GB SATA drive and Sound Blaster Audigy from my original primary system. I also would strip my secondary system and move its memory and hard drive into the previous main system, taking its DVD drives and using it in my new Antec/Athlon machine.

However, with a looming deadline on a large feature story, I had to hold off on finishing construction because down time was not in the cards. The main system is also my work computer. So the following day I finished my feature (on AMD, ironically). With that done, I dismantled my former main system to remove its hard drive and floppy. The hard disk from the old secondary system went into the former main computer. Because both the original main and secondary systems had the same motherboard - Asus P4P800 SE - the new secondary system would reboot with a new drive with no problems. This saved me a ton of time.

2. Wrestling With The Antec

Antec designed the P180 for the hobbyist and system builder. However, their documentation seems to assume people need no help at all putting this beast together. Documentation is almost non-existent, and for a case this different in design, that’s simply not acceptable. There were some written instructions, but no illustrations, which this beast demands.

It took a little longer to install the PSU and snake the cables through an opening separating the power supply area from the rest of the case. The power supply sits at the bottom with a large 120 mm fan pointed right at it. The case is two feet tall, so you have to make sure your power supply has power cords long enough to reach the CD or DVD-ROM drives that are in the 5.25" bays.

However, this design has its purpose. It keeps the power supply’s heat away from the motherboard. Between an insulating wall of aluminum and the fan blowing directly on the power supply, none of its heat will get to the motherboard area at all.

Then the board, with mounted CPU and memory, went in quickly. With no power supply getting in the way, mounting was much easier than any other system I’ve built. Removable drives and the sound card were also added.

Drive installation was rather simple. Like many newer case designs, you attach mounting brackets to all of the drives and slide them into place. The P180 can hold six internal 3.5" drives in two bays capable of holding three drives each. Both drive bays slide in and out of place and are held securely with large screws. There is also a mounting bracket by both drive bays for 120 mm fans to keep them cool, if you want to add more fans.

The motherboard space is open and easy to access.

There are three stock 120 mm fans and room for at least two more, as described above. In its out-of-box form, there is no fan on the side, with no direct internal fans sucking in air. However, that doesn’t appear to be an impediment.

Another nit-pick on my part : the power connectors on the 120 mm fans require connecting them to the four-prong power plugs from the power supply. It would have been very nice to use the motherboard connections, so they can be controlled and monitored via motherboard fan controls.

3. Houston, We Have A Problem

So, everything is in the new system, I hook everything up internally, connect my monitor and keyboard, power it up and then : Nothing.

The fans spin but that’s it. After an hour of experimenting, I was forced to drag it to PC Club, since it was their motherboard and the most likely point of failure. This meant carrying a case weighing nearly 40 lbs. down the stairs (living on the second floor has its drawbacks) and dealing with L.A. traffic at dinner time, but this computer had to be up and running for the next day.

Fortunately, the PC Club tech knows me and knows I am capable enough to operate on my own. So he gave me free reign over his power screwdrivers and I set to work while he took care of other customers. This would never happen at CompUSA or Fry’s, which is why PC Club gets my business.

Eventually - and this is a big gap in time here where I completely took everything off the computer except for the PSU, one stick of RAM and the CPU - we figured it out : the power supply, an Enermax FMA 535, didn’t have a 12v plug. It had the 20+4 plug for the Athlon motherboard, which I thought was enough. It even says on the Enermax box that it’s designed for an A64 board, but it doesn’t have that extra four-prong plug that’s needed to start things up. Once it was determined that the Enermax was the culprit, we replaced it with a chrome-plated Soly Tech 460 watt power supply, and things worked fine. The Enermax went back to Fry’s, where it’s undoubtedly sitting on the shelf for the next sucker to purchase.

The motherboard installed, with the two 120 mm fans for venting.

Rebuilding the computer was another bit of major surgery and the PC Club tech uttered a gem : "Man, you’ve convinced me that I never want to own this case." But once it was reassembled and everything connected, he could see how the airflow worked and understood what Antec was aiming at. The case had proven a bit of a fascination among the staff, as the sales reps came over to see it. One of them tried to convince the store manager to carry the case, but his boss refused. It’s not too often the staff of a computer store comes over to check out a case.

