[Hardware Review] Antec P160

Sazar

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The saga of the new case begins

I went into Fry's here in Austin today and found this case for $79 after rebates and said, hey, its a nice piece of equipment, lets score it :)

Good case, really liked the extra's on it and here's a little review of the case.

First impressions

First off, its EXTREMELY LIGHT and looks rather sharp. Some el-cheapo components (plastic made to look like metal finish) but for the most part it is aluminium. Thumb screws all over the place so that is a really nice touch and I LOVE the removable motherboard tray.

The fans (it takes 2) are 120MM, it comes with 1 and I bought another for the front to cool the hdd's and suck some extra air into the case. Attaching the hard-drives was easy as pie and the case has a little extra compartment where the hdd's sit where you can store the tools/screws and other attachments. Nifty feature.

Droolage continues

The front panel connector is also rather nice and hooking up the USB ports was easy. The mic/headphone jacks can also be hooked up but I couldn't be bothered since my DSP headphone/mic connect via USB. I also didn't connect the firewire adaptor since I already have 2 firewire ports on my computer and it would have been redundant.

The front panel has a readout for 2 temps and cycles through it every few seconds. I attached the first temp sensor to around my HDD area and the 2nd to my mobo. I didn't attach one around my CPU because I have a zalman 7000 CU cooler and it keeps things pretty cool and quiet.

The side panels for the case (on the side its supposed to come off) is easy to remove and made life very simple for me as well. When I first started putting the case together I thought I would be done in no time.

And thats when I was proved wrong. Very wrong.

The case has some minor annoyances, but they are extremely time consuming.

Installation issues

The 5.25" drives in the front which you see in the pics take a VERY long time to hook up if you don't know any better. The user-guide for the case is a bloody joke. Antec, for all their wisdom really dropped the ball on this one.

Apparently in order to do anything with regards to putting the drives in, you HAVE to remove the entire front face of the rig. If you don't, you cannot physically insert the drives into the bays with the provided drive rails. It is impossible. To make matters more interesting you HAVE to remove the other side panel and in their profound wisdom Antec fail to mention you have to remove not 1 but TWO thumbscrews which are located on the INSIDE of the case, well away from where you might be able to reach them normally in order to pop it off. If you don't you will either bend the side panel beyond repair or snap one of the panels on the front or both.

Workaround found, much rejoicing
Once I managed to take the thumbscrews off I was happy and left them out because they served no purpose at all from what I could see.

Anyways, once this annoyance was taken care of, everything else proceeded smoothly.

Overall a very quiet case with exceptional air-flow especially when compared to my old Antec case which I had plenty of fans in.

I am going to add more to this later time permitting and if I take more pics.

Pro's:

- Easy to use
- Looks nice
- Relatively inexpensive
- Quiet
- Rubber grommets everywhere == no vibrations and extremely quiet case
- Lovely Blue led on the Front
- Front panel connectors are convenient height and temp read-out is nice feature
- Removable Motherboard tray
- 120 MM fans move a lot of air
- My cats love it.

Con's:

- Retarded instructions. Please PM me if you need assistance with this case rather than wasting time and money breaking stuff through trial and error
- Some thumbscrews are in incredibly ridiculous places and serve no purpose. As before, PM rather than breaking something
- Plastic finish on some surfaces looks cheaper than rest of the case
- PSU tray's design makes it difficult for some PSU's to fit. I had to remove my PSU's fan guard to use the tray.
- 5.25" bay design is ingenius but manner in which drives are installed is useless. A simple fix, cannot imagine why Antec would do such a thing.
- Kitty love may lead to scratches :(

Overall:

4/5 Osnn star rating. Reason it is high is once you get over the annoyances, it is actually an exceptional case. And it is quiet.

I didn't get the window version because I am not a big fan of windows, however that doesn't matter much to me.

Enjoy the pics and post comments.
 

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I also own this case and love it. My only complaints with it were that the front of case is plastic, and that it also scratches easily (I usually leave coins, keys, or something hard on top and I seem to have scratched mine.

Very quiet though and I think it was designed fairly well.


If you are constantly adding new CD / DVD drives to your PC you may want to skip out on this case, removing the cover too many times may actually damage it (the connectors are plastic and and only take so much stress from you pulling it off)

I should also throw in that the CD drive covers did not work with either my CD burner nor DVD burner so I had to remove them.
 
Yah the covers didn't work too well with my stuff so I left em in the box, and I agree about the removing/reinserting of the front panel.

It could have been aluminium like the sides and had a simple release mechanism. Ah well. The bad with the good, overall I don't mind :)
 
They didn't line up correctly so I took them off. I don't care that much about the color and stuff, looks fine to me.
 
