Reviews for Antec P182 Black Midsize Tower

Super Quiet Case.

Strengths: Looks great, quiet, good cooling.

Weakness: Very large and heavy. Expensive.

This is a great case if you're going to spend some money on a case. It's really quiet and because it's large it's very easy to work inside of it. If you have all the fans set on low it is whisper quiet. It's easily the best case I've ever owned but it's also costs about four times any other case I've ever bought (and it doesn't include a power supply) and weighs twice as much. Though, it has been totally worth it to me because it's has so much space inside for hard drives and is both well-cooled as well as quiet.

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Quiet and sturdy case

Strengths: Quiet, Cable management, Sturdy

Weakness: PSU chamber needs more room, especially for larger PSUs

With the power supply located at the bottom, it helps reduce turbulence to lower noise from the PSU fan. And with grommets in the hard drive cages, the vibration from the hard drives is reduced, together making the case very quiet overall.

Being able to route the PSU cables behind the motherboard tray is a nice touch and makes the cables organized, but it could use a bit more room especially for fatter cables.

The toughest part was getting the PSU into the PSU chamber. I had to temporarily remove the fan that sits in the lower chamber between the PSU and the hard drive cage to insert the PSU (I have a 750W PC P&C). Omitting this fan is not really an option for me since it sucks air into the case to cool the hard drives and expel it out the PSU.

Before buying this case, I would check around to see what PSUs others have successfully been able to install.

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Awesome Case!

Strengths: Great looking, cable management makes for great airflow, easy access to lots of places inside, fantastic workmanship, quiet operation

Weakness: You'll need a PSU with long cables to utilize the cable management design, pretty heavy, larger CPU heatsinks may not fit without removing the overhead case fan

I am very impressed with this case. I used to be a fan of another Japanese case maker that used only aluminum in their construction (and ran for twice as much), but Antec has sold me with this. There are some very minor gripes, as listed above, but nothing is perfect. Actually, this is the closest to perfection I have ever seen a case get.

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Great Case, Quiet & Cool

Strengths: Wonderful design, very quiet out of the box, large case

Weakness: None, some things to be aware of though

I replaced an old Xblade case with a new P182 Tower. Given I build my own machines I had a pretty long list of requirements for my case most notably the ability to keep the machine cool, ensure low noise levels and provide good spatial utilization for all of my components.

The P182 is the best computer case I have had the fortune of building a new desktop with. It is truly a beautiful case and Antec put some serious engineering in the design to ensure this machine not only keeps cool but quiet as well. The loudest part of my machine now is the Zalman fan on my video card which will be replaced.

I did encounter some concerns. One, no installation manual was included with the case. I'm not sure if this was just a missing piece in my box or a more widespread problem from the packaging process. Either way there are plenty of resource on the Internet that can provide you with this information, just make sure you do this before you go to build your machine!

The only other concerns (really for others) with this case are the weight and the PSU location. As others have mentioned, this is one heavy case but I knew that going into this project.

More importantly than the weight is the PSU location which is on the bottom, nestled away on its own plane. I love this placement and it is truly amazing at how well this case keeps the heat from the PSU away from all of the other components. I had no problems with my Seasonic PSU but it is worthwhile to reiterate that you will need a PSU with longer cords than the traditional, standard PSU.

Although this case fit my needs perfectly, I feel it is important to note for other shoppers that they need to be aware of the PSU.

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Great case, but not perfect

Strengths: Well thought out design. Silenced my hard drives. Behind-the-scenes cable routing helps with airflow.

Weakness: Expensive. Not as quiet has I hoped. Need newer PSU with long power cables. Tricky installation. Have to open front door to turn on computer.

I upgraded to this case mainly to try to quiet my system, and secondly to help with cooling. While it did help with both, it wasn't as good as I was expecting. First, the hard drive cages are awesome for quieting your hard drives. The rubber grommets make all the difference. I have 2 Western Digital Raptors which are super-noisy, but after mounting them in this case, they are barely noticable. My Seagate 7200.9 is now silent. Also, they are mounted out of the way, in the same compartment as the PSU on the bottom of the case. This clears up clutter and gives the drives dedicated airflow. The bad news is that the other hard drive cage is in the way of my graphics card (nVidia 8800GTX), so I had to take the hard drive mounts out (but not the cage itself). I had a similar problem on my last case too, so it's not totally Antec's fault.

The next thing that makes this case so great is the ability to route most power cables behind the motherboard. This helps immensely with airflow. I even got the huge 24-pin mobo cable to fit behind. On the minus side, you need a newer PSU with very long cables for this to work. Even with a new PSU, I couldn't get one of the 8-pin mobo cables to reach behind, and it barely fit the normal way. Getting all the cables to fit the way you want takes a bit of planning and trial-and-error to get right. Also, my PSU had to be shoe-horned into place. It was just a tad to big for the space Antec left for it (didn't have that problem with my older case).