So, with a shiny chrome 460-watt replacement, I had the computer running. Back home, back up the stairs, and I’ve gotten my exercise for the day. Windows XP was installed, along with Service Pack 1 and almost 30 hot fixes. I have stayed away from SP2 because it used to lock up EverQuest whenever it rained in the game, and we can’t have that, now, can we ?

4. In The End

So what did I get for my trouble ? See below.

3DMark 05 Performance Comparison
Test P4/9800 Pro A4000+/X800 XL Gain/Loss
3DMark Score 1,806 4,120 128.10%
GT1 (fps) 7.6 18 136.80%
GT2 (fps) 5.1 12.5 145.10%
GT3 (fps) 9.8 19.3 96.90%
CPU Score (CPU marks) 4,089 4,059 -0.70%
CPU Test 1 (fps) 2.3 2.4 4.30%
CPU Test 2 (fps) 3.2 3.1 -3.10%
Fill rate - Single texture (Mtexels/s) 1,982 2,972 49.90%
Fill rate - Multi-texturing (MTexels/s) 3,026 6,344 109.70%
Pixel Shader (fps) 30.8 78 153.20%
Vertex Shader - simple (Mverticies/s) 46.1 52.5 13.90%
Vertex Shader - complex (Mverticies/s) 27.1 37 36.50%

There is no question the X800 XL flattens the old 9800 Pro. However, I’ve gotten nothing for upgraded processing. The 4000+ is the processing equivalent of a three-year-old Northwood 3 GHz CPU. The only real benefit for me will be if I decide to add more than 4 GB of memory (and run 64-bit Windows).

The hard drive bay, with a place holder for a 120 mm fan.

In fact, I have found one area where the Athlon performance is inferior to that of the Intel CPU. I frequently play two characters at once in EQ, running two separate instances of the program on a single computer. EQ has an auto follow option, so one character can follow behind the movements of another. I use that feature to move two characters at once.

However, with the Athlon, the second client lags so badly that I simply can’t auto follow. The client running in the background runs so slowly that the character falls behind and eventually stops following within seconds. I had this problem with the Intel chip, but it was never this severe. Perhaps it had to do with HyperThreading. Whatever the reason, it will seriously cramp my play style, that’s for certain.

It’s rather annoying that I’ve spent over $1,000 to upgrade my video, because when it comes right down to it, that’s all I’ve gotten. AGP is being phased out, left behind. So to get a decent new video card, not even top of the line, I had to make a huge investment. To be sure, I could have gone with a $75 case that had its own power supply. The Antec cost $159 and new power supply was another $99. But it’s still a big chunk of coin to lay out.

The other benefit is that the heat is definitely reduced. Even with the stock AMD fan, the CPU is at 37 degrees Celsius, or 98 degrees Fahrenheit, and the case temperature is a few degrees cooler. The air coming out of the top and back of the case is far cooler, and I don’t get assaulted by the blasts of heat like I used to. I used to keep a floor fan under the desk just to disperse the heat building up down there. Now it’s no longer needed. Even without direct intake fans, the Antec has tremendous suction, which means even more dust accumulation than on most cases. When I built this case, the old number one system, using the Termaltake case, was thoroughly cleaned. One month later, the dust build-up around the Antec’s intake vents is significantly worse than it is on the Thermaltake. So it will require regular and aggressive cleaning.

The assembled system, before I tucked the wires away.

Retiring the former number two computer was also a plus. That thing wasn’t just a computer, it was a heating unit. I could never put my finger on it, but that thing pumped out ridiculous amounts of heat. It was also the loudest computer in the house. The former primary computer is housed in a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case, which is quieter and much cooler (not to mention a dust magnet of the highest order). The overall noise and heat in this place is greatly reduced for this upgrade.

Money well spent ? I’d feel more confident saying yes if I had the money to really spare.

If there is a good purchase in all of this, it’s the Antec case. The stock fans do a very capable job. They have speed controls, low, medium and high, and on medium, the sound is quiet and cooling more than sufficient. There’s plenty of room in the case for case modders to go nuts with all kinds of modifications, like liquid cooling. It takes a little more effort to assemble the case due to the funky power supply placement, but in the end, it’s a very well-constructed case.