Antec Mini P180
Introduction
Antec’s P-series of cases have always been quite large cases which offer good performance. Until recently, more computer enthusiasts are opting for smaller cases which offer silent performance. Unfortunately though, there’s not a lot of cases about which succeed in both of these factors. Therefore, Antec have created the Mini P180: A high performance enclosure that provides quiet computing. Let’s see if Antec has achieved the goal…
About Antec
Antec is the leading global brand of high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) markets. Founded in 1986, Antec is recognized as a pioneer in these industries and has maintained its position as a worldwide market leader and international provider of efficient, quiet, and reliable products.
Features
- Unique upper and lower chamber structure: the power supply resides in a separate chamber to isolate heat from the system and lower system noise.
- Stylish black interior
- No power supply included:
to optimize the performance of your Mini P180, your choice of power supply is crucial. Antec strongly recommends choosing from our NeoPower or TruePower series.
- Configurable to accomodate graphics cards with full length PCBs
- 8 Drive Bays
• External 3 x 5.25”; 1 x 3.5”
• Internal 5 x 3.5” for HDD
- Cable organization for added convenience and better airflow
- Innovative three-layer side panel (aluminium, plastic, aluminium) dampens system generated noise, making this one of the quietest cases available
- Cooling System:
• 1 rear (standard) 120mm x 25mm TriCool Fan
• 1 top (standard) 200mm x 25mm TriCool fan
• 2 front chamber (optional) 120mm Fan
• Exterior speed control switches
- Motherboard: up to microATX
- 4 Expansion Slots
- Double hinge door designed to open up to 270º
- Front ports:
• 2 x USB 2.0
• 1 x eSATA
• Audio In and Out (AC’ 97 and HDA)
- 0.8mm cold rolled steel for durability through the majority of chassis
- Unit dimensions:
• 17.1″(H) x 8.3″(W) x 17.2″(D)
• 43,5cm(H) x 21,2cm(W) x 43,6cm(D)
- Package dimensions:
• 20″(H) x 11.1″(W) x 20.3″(D)
• 51,0cm(H) x 28,3cm(W) x 51,5cm(D)
- Weight:
• Net: 20.9 lbs / 9,5 kg
• Gross: 24.4 lbs / 11,1 kg
The Package
The Mini P180 arrives in a thick cardboard box which seems very well styled. The front of the box entails many product photos and has Antec’s ‘Quiet Computing’ logo in the top-right corner.
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The back of the box lists the specifications in three languages: English, French and German. Above this there’s a bit of blurb about the case – although I’m quite sure no one will read as it’s quite wordy. A quick quote is also on show “Good things come in small packages”, for Antec’s big box reputation, this is quite a statement and to be honest, the Mini P180’s box isn’t all that small – its actually pretty big for a Micro-ATX case box.
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The sides of the box just have more product photos and the same blurb is repeated.
Along with the case, some accessories are included:
- Users manual written in 7 languages
- Warranty leaflet
- Loads of various screws
- Four Cable Ties
- Drive Rails for three 5,25” drives
- 5,25” to 3.5” drive bay adapter and facia
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These are all the accessories you’d need for the installation of a rig inside this case. I quite like the idea that Antec also bundle cable ties for better cable management as many companies do not do this.
The case is well packaged inside the box with cardboard and Styrofoam protecting its edges. Adhesive plastic is stuck to the main panels (front and sides), to prevent it from being scratched or attracting dust whilst being shipped.
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The Antec Mini P180
Externals
At first sightings the Mini P180 looks remarkably similar to the other cases in Antec’s performance series e.g. the P190. The enclosure is styled in a unique colour which cannot be described as simply black; it’s more of a ‘gun metal’ finish and looks very appealing. A large 200mm fan is located at the top of the case; many of the newer Antec cases also feature this. Just like other cases in the ‘P-series’, there is a front door hiding the drive bays which can be rotated 270 degrees.
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The front door of the case is a 3-panel construction: aluminium, plastic and then aluminium again. This gives a quality feel towards the case, but also helps in dampening system noise. Located at the top-right corner is the Antec logo, this appears to be pressed into the aluminium giving it a nice sleek finish. For aesthetic and cooling purposes, some vents are located at the right-side of the front panel. These don’t appear on the P190 series of cases and is included to increase airflow in the case – although they do look somewhat impressive. Even with the front panel door closed, the front panel ports can still be accessed. The available ports on the front panel are as follows:
- eSATA
- 2x USB 2.0
- Microphone Jack
- Headphone Jack
It’s great to see that Antec are replacing the firewire ports on their cases with eSATA. Who uses Firewire anyway? eSATA is definitely the way to go after the impressive results we encountered when using it with the Vizo Luxon we reviewed.
