Antec Nine Hundred

Verdict: Despite the fact that it's flexible enough to mount a double 120mm-fan radiator, the Nine Hundred is slightly too cramped for a full-scale water-cooling system, and its spiky looks might not be to everyone's taste. However, for people looking to build a high-end, air-cooled PC, the Nine Hundred has very few bad points. While the £50 Jeantech Phong II (see Issue 33, p58) still offers the best value for money, the appealing looks, superior build quality and superlative cooling of the Nine Hundred easily justify its higher price tag.

The Elite-listed Antec P180 midi-tower case (see Issue 32, p86) has always been a favourite of ours, but it's remained reassuringly expensive throughout its lifespan, still costing £100 despite the fact that its replacement, the P190, is imminent. Before the P190 arrives, though, Antec is launching another new case, the Nine Hundred, which comes in at the cheaper price of £71.

Compared with the understated design of the P180, the Nine Hundred is smaller, lighter and looks more aggressive. Like its bigger sibling, though, it certainly isn't deficient in the cooling department. The roof of the Nine Hundred is swollen to accommodate a massive 200mm exhaust fan and vent, while two 120mm fans, lit by blue LEDs, suck in air through the perforated front panel. With a third 120mm exhaust fan on the back of the case, the Nine Hundred abandons the subtle compartmentalised design of the P180 and adopts the wind-tunnel approach to cooling hot-running hardware. The only problem with the design is the lack of air filters, meaning that the interior will clog up with dust very quickly.

The Nine Hundred's side panel sports a V-shaped window and a large mesh vent, and it also has a screwless fan mount for yet another 120mm fan, in case you need additional direct cooling for your graphics card.

There's also plenty of room for hard disks and optical drives. The case sports two removable hard disk caddies, each attached to one of the two blue intake fans. Both cages are secured to the case by thumbscrews, and each has room for three hard disks. In addition to the six 3.5in drive bays, there are three externally accessible 5.25in drive bays. If you need more room for other components, the hard disk cages can be removed, effectively giving you up to nine 5.25in drive bays to play with. This would be great if you wanted to free up space on the front panel to install a dual 120mm-fan radiator for a water-cooling loop, and it would still be possible to fit a hard disk into one of the 5.25in bays, as Antec supplies a plastic 3.5in drive bay converter, intended for use with a floppy disk drive.

That said, while you could fit a radiator into the front of the case, you'd be hard-pushed to squeeze a full-scale water-cooling kit inside the Nine Hundred. At less than 50cm deep, the case doesn't offer anywhere near as much free space as the similarly designed Cooler Master Stacker 830. The PSU is situated on the floor of the Nine Hundred, so it takes up plenty of space too, especially if you opt for an oversized model such as the 1kW Enermax Galaxy (see Issue 38, p55).

All of the fans inside the Nine Hundred are Antec TriCool models, so they're powered via passthrough Molex connectors. Each fan has its own speed control switch, allowing you to run them at low, medium or high rotational speeds. As we saw in our case fan Labs test (see Issue 36, p73), at high speed, these Antec fans shift a lot of air, but make quite a racket. Even at the medium setting, they emit an irritatingly audible hum and, while they're effectively inaudible at low speed, they shift very little air. Fortunately, the 200mm fan in the roof of the case more than compensates for this. Even at low speed, the roof fan creates a pleasant draught inside the case, which becomes a refreshing breeze at medium speed. The huge fan makes a noticeable whooshing noise at high speed, which can be distracting.

The power and reset switches, as well as the usual array of two USB 2, microphone, headphone and FireWire I/O ports are located on top of the case. They're ideally situated for people who keep their tower on the floor. Behind the ports, in the middle of the roof, there's an indented tray area, presumably for holding cans of energy drink. While this seems like the kind of cliched, gamer-orientated element the marketing department would add to appeal to 'l33t gamers', it's handy for storing USB thumb drives, MP3 players or gamepads, so it's actually a neat and useful idea.

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