Antec P183 Mid-Tower Case Review

Interior Impressions


With the side panel removed, we are greeted by a relatively spacious interior with two divided sections. The top two thirds of the case make up the main chamber, while the lower third makes up the lower chamber. As you’ve probably already guessed, the PSU and up to four hard drives can be installed in the lower chamber, where they are thermally isolated from the toasty components above. There are a couple of benefits to this sort of layout. First off, since the PSU is always exhausting air out of the case, it is not fed hot air by the warm components in the top chamber. It should be exhausting air from the lower chamber alone, which is significantly cooler. The four hard drives toward the front of the case in the lower chamber also benefit from this small amount of PSU exhaust, as the negative pressure draws cool air in from the front panel, through the drives and out the back via the PSU. Secondly, the components in the main chamber and the cooling fans there have to cope with an overall lower heat load thanks to the separation of the PSU and hard disk drives. In theory, this is a great layout and we’ve seen it work well over the years. We’ll be running the P183 through a whole slew of cooling performance tests shortly, so please stay tuned.

Cooling layout aside, Antec decided to use a drab grey color throughout the interior of the case. After seeing the very attractive “Mini P180” with a painted black interior, we hoped Antec would have maintained similar styling in the P183.


Because true isolation would inevitably be impractical, Antec includes a plastic shield that can be adjusted to allow cables to pass between the chambers. Two thumb screws can be loosened to move the two pieces of plastic back and forth. For optimal performance, they should be closed as tightly as possible without squeezing the PSU leads and SATA leads.


As mentioned earlier, the PSU is forced to draw cool air in from the lower chamber so ventilation openings at the bottom of the case are not provided. A special bracket ensures that PSUs with bottom mounted fans are spaced appropriately to draw air in from the lower chamber. This same bracket also has some rubber dampening strips placed on it to help reduce noise and installation scuffs and scratches to the PSU.


A total of six hard drives can be installed in the Antec P183. Four of them can be installed in the isolated lower chamber, while two can be installed in the optional caddies in the main chamber. Although we’d definitely recommend installing drives in the lower chamber for its thermal properties, it’s nice that those who horde their terabytes can also throw a couple of extra drives into the top chamber.

The drive cage in the lower bay is removable by removing one thumb screw and pulling the grenade style pin. It has a thick plastic guide that allows it to fit firmly into metal rails on the case. Thick rubber stand-offs help to reduce vibration to the hard drives as the special mounting screws and the drive will not make any metal on metal contact with the case. The removable cadies in the main chamber also employ these rubber stand-offs, but mount to the drives through the standard lower mounting holes.


The drive cage in the main chamber can also be removed by releasing one thumb screw and pulling the key chain handle. Behind it, we find the case header leads entering the case as well as an optional 120mm fan mounting location. A 25mm thick intake fan can be mounted to the plastic bracket using simple self-taping fan screws.

We found an interesting undocumented feature at the rear of the drive cage as well; a small plastic storage compartment. Thermaltake did something similar in their recent Spedo case, but we can’t help but feel that loose case screws don’t belong inside of the case. It was nice of Antec to make use of otherwise wasted space, but you wouldn’t catch us keeping anything in this little compartment.


The 5.25 inch drive bays each have punch-out covers installed out of the box. They can easily be twisted off from the front of the case, without needing to remove the front panel. We suppose that leaving these punch-out panels in place provides a bit of extra rigidity to the chassis, but it’s always a bit of an annoyance to pop them out when installing optical drives.