The biggest complaint I have is that my computer isn't really much quieter. The panels are designed to quiet sound, the case is solid, so what's the problem? Well, it's the fan placement. There is a huge fan on top of the case, and while the fan itself is quiet, this gaping hole allows the noise created by my CPU cooler (Zalman 9700) to escape out the top. If I block this hole with something (like a book), the case is much quieter. But obviously this would hurt the cooling properties of the case long term.

Also, it's a bit expensive. I feel it's worth about $100, but you can't find it for that cheap unless you get a good sale or rebate.

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Great looking, quiet case.

Strengths: Quiet. Cable routing behind the motherboard, makes for a clean PC if the PSU cabling allows. Fan control on the back. Looks awesome, especially with the finish of the P182. Nice upper HD tray.

Weakness: Heavy. Because of the layout some PSUs don't have long enough cables. The space behind the motherboard is a bit cramped for thick ATX power cables. Little more expensive than most cases.

I already own the P180 and several friends of mine own the P180B. The quality is very nice. Although the doors are known to breaking if abused, so just be careful with them and don't slam them open and shut on a daily basis.

The finish is very nice on the p182, to be quite honest I like it more than the P180B.

Overall the case is very nice, especially if you're looking for a sleek looking clean case that is quiet.

The case is a bit heavy for its size, however that is because of the sound deadening materials.

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Classy Case

Strengths: Heavy duty, well made, nice silver and black look. Plenty of space, and excellent attention to detail.

Weakness: A bit pricey.

Excellent product, strongly made for long lasting computing. Cable management most doable, but studying your available componets, and working the cable routing slowing to better hide applicable wire to enhance computer venting and cooling of your video cards and various componets. If using more than two hard drives and two CD ROMs, and one floppy drive the case will become a bit full. If building it new, you might be better off buying as many OEM products as possible. While my motherboard and hard drive can with applicable SATA cables, after installing all the four drives and floppy drive, I would have been better off buying special lenght cables that would have served me better.

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Good case

Strengths: A lot of room, sturdy, nice finish, good cooling, quiet

Weakness: No eSATA connector, not aluminum = heavy, poor component alignment

Overall very good case. The real complain though is that quality is not what Antec used to be. PSU bracket is about 1-2mm to narrow/shallow. Drive bays and other case components are poorly aligned, you have to push and press here and there to make screws fit properly.

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Antec P182 case

Strengths: 3 stock cooling fans with variable speed controls, very quiet with fans on low setting, easy to run wiring behind motherboard allowing better air flow from front to back

Weakness: middle accessory fan will not fit if you install the Geforce 8800 GTX graphics card (it's too long)

It would have been nice for the three stock fans to come with an optional connector directly to the motherboard to allow automatic speed control (currently they only have molex connectors). I purchased three Antec 120mm fans for this case which all came with the accessory plugs for monitoring fan speed at least.

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Once again Antec delivers

Strengths: extremely well thought out and designed, very sturdy, near silent, suitable for silent PC with the right components

Weakness: price, but not really when considering the value

I hade previously bought a Antec case for a HTPC and was impressed by the well thought out design and all the attention paid to detail.
So it was a no brainer to get another Antec case for my new workstation. I was not disappointed. Again, extremely well thought out design and layout, such as: cables are run behind the motherboard to reduce clutter and keep airflow unobstructed. A lot of attention has been paid to small details which you only realize are there, once you actually build your system.

I did have some very minor issue getting the power supply (Corsair HX520) fit into the cage, it took a bit of force asit was a bit tight. Maybe this is intended to be a snug fit, or maybe the Corsair is just a tad to wide, I don't know. In the end it did fit without a major problem.

One thing to consider: this is a large case, depending on your MD and PSU, make sure the cales are long enough!

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Very satisfied

Strengths: Flexibility, Design, Style, Quietness

Weakness: Limited size of power supply in the bottom (but this has merit as well)

I am very satisfied with this one. Quietness and good internal and external design make this one of the best recommended ATX case. One thing that need to note is that although there is a room at the bottom, it is a bit tricky to install big power supply. I have installed relatively large power supply, for which I had to first take the bottom fan out, install power and then reinstalled the fan. You have to push the side panel of the fan inside to take that out. Wiring of power cable became tight, but manageable.

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Antec Performance One P182

TestSeek.com has collected 32 expert reviews for Antec Performance One P182 and the average expert rating is 91 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use TestSeek.com to find all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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