Antec P183 Mid-Tower Case Review

Installation pg.2


Installing an optical drive into the P183 was fairly easy. The included plastic rail brackets screw onto the drive and it slides into the empty bay. Despite our best efforts, it took several tries to get the brackets on in the right position. Antec does not indicate what mounting holes on the optical drive to screw the bracket into, so a little bit of trial and error may be required to get it just right. Although this rail system works fairly well, it would have been nice to see Antec adopt a ‘tool-free’ optical drive mounting system as many other case manufacturers have done.


As mentioned earlier, the filter mesh is glued to each of the drive bay covers. With a little bit of patience, it can be removed for increased airflow, but reattaching will be a bit of a chore.


We then moved onto the video cards, which were a piece of cake. There is plenty of front to back clearance and just about any 10.5 inch card should fit without issue. Those with extra long cards would probably be best leaving the hard drives mounted in the lower chamber so that SATA cables and power leads don’t clutter up this area of the case.


Once we had everything installed, the final product was very clean. Antec did an excellent job with respect to cable management on the P183. Keeping that ATX cable out of the main chamber made a big difference in keeping the case looking clean.


Another optional feature that those interested in maximum video card cooling will be interested in is the “Mid Fan”. Small metal clips are included to mount a 25mm thick 120mm fan just in front of the expansion slots. The clips simply snap into place over the mid-section of the fan and hold it securely in place.

Installing a 120mm fan in the intake location in front of that drive bay is another alternative mounting location that may benefit GPU temperatures. We’ll be testing both of these configurations in the “Cooling Performance” section.

Initial Acoustic and Running Impressions

When we first fired up the P183, we were immediately aware of the noise produced by the TriCool fans at full speed. Although they don’t produce an annoying sound, they do produce a fairly low pitched “roar” as they move 80CFM of air a piece. The noise appears to be primarily due to large volumes of air moving through the fan grilles, and not due to the fan motor, or any other “more annoying” source of noise. Some lower quality fans produce a constant “hum” that we’re pleased to report is not the case with the TriCool models.

With the fans turned down to “Medium”, the noise was reduced very significantly. Airflow still appeared to be somewhat strong, but not like it was at full speed. At “Low” the noise level was further reduced, but the difference was not as apparent as it was going from “High” to “Medium”.

It’s unfortunate that the case isn’t terribly quiet at its full performance potential, but we are pleased that buyers can reduce the noise levels with the flick of a switch.