Outside

As I mentioned before at first glance the P280 looks a lot like the popular p180/190 series. It’s not until you notice how the case widens after the front panel than you realize you are looking at a whole new beast.

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Up top you have raised fan grip area for two 120mm fans, beyond that the only thing you will find on top is the power and reset buttons near the front. In fact both left and right side panels are the same also with no fan grills or windows; just like past performance series cases. On the bottom of the left side there is a small tab hanging off the bottom that allows you to pull out the bottom fan filter.

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It isn’t until you get to the front of the P280 that you start finding features. First you will come across the front I/O panel with four USB ports, two being 2.0 and two 3.0. Along with the USB ports you have the headphone and microphone ports. The rest of the front is covered by a large door. Opening it you will find the entire door is covered in a sound deadening foam. The layout of the front panel has a large filter covering half of the front, in order to pull air in without disturbing the clean look you have a gap between the door and the filter with an opening at the bottom to pull air in from. That same filter has two tabs holding it on and is easily removed for cleaning. Last but not least on the front you have three 5 ¼ drive bays for your devices.

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Around back the black theme continues, I should also point out that the back has the same finish as the side and top panels. Typically the back panel may be black but not the same finish as the rest of the case, this is a nice touch. In the top right corner there is a box of switches to control the P280’s fans; this is similar to what we have seen in the past on both the P Series and the Gaming cases from Antec. Below that is a 120mm exhaust fan. It’s clear from looking at the back panel that they tried to fit as much cooling as they could with mesh above the PCI slots, under the motherboard tray, and even in each PCI slot. Speaking of PCI slots there are a whopping 9 total in the P280, meaning it supports XL-ATX motherboards! Down at the bottom is the power supply mount; it’s also nice to see a standard mount size here, not Antec’s proprietary larger PSU height.

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garfi3ld replied the topic: #21722 21 Dec 2011 23:07
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