Conclusion:

I’ve been using this P180 for roughly one week now, and I must say that Antec have a winner on their hands. The build quality is exceptional, the precision of the motherboard standoffs are excellent as they line up perfectly with the holes on my motherboard. As with the highest quality design work there are absolutely no sharp edges on this chassis.

Hands down it is without a doubt one of the quietest case ive used. The three-layer side panel (aluminium, plastic, aluminium) does the job of blocking out any erroneous noise very well. The silicon cushions in the hard drive cages also do their job very well, in other cases I’ve always been able to hear my 10,000rpm raptor, and in the P180 it’s barely noticeable. Its this attention to detail that deserves high praise.

I only have two minor complaints about the P180 and that is that the PSU compartment is rather small, when you’re using a longer power supply unit like the OCZ we used in this review it tends to be a bit of a squeeze. The other thing worth mentioning is due to the power supply placement and specific motherboard layouts you might have a bit of a problem reaching all the slots for connectivity, be sure to check this out before a purchase.

The cooling capacity of the P180 is more than enough "out of the box". Running the fans on low resulted in case temps of 5°C-7°C above room temp and at medium speed it never exceeded 5°C over the ambient room temperature. I didn't run the fans at full because the whole idea of this case is a combination of "silence with good performance", you can of course add additional fans like I did with the tri-cool fan and crank it, however it isnt silent which defeats the purpose of the design.

Without hesitation the P180 is one of the finest cases ive had the pleasure to build a system around, if I was to purchase a case tomorrow Antec would get my money, and that in itself is praise enough.

The P180 can be found in the UK for approx £99 ink. VAT
And in the US for approx $135.

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