Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower ATX Case (Black)

Introduction: Antec is one of the finest manufacturers of computer chassis and power supplies. This case is a fine example of why Antec firmly holds their good reputation.

Background on the Reviewer: I am an IT Professional. I have been building computers since 1997. I currently work in an IT Field for the US Government.

Features: Steel, Aluminum, and Plastic construction. Blue power and activity LEDs in a stealthy mount. 270-degree front-panel door. Minimalist exterior, carefully organized interior. 7x 3.5" bays (one with an external face for drives with removable media). 4x 5.25 bays. Front USB, Firewire (1394), and Audio jacks with Intel-Standard motherboard headers for each. 3x 120mm fans, with mounts for up to 2 more (and room for 1 more mount to be added if you are into case-modding).

Why This Case Earns Top Marks: The design present in this product is fantastic. The interior design is spacious and carefully organized, leaving room for even the largest ATX motherboards, and the longest video cards. The understated exterior gives the case a very "classy" appearance, a quality present in many of the higher-end Antec chassis.

This chassis is designed for quiet computing. It includes silicone rubber bushings on the hard drive mounting apparatus, silicone rubber pads on the power supply mounts, and three-layer side-panel construction. One thing to consider doing while assembling your system in this case: purchase some rubber or silicone rubber washers (3/16" or 4mm) to install around each of the fan-retaining screws (so you'll need 12 by default or 16 if you use the included optional mount).

My favorite aspect of the design used in this chassis is the manner in which the motherboard tray is arranged. While this tray isn't removable, it does include loops for zip-tying cables along behind it, and gaps for those cables to return to the top-side of the motherboard. This allows one to have an extremely clean wiring job with positive airflow to encourage adequate cooling of the internal components.

Things that could make this case shine even brighter: the lower intake vent does not have a means for mounting a fan. It has a small space the size of a 120mm fan but not a pre-drilled mount. Even a novice case-modder could find a manner in which to add an additional fan here, however. A little bit of drilling and dremeling will allow a 6th 120mm fan to provide better intake to the lower bays.

Conclusion: I love this case. I am completely satisfied with my purchase (I ordered it here on Amazon). I highly recommend this case.

This is the most thoughtfully designed case I have owned (my fourth). My main purpose in purchasing this was to build a quiet, custom PC as most custom machines tend to be ridiculously loud. This case fits that bill quite nicely with the separate hard disk/power supply chamber and large, low RPM fans.

These are the features I really like about the Antec P182:

- Separate chamber for power/hard disks
- Great construction quality with acoustic design principles built into the outer case materials
- High quality, quiet hard disk mounting system and removable mounting box
- Great airflow for cooling that is also quiet
- Design allows routing of cables behind motherboard which also helps improve airflow

There are a couple of things to keep in mind with this case, however:

1) Your power supply will need a relatively long cable to get the power connector to the mother board, depending on where your MB's connector is located on the board.
2) The fans will not always turn on when you power on the PC if they are set to the lowest setting. This is not a problem for the two upper fans as you can manually jump-start them with the switches on the back of the case. The lower chamber fan, however, only has a fan speed control inside the case so if it does not start consistently on the lowest setting, you may have to leave it on the medium setting. This creates substantially more noise

Overall, the Antec P182 is very well built, with the most thoughtful design I have ever seen in a PC case.

This is my second Antec case, my first one being a P180. I bought this because I had a good experience with my P180 and this one is almost identical in design. Generally, there's LOTS of room to work with.

However, be careful with the dimensions of the power supply unit that you select. If you try to put in a larger, rectangular PSU it will NOT fit because the lower chamber fan placement would leave no room for the PSU cables. I'm using a Corsair 620W and it fits fine, as well as being a great PSU.

Overall, I'm just OK with the case, but there were two things that were really disappointing.

The mobo standoff screw mounts were very cheaply made, with soft metal. When I lightly tightened down the mobo mounting screws, two of them STRIPPED OUT so I had to find and use screws with a slightly larger dimension and even then they didn't tighten down properly. There can be NO excuse for this type of defect.

Secondly, the fans that came with it are complete junk. I assume they used these to keep their price attractive and competitive. The fans had MOLEX connectors only (peripheral power connectors) and no mobo fan header connectors.

I'm not sure how to get around the screw mounts issue. I'm not sure if they're replaceable with sturdier mounts or even pin lock mounts. But, definitely toss the fans and replace them with higher-quality ones with mobo fan header connectors.

This thing was a royal pain to install my components in. I hope you have small hands cause i do and they barely fit. Keeps things cool but nothing spectacular. Bottom chassis design makes NO sense at all to me. Why have your main input fan pull air at the bottom of the case when it's isolated from hot cpu and video card above? I suggest putting the input fan in the front middle and put your hard drives in the middle as well. They stay cooler that way. Two out of the three fans don't start to rotate unless i spin them by hand!!! Who has time for that? They do start if you put them on medium but this is supposed to be a quiet case so people want them on low. I put retail antec tri-cool's in there and they work fine. It is quiet but NOT silent as some have said. If you want quiet buy an accelero fanless vga cooler and get an aftermarket cpu heatsink with a tri-cool fan set to low. Many other reviewers love this thing but I just thinks it's OK and not as good as your hoping for. Overall I do like the case, the way it looks and it has room but save yourself some money and get something cheaper.

This is clearly one of the best built cases you can buy for anything near this price. A great deal of attention was paid to the design of many aspects of this otherwise very fine case, but unfortunately the bottom drive cage is very difficult to use. Vertically mounting the drives in the cage is fussier than mounting on the sleds used in the top drive cage, but the real problems are related to cabling. There is very little room between the back of the cage and the fan residing between the cage and the power supply, so routing your cables both up to the motherboard and around to the power supply on the other side of the fan can be difficult.

If Antec had gone with the perpendicular mounting style of the Sonata in this model, it would be an obvious five star case. Not only would that make it easier to insert and remove drives, but it would also free up room between the power supply and the mid-mounted fan, making cabling much less of a problem than it currently is.