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Behind the front door of the case there are three 5,25” bays (one at the top, two at the bottom), two large vents which are not removable and the much needed power and reset switches. When the vents are pressed inwards, a door on them swings open revealing a dust filter. These dust filters can easily be removed for cleaning.
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The top of the case is somewhat unique to all other Antec cases. A unique vent design is on show which fits in with a similar style to the vents on the front panel. Behind the vents are perforated aluminium which stops wondering objects from entering the case and getting wound up in the massive 200mm top fan.
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From the rear of the case we can see that the Mini P180 can house a MATX motherboard and a full size power supply (which can be mounted at the bottom of the chassis for better cooling). This is ideal for any gamer or overclocker who wants a much smaller gaming rig. The rear also features a 120mm Tri-Cool fan. These are much preferably to the whiney 80mm fans older cases use to use. Above the fan is a small fan controller unit which controls the speed of the top and rear fan. The unit has three speed settings: low, medium, high. Securing the side panels in place is two thumbscrews for the left (main) panel, and two standard case screws for the right panel.
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The bottom of the case has four – very soft – silicone case feet. These help to considerably reduce vibrations from the case and of this quality, normally have to be purchased. There is also a large vent in the centre with a dust filter – which can be removed from inside the case. This is a bit of an odd arrangement as not much airflow normally covers the area beneath enclosures.
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From the side panel we can get an idea on the size of the Mini P180. Sizing it up with an Antec Twelve Hundred, the Mini P180 is 12cm smaller in height and 8cm shorter in depth. This is quite a considerable amount but as the Mini uses a MATX board, it’s a perfectly adequate size – a little bigger than a Midi case.
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The actual side panels themselves are fairly similar to the front panel in the way that they use the 3-layer construction: aluminium, plastic, aluminium. This gives them more of a robust feel and helps to dampen noise. I like this idea a lot. The brushed aluminium gun metal colouring is continued on the side panels.
Internals
The internals are constructed from 0.8mm cold rolled steel. This gives the Antec ultimate durability and feels of great strength. Alike the Twelve Hundred we reviewed, the internals are sprayed black in colour which - in my opinion - looks very nice, much better than the bog-standard steel colouring.
The case is split into two chambers. The top chamber has space for five hard drives, one 5,25” drive and the motherboard bundle. This is good for cooling and cable management purposes. The bottom chamber has space for two 5,25” drives and a power supply.
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The PSU sits on four small rubber pedestals inside the case and draws air in through the vent on the bottom of the case. This should be sufficient cooling for a standard power supply, but passive PSU’s – which don’t have fans to help them draw air in – may struggle with this design.
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With the hard drive cages removed we can see the front fan filters. On these fan filters 120mm fans can be installed. However, if installed, the hard drive cage – where the designated fan is mounted – cannot be installed. Therefore, if wanting to add a 120mm fan to the front, you’ll be stuck with space for only 2 or 3 hard drives. But as this is a small case, designed for smaller systems, this shouldn’t prose to be a problem.
In-between the top and bottom chamber of the case is a large plastic slider which can be slid back and forth for added cable routing. This is useful for routing cables from the PSU to the required connectors.
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After removing the right side panel, we can see many holes in the motherboard plate. These are great for cable management as they allow you to easily route cables about the case. Also, there are little ‘hooks’ protruding from the plate with cable ties pre-installed into them. Again, these are for added cable management, hence, better airlow.
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Alike the P190, there’s also a little black box behind the right panel. This can be used to store pretty much anything you want, although most users will likely use this to store the case’s screws.
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Another added feature which aims to dampen noise inside the case is the felt edging on the chassis. Instead of having two metals rattling together (chassis and side panel), the felt is installed in-between the metals so that they cannot rattle. This is another nice idea which was also used on the Antec Fusion 430.
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Installation
The system we installed in the Antec Mini P180 is as follows:
| Processor | Intel C2D E6750 @ 3.2GHz |
| Memory | Corsair XMS2 6400 (2x 1GB) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H |
| Graphics Card | Onboard nVidia 7100 |
| Power Supply | Antec NeoPower 550W |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi HDT7250 (250GB) |
| Optical Drive | Samsung SATA DVD-RW |
The first step was to pop my IO plate in and install the motherboard bundle (CPU, Cooler and RAM), luckily all the pre-installed standoff’s lined up perfectly with the mounting holes on my motherboard.
