Antec P183 Mid-Tower Case Review

Interior Impressions pg.2


Moving along to the rear of the case, we get an inside view of the vented expansion brackets and water cooling grommets. Each of the brackets is held on by simple case screws. Although this is not a tool-less design, this tried and tested card mounting system is nice and sturdy and gets our stamp of approval. As mentioned earlier, water cooling tubing will enter the case right above the expansion slots. This may or may not be a con depending on your water cooling setup. At least you won’t have to modify the case to install an external radiator.


We’d also like to make special mention of the rubber dampening strips along the chamber divider and the drive cages. This allows the side panel to fit tightly against the case while preventing any annoying vibrations and rattles.


There is a bit of a nest of cabling protruding from the front of the case, but since there are only two USB ports and no Firewire ports, things are not bad from a cable management perspective. We were also pleased to see many of the headers with black insulating plastic as there is nothing worse than seeing a complete rainbow of coloured cables wreaking havoc with your carefully contrived colour scheme.


Although there are a total of five fan mounting locations in the P183, there are only two fans included; one as a rear exhaust and one as a top exhaust. This is a pretty standard setup in cases with bottom mounted PSUs, but usually at least one intake fan is included to force a bit of cool air into the case. We’ll see how this configuration fairs in the “Cooling Performance” section.

Both of the included fans are 120x25mm models with standard 4-pin molex power plugs and a single lead into the fan controller switch. Both fans are identical, and are identified as “Antec TriCool” fans. Unlike many case manufacturers, Antec’s product manual provides some detailed specifications about the TriCool fans.


As you can see, they can provide a very healthy 79CFM at a full 2000RPM, and as low as 39CFM at an ear-friendlier 1200RPM. This wide range of operating speeds makes the TriCool fans very versatile. We’ll explore what sort of impact dropping the fan speed has on CPU and GPU temperatures in the “Cooling Performance” section. Unfortunately, any replacement fans won’t be able to be used by the proprietary Antec fan controller.


On the flip side of the case, we see some nifty cable management features. Antec provides little cable tie notches across the rear of the motherboard tray, as well as cut-outs for the ATX and CPU power connectors. Rather than having to fish these cables above all of the internal components, they can be routed discretely behind the motherboard tray. We’ll be putting these various openings to the test in the “Installation Section”