Antec used to be a leader in cases, power supplies and more. Then it seemed like they stopped. Corsair took over and we haven’t heard much of interest from them recently. This year at CES they sent out a cryptic message that they were back and going back to their roots.
Well the P380 was the highlight of cases that were on display. This was however announced back in december, so while it was still new in the flesh, it wasn’t what we were expecting. Essentially Antec do have something up their sleeve, but it’s being designed, and we can’t share it etc etc etc… snore. So yes it was a bit of a tease. The P380 however isn’t a fail necessarily. Antec are finally looking at the high end again and trying to support water coolers.
The P380 features a 4mm curved aluminum sheet around the edge that gives a nice clean shape:
It’s cut on the top side close to the USB and headphone/mic ports so that the top can be lifted up:
This reveals a 360 mount. However the top is anchored by all the IO wires, so until you pull those out you can’t remove it which makes it a bit fussy.
Inside it has space for one PSU and XLATX motherboards. There’s also tons of HDD racks and two 5 1/4″ bays. Those two bays are a bit confusing, because they are blocked in the front of course. If you want an optical drive then there is a slim mount that kind of slides in behind the front panel and would eject from the side. That’s kind of awkward too.
The drive bays can be unscrewed and removed which means you can mount a radiator in the front which seems far more useful.
Everything is tool less, but despite Antec’s intention to bring themselves up to date, the whole case felt, well…. still a bit old. If anything the SFF cases were more interesting:
The ISK600M is not a name that rolls off the tongue. It is however another case that jumps on the recent trend for mITX and mATX with a horizontal motherboard. Yet again though the case misses the mark a bit as it uses a 200mm fan in the front, rather than allowing a 240 radiator. While the lower chamber could be used for HDDs there is another HDD mount on top:
There is a mount for a 240 radiator next to the CPU, but to be honest the clearance looks super tight and this is clearly going to be better suited for an all in one.
While again it’s not a bad case, it just seems like a half hearted attempt to jump on a trend that was started a while back.
The other SFF cases we saw were the P70 range. One with an interesting orange fan grill on top and no window, while another was more plain but had a window.
These were more of a cube style, e.g. vertical motherboard but PSU behind the motherboard:
Somewhat like a Corsair Air 240, but not as pretty:
There is at least space for an AIO up top, but the whole thing just seems again a bit dated.
There’s still plenty of space for HDDs and SSDs which again feels dated. With large SSDs and M.2 about to be common there’s little need for as much storage space as in the past. You could say that this competes on price, but the Air 240 was $30 after rebate a few weeks back.
Lastly for cases we had the P50 which was such standard “old Antec” that I didn’t even bother to take a photo. Google it if you’re easily excited.
Antec were however expanding their power supply line with more of their edge series:
the 1050W and 850W models were new, but a gold rating again seems old when EVGA are pushing Titanium rated supplies out left right and center:
A colored rubber bumper doesn’t really make up for that, there’s not even a mention of pre-sleeved cables or anything like that.
While Antec were claiming to be going back to their roots, we were left thinking that while they have been playing catch up, they still have a long long way to go.