That's an awesome review man :D

I dig the fact that your cats like it, as I have a kitty as well :)
 
Nice review, my brother has had this case for a couple years now. When he got it he loved it. I think the lcd panel burnt out after a couple months and some of the plastic parts broke after a while though. Good looking case though :)

I couldnt help but think "CAT ATTACK" when I saw that second pic :p
 
kcnychief said:
That's an awesome review man :D

I dig the fact that your cats like it, as I have a kitty as well :)

That one looks like a Siamese, or mix Saimese cat.

I had one for almost 16 years, she led a great life, and travelled the world with us.. I miss her...
 
mlakrid said:
That one looks like a Siamese, or mix Saimese cat.

I had one for almost 16 years, she led a great life, and travelled the world with us.. I miss her...

I'm not sure about a pure bred siamese... The tail looks somewhat off for that. We had a siamese cat, if I can find the pic

Pung Fu (the name my father gave, which is essentially Chinese for fat cat :laugh: ), was a pure bred Siamese... As can be seen, the tail on Pung Fu was longer, and more slender. My parents latter got a Persiun which had a shorter/fatter tail, albeit the Persian also had longer fir...

Some of the other features, other then the tail look a bit Siamese like. Saz's cat does have "extra claw mode" however (unless it was his other cat), so attack of the cat might not be far from the truth :D
 

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Did you know siamese cats have several breed standards, just like beagles (in the dog world) and it totally depends who you ask as to what the "official" breed standard is....
 
This

case

is

A-W-E-S-O-M-E

If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM me as well. I have the P160W model myself, and would be glad to help :)

I was simply amazed with how easy this case was to put together. I was impressed with everything Sazar mentioned previously, also with the fact that even the FDD and front fan cages were removeable. Simply amazing case, 5/5 stars hands down!
 
I have a slight problem with my case, which I have had since day 1 but it's becoming more of an issue. My power button is a bit sticky, in the sense when you push it down sometimes it sticks down and won't come back up, eventually powering the system back off again. My fix has been to use even pressure on both sides with two fingers ever so lightly until it turns on, but that's an inconvenience at times.

Do you know if this part is replaceable, or have another solution for me?
 
I wonder if its just the swivel bracket having an issue?

I have not had a single issue with either my power or reset button. Both work flawlessly.

Call-up Antec and see if they can send you out a new module. They have pretty decent support. That entire swivel bracket comes off and can be replaced.

-edit-

Here is teh part on the Antec website.

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=30079
 
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Thanks Sazar, I may end up picking that up.

For the mean time, I just shut my PC off at night through Windows and have it wake up itself at 7AM. This way I don't have to use the button atm for a quicker solution.
 
kcnychief said:
Thanks Sazar, I may end up picking that up.

For the mean time, I just shut my PC off at night through Windows and have it wake up itself at 7AM. This way I don't have to use the button atm for a quicker solution.

It can do that? :eek: How?
 
Can be done in the BIOS brother, most PC's have the ability :)

EDIT: PC's can also wake on lan
 
Aye, I know wake-on-lan but hmm, didn't know it could turn itself on. Maybe my older motherboards never had this feature so I didn't notice. Cool, I'll play around with it later.

Now if you could only get it to type in my user password for me :p
 
If you are referring to the password within windows, you can set it to autologin for you.

Start - Run - "control userpasswords2" (no quotes) - hit enter

Uncheck the box for users must enter a username and password to use this computer. It will then prompt you for the user who is "assumed" to be logged in, and bam it will auto-login when the computer starts :)

EDIT: one thing of note though, MS anti-spyware will prompt you to turn that off, not sure if Windows Defender does as I don't autologin anymore...
 
I feel kinda silly asking this question, but I will anyways :)

The fan that goes in the back, with the rubber through screws, died in the line of duty. I had it out while I was doing something, and my cat decided to launch a full out nuclear assault on the fan. Result, Cat 1, Fan 0 :smoker:

I have extra 120mm fans, but no screws long enough to go all the way through. Where can I buy screws that are long enough - I have been searching but must not be using the proper syntax?
 
An addendum to my config.

I gave my 160 gig to my brother and replaced it with a 300gig maxtor instead. Faster/quieter and the extra cache makes me tingle all over.

Performance improvements? Well I am currently running f@h on both cores on max so most of my cpu cycles are being taken up, its a wonder I ever get any work done :smoker:

The tubing is a god-send and dirt cheap.

I picked up 2 packs, one wider and one narrow as you can see from the pics, about 4 bucks each for about 30-35" total.

2 120mm fans, one in front one at the back. I replaced my old 120mm hdd because it just didn't fit right.
 

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