Antec's New P380 is a Piece of Modern Art

Editor's Note: While Computex took place last week and all of the news announcements are behind us, we're still sorting through hundreds of in-person meetings and demonstrations, picking out just a few more of the most interesting items we saw up close.

Antec announced its Performance One P380 enclosure at Computex 2014, and this case takes the designs of the original P180, the newer P280, and evolves it all a step further into present-day styling.

The case is built with a front and top made completely from 6 mm-thick aluminum. As such, it is very tough, but also heavy, although the older Performance One cases were also very heavy. The chassis is a full-size ATX enclosure with room for plenty of hardware.

Along with the modern-day dismissal of optical drives, the case no longer has any 5.25" optical drive bays. Instead, behind the gorgeous front of the enclosure is a bracket that can hold a slim optical drive, either slot-loading or tray-loading. The beauty of this system is that if you don't use these brackets, you won't be left with ugly unused optical drive bays. Inside the enclosure there is space for ten 3.5" drives.

Front I/O is handled by the ordinary pair of USB 2.0 ports, pair of USB 3.0 ports, and HD audio jacks, and it also comes with a neat little feature: the I/O module can be swapped to present the ports either on the left or the right of the enclosure, making sure that you can always get access to them regardless of which end of the desk or floor you place the chassis on. The same goes for the power switch – Antec simply put a power switch on both sides of the chassis.

Antec also hasn't taken cooling support lightly. The case can house up to two 360 mm radiators simultaneously along with a rear 120 mm exhaust fan. In place of the 360 mm radiator spots, users can mount either three 120 mm fans or two 140 mm fans.

Pricing for the case is predicted to sit around €229, which is perhaps a bit steep, but if you consider the manufacturing quality you get from Antec, combined with the materials in this case, it's actually not such a bad deal. It is a very premium chassis, after all. And this case looks even more impressive in person than it does in pictures.

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