After that I installed my 550W Antec Neo-Power PSU. This went in very easily with a four screws and I was left with plenty of space around the unit. It was indeed resting on the little rubber feet, so should work well in dampening vibrations.
Once the bigger parts of my system were out of the way, I began installing my hard drive and disk drive. The hard drive was very easy to install: remove the cage, screw the hard drive in place, slot back in. The disk drive is installed my screwing two of the included drive rails to the sides of the drive. It can then be slotted in place via the front of the case. Nice and easy.
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All that was now left was to connect up the fans and all the components. As my PSU is modular, this was relatively simple and made cable management easy – especially with the added holes in the motherboard plate. After spending less than five minutes on cable management, this is the result. Pretty good huh?
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 "Antec Mini P180 Review")
Testing
At Tech-Reviews we test cases for a number of different factors: Strength, Noise and Temperatures.
The way in which we test strength is fairly simple. We stand on the top of the case and jump up and down on it – this is quite a fun test and can really show the effectiveness of the construction. A case which is strong should not be damaged from this test at all; whereas a weak case would bend and buckle.
Testing noise is quite difficult as expensive sound equipment is needed which unfortunately, we don’t have access to. Instead, we use out own God given human ears to give you an ‘as accurate as we can get’ explanation on the case’s noise with a comparative conclusion of its noise.
Temperatures are recorded using a mixture of programs. To measure CPU temperature, we take 3 temperature readings at 10 second intervals and then record an average temperature. This test is done with the CPU at idle state. Recordings are measured using the CPU’s own diode and SpeedFan.
The Hard Drive temperature is measured using SpeedFan too at idle states.
To record the environments’ ambient temperature at the time of test, we use a digital thermometer.
Ambient temperature was 21 degrees Celsius.
The Mini P180’s results will be compared to the results from an Antec Sonata 550 Plus with 1x 92mm Noiseblocker at the front and 1x 120mm Noiseblocker fan at the rear. These fans have their voltage set from 12v to 7v for silence.
When testing the Mini P180 we will use the default fans in this configuration: one 200mm top fan and one 120mm rear fan.
The CPU Cooler used throughout the results was a Xigmatek Red Scorpion with Noiseblocker fan fitted and running at 1000rpm (5V speeds).
The temperature results of the Mini P180 were recorded with both fans set to ‘low speed’ on the fan controller. Reasoning for this is because this is the setting most people will use.
Results
* All temperatures are measured in Degrees Celsius.
| CPU | Hard Drive | |
| Antec Mini P180 | 35 | 29 |
| Antec Sonata 550 Plus | 36.5 | 34 |
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The temperatures the Mini P180 achieves are very good. Oddly, the hard drive temperature of the Mini P190 beats the Sonata 550; this is odd because the Mini had no front panel cooling whereas the Sonata had a 92mm Noiseblocker at the front. This shows that the 200mm fan at the top really succeeds in drawing in plenty of air. The CPU temperature is also pretty impressive and proves that even at low fan speeds, this case produces ideal temperatures which are safe to game at.
In terms of strength, it’s safe to say this case won’t collapse on you. The steel, aluminium and plastic construction is one of the strongest I’ve witnessed and is definitely capable of taking some battering - ideal for LAN events.
Noise wise, at low speeds its inaudible. At medium speed, the top fan is about the same noise level as it is when at low speed. The back fan however is much noisier. When at high, the case is ridiculously loud and the main source of noise seems to be coming from the back panel. If you were to replace the back fan with something more silent like a Noiseblocker fan, you could easily whack both fans up to high speed and not be bothered much by the noise – if any.
Conclusion
From this review, you can probably already tell that the Mini P180 is a very impressive case. Not only does it produce good temperatures, it also stays at a very low noise level, most new cases out nowadays are incapable of doing this.
But it’s not all about performance when buying a case, more so aesthetics. Luckily, the Mini P180 carries on a similar style to that of its big brothers e.g. the P190 and P180. This is a unique style that most like the look of. Sleek.
As of always, the main conclusion is decided in terms of the products price. Luckily though, the price is quite reasonable at ~£80. Okay, this is quite expensive for a MATX case, but the Mini P180 isn’t the ordinary and is actually a little larger than a standard ATX case.
To sum it all up, if you want a case – a little smaller than your average – which performs silently and to a good temperature, then trust me, the Antec Mini P180 is a perfect buy.
Pros
- Silent
- Performance
- Durability
- Aesthetics
- Reasonable Price
Cons
- Not Micro-ATX size; same size as a Midi Case
